Valerie Gribben: Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work
Selected Excerpts
“… when I started medical school, I packed up my youthful literary indiscretions. I reordered my bookshelf, moving my well-thumbed but now irrelevant Brothers Grimm stories behind a biochemistry textbook. Within weeks my desk was crammed with printouts on fractures of the humerus and the intermediates of oxidative phosphorylation. I was thinking in terms of proximal and distal, instead of hither and thither.”
“The practice of medicine bestows the sacred privilege to ask about the unmentionable. But what happens when the door to Bluebeard’s horror chamber opens, and the bloody secrets spill onto your aseptic field of study? How do you process the pain of your patients?”
“Fairy tales are, at their core, heightened portrayals of human nature, revealing, as the glare of injury and illness does, the underbelly of mankind. Both fairy tales and medical charts chronicle the bizarre, the unfair, the tragic. And the terrifying things that go bump in the night are what doctors treat at 3 a.m. in emergency rooms.”
Discussion Questions
The gritty details in this essay are what make it so haunting, so powerful. Which specific descriptions captivated you?
Dr. Gribben left her fairy tales behind when she went to medical school. What parts of yourself have you left behind when entering the hospital or clinic? As a patient? As a family member? As a clinician?
How do stories help you make sense of your experiences with illness and healthcare?
Reflections from #MedHumChat
“The image of “bloody secrets” spilling out onto your “aseptic field of study” really hit me. highlights that contrast between what we learn of medicine vs. what actually practicing is like, it can be overwhelming to process.” —@CarlySokach
“My voice - It's hard to remember that as patients and family members we have the right to ask questions. It's so easy to get caught up in the hospital way of doing things, to be intimidated by white coats and medical authority.” —@LReedsbooks
“It's as a patient that I've felt that I leave my entire identity behind, except anything that relates to my disease, esp in the ER. If they don;t see it or understand signs/symptoms in your context, they don't exist.” —@mcshannon17
About this #MedHumChat
“Practicing Medicine Can Be Grimm Work” was paired with “Intensive Care” by Jane O Wayne for a #MedHumChat on June 2, 2021 discussing Can Fairy Tales and Poetry Help Us Heal?
These pieces and discussion questions were originally curated by Colleen Farrell for the very first MedHumChat January 2, 2019.
About the Author
Dr. Valerie Gribben, MD is an author and pediatric hospitalist at the University of California, San Francisco.