We've all been there. Banging our heads against the wall and then thinking we had "the answer." But no, Not this time.
I just finished reading a lengthy article in the New Yorker magazine by Rivka Galchen about young intern Hashem Zirkey, at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. It's basically about his life in the ER and it is heartbreaking. He describes every day as very different but always tramatic. Protocol changes almost daily.
It's evident Zirkey cares deeply about his patients. On March 21st one of the patients who seemed not as sick as others signed out to recover at home. He walked by later and asked Zirky where the bathroom was. He was walking - that's a great sign. Talking - that's a great sign. A short time later the man had collapsed in the bathroom. When Zirkey reached him the man had no pulse. The patient died about 15 minutes later. "Nothing like this had ever happed to me," Zirky said.
One of the things Zirkey treasures is being able to communicate bad news to patients in a compassionate and humane way. Families are calling constantly. One night he had a patient who was critically ill and on a ventilator. His family called wanting to say goodbye. Zirkey had to put the phone on speaker in order to hold it to the patient's ear. "I felt like I was intruding....I thought, My God, this is real. This is what everyone is doing now."
One of the surgeons at Elmhurst described much of his work as a "hundred-per-cent Sisyphean task".
Another fan of the legend of Sisphus was French philosopher and prolific, Noble prizing winning, writer Albert Camus, In his 1947 novel "The Plague," he described something that has struck with me all these decades since I read it. I may not get the details straight but the profound message, for me, was this: In a world much like what we're experiencing now, he tells about a time when two exhausted, and discouraged doctors who were ready to throw in the towel, were able to get away for a short respite. They went for a night time swim and, at some point, they found themselves swimming in perfect sinc, which somehow empowered them to carry on their work. They were able to continue pushing the bolder.
I have been uplifted by both stories. Zirkey's, which I read today and "The Plague" which I read decades ago.
The point of the Sisphus legend is that we don't have control of the universe. Stuff happens. We get one issue solved and another pops up. But we can choose to find meaning and purpose in continuing to roll the boulder.
Unfortunately for Camus, he was killed in a car crash at age 46. That too, for me, is a profound example of the Legend of Sisphus.
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