On the Personal Discomfort with Aging and Death
This Blog post represents a partnership between the Women in Medicine Summit and Healio Women in Oncology. An excerpt appears blow, and please find the full length piece at Healio’s Women in Oncology Blog
Author: Lois M. Ramondetta, MD
“I see my folks, they’re getting old. And I watch their bodies change. I know they see the same in me and it makes us both feel strange.”
“Nick of Time” by Bonnie Raitt
Our daily interactions with people energetically change how we feel about ourselves and our own circumstances.
When interacting with patients with cancer, our discomfort with our own mortality can sometimes interfere. We may see our own lives reflected in our patients’, which may, in turn, color our treatment decisions.
Maintaining mindfulness about these changes is a minute-to-minute — actually, no, a second-to-second — practice. It is all about the pause … accessed often by a deep inhaled breath followed by a slow, prolonged exhale. A pause, designed to ask perhaps, “Why am I feeling unease? Is this my ego talking, or is this my true nature?” Or “Is this reaction I’m experiencing based in ‘wrong knowledge’ about the sensory input I’m receiving?” And, in a more personal example, “Is the frustration I feel when my parents walk a little slower or forget something we discussed earlier really about my parents, or is it rather about me and my personal discomfort with aging and death?”
When considering our unease, it may be helpful to follow the guidance of the yoga sutras, where there is emphasis on being mindful of your “kleishas.” Kleishas, according to Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras, are characteristics of thought/thinking that are based in wrong knowledge (the first Kleisha) and thus color our experiences. The other four kleishas include, hatred/disgust, desire/attraction, an inflated ego and a clinging to life. All these afflictions, per Patanjali, produce a sense of apprehension and unease. The purpose of yogic lifestyle is to calm the mind, and per Patanjali, identifying with your kleishas brings suffering of the mind.
About the author: Lois M. Ramondetta, MD, C-IYAT, Diplomat ABLM, is professor of gynecologic oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Twitter: @DrRamondetta.
