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Here was Irma,^† lecturing me about toilet paper, on how to be a good roommate in America, contributing to the apartment, how we were both Christians… She kept pointing out how generous she had been to me, asking me why I wasn’t appreciative.

MENTAL DOUBLE TAKE — Did she just say she had been generous to me?

[jen ∙ ə ∙ ˈrä ∙ si ∙ tē]

When used to describe a person, generosity is defined as “readiness to give more of something, especially money, than is strictly necessary or expected; open-hearted, charitable, liberal, bountiful.” ^‡

While I may not be able to describe what generosity is [that is, true generosity], I definitely know what it is not — and it was not Irma. Generosity is something I struggle to understand; and along with that, love, justice, and compassion.

I began growing weary of “church” my senior year of college. I was dissatisfied with the way the Gospel was, in my opinion, presented and how it was applied. I am no expert, but I felt that it was too often hidden under a message that could be easily likened to self-help program. These feelings continued into graduate school, where I often asked myself, “Why are my non-Christian classmates so much better at ‘loving their neighbors,’ at defending the poor and powerless, at righting injustice than Christians? Why did they seem to actually care?”^§

At the height of my discontent, I visited several different churches, but I always resisted committing myself to anyone one of them. I didn’t feel like I fit or I felt that some of the churches’ “progressive” principles confounded the basis of the Gospel.

When I went to work in Malawi for the summer in 2008, I told myself that I would go to a local church because I wanted to experience God in the way that the Malawians did. But I was even more frustrated at the remnants of colonialism and indications of foreign missionaries that had long returned to their homes. Going to church in Malawi was like going to church in the Bible Belt—dressed up every Sunday, sitting still for 3 hours in a sermon, polite mingling afterward with all the aunties and uncles you knew growing up. Going to church had definitely become a part of Malawian custom.

So I’ve been on this quest for what true generosity is, what justice is, even what love is. I believe that the penultimate example of these is manifested in Jesus, but what does that really mean for us right now? What does it mean to me as a Christian?

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^* I began this entry sometime in March 2011 after visiting Mental States, an exhibit by George Condo at the New Museum. The outline for this entry is actually quite long, and obviously I haven’t been able to finish it, but I thought I would just start posting it in parts.

^† Irma was my flatmate in New York when I first moved there in July 2009.

^‡ This definition is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary.

^§ Of course there are Christians who do care and do a lot and of course some of my non-Christian classmates perhaps did not truly care.

This semester I signed up for an elective in the ER practicing documentation and history-taking. From my understanding, once a week I would essentially work as a scribe for a resident or attending physician during their patient encounters and then enter the information into the patient’s chart. The physician would then give me feedback on my chart-entering and documentation skills. Sounds a bit cumbersome, no? Well, last week was my first session.

I followed Dr. A, a 2nd year resident in the ER. He was at the computers entering a chart. Pretty uneventful I thought. He told me that he didn’t feel comfortable allowing a medical student enter patient information. I agreed. So we began our visits to exam rooms. Dr. A seemed like a simple guy, quite blunt and to the point, yet funny. He didn’t carry anything during his interviews but his stethoscope and an orange phone. All of the ER physicians carried one.

I was surprised that Dr. A didn’t rely on a paper and pen to document anything. He told me he just kept it all in his brain. He would see 5 to 10 patients and return back to his computer to enter information, fewer if they were complicated cases. I was in awe, but then I remembered that every exam room had a computer with patient chart information he could access if needed.

First patient, a woman with lower abdominal pain who ended up with indigestion. Dr. A was courteous with the patient, but someone interrupted him on the loud orange-colored phone attached to his hip during their conversation. He seemed somewhat distracted during the rest of the interview. A nurse entered and asked the patient similar questions about her symptoms. Repetitive, I thought.

We moved on to a middle-aged man complaining about a cough, shortness of breath, vomiting, and a swollen foot. On quite a cold day he was wearing a t-shirt and shorts because he said he felt overheated. From his symptoms, I could not think of what was potentially wrong with him. So many things. Related or unrelated? Dr. A started asking questions right away but didn’t make much eye contact. He pulled up the patient’s chart, which was a treatise on his failing body. With a history of sepsis, a stay in the ICU, a permanent colostomy, gout, among other things, I was sure this guy needed further evaluation. But 10 minutes later when Dr. A was debriefing to a nurse and entering more chart information, he remarked that he believed the patient was making it up, but didn’t know why. I thought, a drug seeker? Nah. To me, he didn’t seem like one. The extensive history made me question Dr. A’s intuition. Perhaps Dr. A wasn’t referring to seeking drugs.

Next, we enter a room with a 9-year old girl with her mother sitting on the edge of the exam table. She had a surgical mask on and was hunched over looking down. The 9-year old girl began answering on behalf of her Spanish-speaking mother when Dr. A asked what was wrong. A cough that has been ongoing for the past month, she answered. I wondered about the federal mandate requiring official hospital interpreters. We weren’t supposed to rely on patient’s relatives, especially minors. Dr. A asked a few more questions in not-so-great Spanish and listened to the woman’s lungs. As Dr. A realized that the symptoms were perhaps pointing to something more serious than just a cough, he told the little girl that we would request for an interpreter. As we left the room, I wondered how serious something had to be for a physician to deem an interpreter necessary irrespective of the mandate.

It was getting close to the end of my short shift of 2 hours. We enter a room with an obviously anxious woman, breathing extremely rapidly. There were already 2 other nurses in her room and she had many monitor lines extending from her arms, chest, and face. Dr. A began asking questions, again answering his orange phone. The patient answered with short breaths, saying she felt like she was being stabbed in the chest. Even though she was only a couple years older that I am, she had a history of pulmonary embolism (PE), caused by clotting blood following a car crash injury. I immediately thought she could be having another PE. Dr. A, I was sure, was thinking the same; however, he continued asking questions with his usual distracted air — no eye contact. But I noticed Dr. A seemed like he was compassionate and cared for this patient, using words like “sweetheart” and “concerned.” Somehow though, I felt he seemed robotic and those words were just words that were programmed into his practice style. When Dr. A asked the distressed woman what could make her feel better, she answered that having her fiance there would greatly calm her. Dr. A reassured her that he would send for him. Hm, I thought, perhaps I judged his bedside practices a little too soon.

We returned to the computer bay, Dr. A typing and clicking as fast as possible. He had even written macros to help him streamline his information entry. I could see why he didn’t trust medical students with being his scribe. The other medical student following Dr. A with me commented that if he were going through something like the PE patient, he would definitely want his fiance there for support. Dr. A, however, told us he wasn’t actually going to go get her fiance and that he’d let the nurses deal with that. Ouch, my ratings for Dr. A’s bedside manners further plummeted.

As I left my shift, I wondered if Dr. A’s style reflected his personality or was a product of working in the ER and seeing noncompliant patients or “crazy” ones, slowly becoming a cynical robot without any compassion. I admit, I’m being a little harsh, but I wonder if that would happen to me also.

My sister and I were on the way to school last week and as we were on the exit ramp, I notice a woman holding a sign up. I was thinking, “man, I’m going to have to avoid eye-contact with her,” and all that other stuff that usually make me feel guilty when I encounter a person with visible physical needs.

However, as I got to the light, the sign read something totally different from what I was expecting:

“THE KROGER ON 15TH STREET HAS DEAD RATS.”

I thought it was so funny that she was doing that! It really made my day.

But when I thought about it more later, I wasn’t sure what she wanted us to do about it. Awareness? Protest to get them to change? I know that Kroger is one of the only grocery stores in the area, so it can’t possibly be shut down. So…I don’t know.

I briefly visited my parents this weekend while in town for a wedding. Sunday morning, they went off to church and insisted that I take whatever food I wanted with me. So here I am, scrounging around the kitchen for some sorely-missed staples, mostly spices and herbs, tea, and cooking wine. I glance in the fridge to make sure I didn’t miss anything and find a dish of beef and green bell peppers that my dad had made for us. Win! In the drawer, I find numerous yellow mangoes, which I LOVE! I also saw some on the counter and decided to grab a couple. My mom couldn’t possibly be able to finish all of them herself before they go bad. I didn’t know it was mango season, but I assumed it had to be mango season somewhere in the world.

I was inspecting the mangoes when I noticed they were a little funny shaped, not as flat as usual, a little too rotund and symmetrical. I located the PLU sticker… Lo and behold, they were not mangoes! They were miniature papayas POSING as mangoes! You know what I like about papayas? NOTHING! I HATE them!