Literature Annotations
 |
Schwartz, Lynne Sharon |
| Genre | Short Story (16 pp.) |
| Keywords | Anesthesia, Body Self-Image, Cancer, Depression, Disease and Health, Doctor-Patient Relationship, Empathy, Individuality, Infertility, Menstruation, Narrative as Method, Physical Examination, Power Relations, Psycho-social Medicine, Sexuality, Surgery, Time, Women's Health |
| Summary | Narrated in the style of an "advice" manual, this is the chronicle of a woman who undergoes a hysterectomy and removal of her ovaries. The tone is sardonic. The story begins with the office visit in which the doctor delivers the news and reassures her that she is too "intelligent and sophisticated" to associate her womanhood with her reproductive organs. The physician attempts to persuade the narrator to have her ovaries removed--preventive medicine against the possibility of ovarian cancer--and she finally agrees while groggy from pre-operative anaesthesia. Nothing has prepared her for the emotional and physical lability she experiences after surgery. Even her sexual relationship with her husband is changed. As she returns for post-operative check-ups, she becomes increasingly conscious of the indignities of the office visit and physical examination: "it strikes [her] that this maximum-efficiency set-up [three cubicles with naked, waiting women] might serve equally well for a brothel and perhaps already does." She feels that she has made a terrible mistake in allowing the doctor to have talked her into anything and that as a male, "there is nothing he can tell you about how you feel, for the simple reason that he does not know." |
| Commentary | This satiric piece raises important questions about medical paternalism, particularly with regard to female patients; the patient as his/her own best advocate; the fragility of personal identity; human dignity; and about the nature of empathic interactions between physicians and their patients. Can a doctor be a "good" doctor without ever having experienced something of what the patient experiences? |
| Source | The Melting Pot and Other Subversive Stories |
| Publisher | Harper & Row |
| Edition | 1987 |
| Place Published | New York |
| Annotated by | Aull, Felice |
| Date of Entry | 05/11/95 |
| Last Revised | 02/04/97 |