Party

The way Hong Kong's iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant sinking like Titanic is sad. But nothing earth-shattering, if you ask me, when compared to the story of my friend who can't make it to go on board the boat today.

That's a boat party she missed. Not an impromptu party, but a boat party she planned after her diagnosis of stomach cancer. Flecks of cancer had already broken free of her bleeding stomach, floating off into her body. Her liver first. And then bone. And her lungs. She knew she was counting her days. Last month she came up with the idea of throwing a boat party for her family, her son's buddies at school and ice hockey team.

She wished she were here today. We wished too. 

She died two weeks ago.

Bittersweet

In my quest to help my patients, I do my utmost to keep them alive and safe. Not a must for some patients.

So. What happened?

One of my good friends - and my patient - died tonight. Kübler-Ross was hovering over the room when I brought my daughter and her classmate to say farewell. For an instant we were wired together and humming, like two engines on the same circuit. I began to feel a lump in my throat. Okay, I whimpered. We cried.

There are doctors who are particularly skilled at not letting the suffering get to them. They seem impervious. I can't.

Susan Cain tells us that compassionate instinct - the way we humans are wired to respond to each other's troubles with little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others - is as much a part of us as the desire to breathe. A fundamental human nature. If someone pinches us or burns our skin, this activates the anterior cingulate region of the cortex - an unique part of our brain responsible for high-level tasks like paying tax. And our anterior cingulate region of the cortex activates in the same way when we see someone else get pinched or burned. This is what I have recently learned from Susan Caine's new book Bittersweet.

What does it mean? This implies that our impulse to connect and experience sadness of other beings sits in the same location known as anterior cingulate region of the cortex. Our need to breathe? Anterior cingulate region of the cortex. To digest food? That, too. To reproduce and protect our babies? Anterior cingulate region of the cortex again. Read: right at the heart of human existence.

Match

Dr. Vanessa Grubbs has been in love with a man called Robert Phillips. That's a beautiful story I have read from her book Hundreds of Interlaced Fingers. On the day Robert made proposal with a diamond engagement ring, Vanessa smiled at him, surprised at how nervous he was. How sweet, she thought, because there could not have been a surer thing - she had just given Robert her kidney. Of course she would give her hand.

Yes, you heard it right. Vanessa has already donated her kidney to Robert, even before their engagement. She believed at her core that giving Robert a kidney is the right thing to do, and far better than seeing Robert's ordeal of three-times-a-week dialysis.

You won't read about this type of living kidney donation very often. Most of us would respond similar to what Vanessa's colleague did, "It's not an extra pair of shoes."

The answer lies deep in Vanessa's mind, as she puts it nonchalantly, "He needs one and I have two."

Try as we might, many of us could not follow the noble example of Vanessa. But that doesn't matter. Everyone is in debt, and many of us are takers. As long as we remember to be givers now and then, it's going to make a better world. Recently, I tried my best to help a good friend of mine after her diagnosis of metastatic stomach cancer. An incurable disease for a twelve-year-old boy's mum. It's as unbelievable as the moon catching fire. The bad news is that she has bleeding from the stomach and, at the same time, dangerous blood clots lurking inside her leg and lungs. Each clot damages her lung a bit more, each insult sending the signal for me to start blood thinner until, soon, the bleeding intervenes.

She needed transfusion and we gave her blood. One unit. Another one. And on and on. And so I went to donate blood this afternoon. Blood group B. Same as my friend. I wished that helps. Amen.

Human Kind

On my way to a public education event this afternoon, I was reading Mitch Albom's story of ten people on a lifeboat. Imagine them making an inventory of their rations after a yacht explosion: half can of water, three protein bars from the ditch bag, four bags of cookies, two boxes of cornflakes, three apples, and few peanut butter crackers. Wait a minute, one more: one seasickness pill, and that’s all.

On my way home, I delved into another book, Humankind, written by a historian and provocative thinker Rutger Bregman. He asked us to imagine two different planets.

On Planet A, the passengers turn to their neighbours to ask if they're okay. People are willing to give their lives, even for perfect strangers.

On Planet B, everyone's left to fend for themselves. Panic breaks out. It'd be like the cut-throat reality competition Survivor in which you either trample others underfoot or you get eliminated.

Now the question: Which planet do we live on? Choosing the planet is like opening our mind's eyes so that we can see humanity from the most positive possibility: upgrading from the operating system of surviving to thriving.