your stories and transparency always heal a little piece inside of me. i cry every time 🥹 thank you for increasing the beauty and goodness in this world.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing with me how you feel! "Increasing the beauty and goodness in this world" is literally one of the best things someone has ever said about my writing!!
What a beautiful, tender, and honest remembrance, Zed. You and Lynn are to be commended for helping your parents navigate this often cruel place known as the USA. My grandparents were immigrants and we Americans need to remember the many struggles immigrant families faced yesterday and today. Thanks for sharing this.
Hi Zed, did anyone ever tell you that besides being a great, empathetic physician, you are also an exceptional writer? I bet you have heard this before, but I just want to let you know how I feel. As my parents' life-long interpreter, I totally get what you were trying to convey in this heartwrenching/heartwarming essay. I have felt the same anger, too, when I was tending to my father by his sick bed while he received chemotherapy. I got angry at the nurses and doctors every day for neglecting his needs and causing his blood pressure to drop to a life-threatening level (too much morphine). Eventually he did die of medical negligence/malpractice but I and mom were too scared to speak up right after the fatal error for fear of retaliation. It was more than a decade ago and the COVID-related Asian hate wasn't in the picture. Still, people with limited English speaking ability are in very vulnerable situations. I learned that fact intimately while working as a Cantonese-English medical interpreter during the pandemic, and got angry on behalf of the people I interpreted for. I am so angry at the bigoted physician who administered tests to your parents. Your story about the "bathhouse adventures" really touched me deeply. Please keep telling your stories and your perspective as an immigrant daughter. The world needs to hear more of these. 💕
Thank you so much for the lovely note, Lily. I am so sorry to hear about your father's death. I hope you take comfort in the fact he had your advocacy. I wish you didn't have to carry that burden. I think more than the angry daughters of immigrants and lifelong interpreters, we also share a sense of justice that has made us the patient advocates we are. As long as one person's family is treated like this, all of us will remain in the fight. <3
Thank you for your kind words. I tried to do my best, but there were so many things beyond my control. I've learned to accept what happened as fate, and to live with the regrets. You're right about the sense of justice that we immigrant daughters feel. The injustice will probably never end, but this fight will always remain worthwhile.
Zed, You are so talented. That transition, when we begin to parent our parents, is something was needed to discuss more. My mother (86) had a traumatic experience in rehab two years ago. I still am grateful to the nurse manager who was honest with me, who apologized to me, and who validated our experience. She said, “I would feel the same if this were my mother.”
Your love for your parents shine throughout your writing. And that moment of recognition between two daughters trying to protect their parents... so special!
What a beautiful, poignant and rich story. I can relate to the experience of being one’s parents advocate and ultimately caretaker, under less than kind and often hostile circumstances. My parents migrated here decades ago and faced challenges with the healthcare system and unkind providers, but the timing made it less blatant than what you had to face. After so long ago when mine arrived to now when yours have, and as revealed in the story of your patient, it’s shameful that the care in healthcare still falls short. That it’s even punitive to so-called foreigners. Sadly, it may get worse in the coming months or years. Thank you for bringing these issues to light and for caring!
Hubs and I are aging and are noticing our kids are often making suggestions that are a polite way of telling us what to do. This often happens when we are dithering making a decision. Because we know they love us we’ve never taken offense at it.
You're a good story teller. Your words took me back to your bath house story. What a wonderful mother to make it an adventure. I felt when you connected to the the Hispanic daughter. You were and are her. I'm glad you talked to the physician that didn't do the job right. Whether it's protocol or not. It was right and should be policy despite legal issues.
Oh God. This is so, so heartfelt! I relate to it on a million different levels. Don't give up on that anger. Much as I would hope there isn't much need for that parent protecting anger, I think you will. We all will, with the poison of hatred is being carpet bombed on us.
I love reading your humble and brilliant observations about life, simple yet profound. Our mom immigrated to USA in 1950 and my father's side in the 1920s. How did we get to so much hated toward immigrants today? We are all humans living on the same planet. I long for the day when we all have easy access to clean water, food and healthcare. Thank you for being you. Aloha to your sweet family and enjoy every moment in the hot tub 🌺🫶🦋
Thank you so much for the kind words and Aloha to you too! We all live under the same sky and walk on the same earth -- we will keep this sense of kinship going and whoever else sees the world that way can join us!
There is such an important developmental shift that happens when we become responsible for our parents and it seems it often happens first in medical care. For those of you who have interpreted language and culture for your parents, it came early. It came later for me when I helped my parents in their old age, each with neurodegenerative diseases.
With my mom, who had mixed-type dementia, Alzheimer’s and vascular, I had to help healthcare providers understand her struggles. Meanwhile, she seemed to have this innate drive to present herself as happy, well, and compliant to anyone wearing a white coat. This resulted in her providers not seeing accurately where she was with her disease or where we were with her care giving.
Her own PCP blithely suggested we needed to do less for her, let her keep her skills as long as she could by practicing them. It was good advice had it landed anywhere in proximity to reality. But he had misunderstood the level of my mom’s dementia. We took her to the bathroom not because we were doting, overprotective daughters, but because she no longer connected the bodily sensations she was having with the behavior of taking herself to the bathroom.
At that point, to “let her do things herself” would have resulted in more suffering for her. He cared about her and wanted to see that happy, compliant woman do well. He needed to see her thriving. As her caregivers, we needed him to see her reality. At the end of the appointment, he got his wish of staying in denial about her decline. We and she got no meaningful help at all. Well, she got a very nice social interaction, which is something she needed, but didn’t have to take place in a medical context with all associated hopes, disappointments, and bills.
After her decline we began to understand how much she was interfacing with the world on behalf of our father. We knew his education had been cut short. We did not realize the extent of his sub-literacy nor his skill at hiding it with her help. As he dealt with Parkinson’s, we became a different sort of interpreters, helping him with paperwork and trying to find ways to help his neurology team understand that he was non-compliant because he didn’t understand and didn’t want to reveal that to them or us.
Ultimately, that meant he rejected a number of therapies that likely would have improved his quality of life and lessened or delayed his suffering. We coaxed him but often could not convince him of the efficacy of the therapies suggested. It seemed he could not trust what he did not understand.
One day we walked into his PCPs office and the receptionist casually handed him an iPad and told him this was the new check-in system. It seemed no one had considered how the convenient new system would be experienced by frail elders. They had not thought about difficulties with carrying objects while walking, about touch screens as “new” technology to the Silent Generation, nor about how much anxiety the new system injected into the experience for someone who is technologically illiterate, let alone unable to comprehend complex written language
There are so many barriers for elders and so many developmental milestones for their caregivers. It feels like a treacherous maze sometimes. I can only imagine that language and cultural differences magnify this profoundly. It is no wonder so many put off essential healthcare—and that’s before we add in financial considerations.
Wow thank you for sharing your story and wisdom. I haven’t thought about it that way — wondering how much of that developmental shift and responsibility transition I’m witnessing in my clinic as a physician. What an honor to be part of it.
I didn’t respond to the main point of your essay, about medical trauma, but as someone who has both witnessed it and experienced it, I really appreciate you writing about it. You give me such hope.
your stories and transparency always heal a little piece inside of me. i cry every time 🥹 thank you for increasing the beauty and goodness in this world.
Thank you so much for reading and sharing with me how you feel! "Increasing the beauty and goodness in this world" is literally one of the best things someone has ever said about my writing!!
what francine said.🙏🏻💕
What a beautiful, tender, and honest remembrance, Zed. You and Lynn are to be commended for helping your parents navigate this often cruel place known as the USA. My grandparents were immigrants and we Americans need to remember the many struggles immigrant families faced yesterday and today. Thanks for sharing this.
Thank you for reading Michael, and thank you for hearing what I really wanted to say.
Hi Zed, did anyone ever tell you that besides being a great, empathetic physician, you are also an exceptional writer? I bet you have heard this before, but I just want to let you know how I feel. As my parents' life-long interpreter, I totally get what you were trying to convey in this heartwrenching/heartwarming essay. I have felt the same anger, too, when I was tending to my father by his sick bed while he received chemotherapy. I got angry at the nurses and doctors every day for neglecting his needs and causing his blood pressure to drop to a life-threatening level (too much morphine). Eventually he did die of medical negligence/malpractice but I and mom were too scared to speak up right after the fatal error for fear of retaliation. It was more than a decade ago and the COVID-related Asian hate wasn't in the picture. Still, people with limited English speaking ability are in very vulnerable situations. I learned that fact intimately while working as a Cantonese-English medical interpreter during the pandemic, and got angry on behalf of the people I interpreted for. I am so angry at the bigoted physician who administered tests to your parents. Your story about the "bathhouse adventures" really touched me deeply. Please keep telling your stories and your perspective as an immigrant daughter. The world needs to hear more of these. 💕
Thank you so much for the lovely note, Lily. I am so sorry to hear about your father's death. I hope you take comfort in the fact he had your advocacy. I wish you didn't have to carry that burden. I think more than the angry daughters of immigrants and lifelong interpreters, we also share a sense of justice that has made us the patient advocates we are. As long as one person's family is treated like this, all of us will remain in the fight. <3
Thank you for your kind words. I tried to do my best, but there were so many things beyond my control. I've learned to accept what happened as fate, and to live with the regrets. You're right about the sense of justice that we immigrant daughters feel. The injustice will probably never end, but this fight will always remain worthwhile.
Zed, You are so talented. That transition, when we begin to parent our parents, is something was needed to discuss more. My mother (86) had a traumatic experience in rehab two years ago. I still am grateful to the nurse manager who was honest with me, who apologized to me, and who validated our experience. She said, “I would feel the same if this were my mother.”
Can that nurse manager teach more people in healthcare about apologies ? 😅 so important
Tears. Again. Keep writing. The world needs the gifts you offer.
Your love for your parents shine throughout your writing. And that moment of recognition between two daughters trying to protect their parents... so special!
They are lucky to have you—parents and patients. Thank you for bringing your heart to work.
What a beautiful, poignant and rich story. I can relate to the experience of being one’s parents advocate and ultimately caretaker, under less than kind and often hostile circumstances. My parents migrated here decades ago and faced challenges with the healthcare system and unkind providers, but the timing made it less blatant than what you had to face. After so long ago when mine arrived to now when yours have, and as revealed in the story of your patient, it’s shameful that the care in healthcare still falls short. That it’s even punitive to so-called foreigners. Sadly, it may get worse in the coming months or years. Thank you for bringing these issues to light and for caring!
Thank you Jacquie! I think you are right about things getting worse. We must and we WILL brace for impact together.
Hubs and I are aging and are noticing our kids are often making suggestions that are a polite way of telling us what to do. This often happens when we are dithering making a decision. Because we know they love us we’ve never taken offense at it.
Yes they do 🥹🥹🥹🥹🩵🩵🩵
You're a good story teller. Your words took me back to your bath house story. What a wonderful mother to make it an adventure. I felt when you connected to the the Hispanic daughter. You were and are her. I'm glad you talked to the physician that didn't do the job right. Whether it's protocol or not. It was right and should be policy despite legal issues.
Your parents must be proud.
Thank you for your comment about my story telling! And yes I think giving each other feedback should be the norm.
Everything about this post is simply sublime. What an honor it is to have crossed paths with you my dear. Lovely humans like you are so very rare.
Beautiful ❣️
Oh God. This is so, so heartfelt! I relate to it on a million different levels. Don't give up on that anger. Much as I would hope there isn't much need for that parent protecting anger, I think you will. We all will, with the poison of hatred is being carpet bombed on us.
Take care and warm wishes.
Will hold onto the anger and make it into advocacy and compassion!!
That is beautifully written! I'm a neurologist in Adelaide Australia, and your stories always make me strive to do better for my patients. Thank you!
Honored 🥹🥹🥹🩵🩵
I love reading your humble and brilliant observations about life, simple yet profound. Our mom immigrated to USA in 1950 and my father's side in the 1920s. How did we get to so much hated toward immigrants today? We are all humans living on the same planet. I long for the day when we all have easy access to clean water, food and healthcare. Thank you for being you. Aloha to your sweet family and enjoy every moment in the hot tub 🌺🫶🦋
Thank you so much for the kind words and Aloha to you too! We all live under the same sky and walk on the same earth -- we will keep this sense of kinship going and whoever else sees the world that way can join us!
There is such an important developmental shift that happens when we become responsible for our parents and it seems it often happens first in medical care. For those of you who have interpreted language and culture for your parents, it came early. It came later for me when I helped my parents in their old age, each with neurodegenerative diseases.
With my mom, who had mixed-type dementia, Alzheimer’s and vascular, I had to help healthcare providers understand her struggles. Meanwhile, she seemed to have this innate drive to present herself as happy, well, and compliant to anyone wearing a white coat. This resulted in her providers not seeing accurately where she was with her disease or where we were with her care giving.
Her own PCP blithely suggested we needed to do less for her, let her keep her skills as long as she could by practicing them. It was good advice had it landed anywhere in proximity to reality. But he had misunderstood the level of my mom’s dementia. We took her to the bathroom not because we were doting, overprotective daughters, but because she no longer connected the bodily sensations she was having with the behavior of taking herself to the bathroom.
At that point, to “let her do things herself” would have resulted in more suffering for her. He cared about her and wanted to see that happy, compliant woman do well. He needed to see her thriving. As her caregivers, we needed him to see her reality. At the end of the appointment, he got his wish of staying in denial about her decline. We and she got no meaningful help at all. Well, she got a very nice social interaction, which is something she needed, but didn’t have to take place in a medical context with all associated hopes, disappointments, and bills.
After her decline we began to understand how much she was interfacing with the world on behalf of our father. We knew his education had been cut short. We did not realize the extent of his sub-literacy nor his skill at hiding it with her help. As he dealt with Parkinson’s, we became a different sort of interpreters, helping him with paperwork and trying to find ways to help his neurology team understand that he was non-compliant because he didn’t understand and didn’t want to reveal that to them or us.
Ultimately, that meant he rejected a number of therapies that likely would have improved his quality of life and lessened or delayed his suffering. We coaxed him but often could not convince him of the efficacy of the therapies suggested. It seemed he could not trust what he did not understand.
One day we walked into his PCPs office and the receptionist casually handed him an iPad and told him this was the new check-in system. It seemed no one had considered how the convenient new system would be experienced by frail elders. They had not thought about difficulties with carrying objects while walking, about touch screens as “new” technology to the Silent Generation, nor about how much anxiety the new system injected into the experience for someone who is technologically illiterate, let alone unable to comprehend complex written language
There are so many barriers for elders and so many developmental milestones for their caregivers. It feels like a treacherous maze sometimes. I can only imagine that language and cultural differences magnify this profoundly. It is no wonder so many put off essential healthcare—and that’s before we add in financial considerations.
Wow thank you for sharing your story and wisdom. I haven’t thought about it that way — wondering how much of that developmental shift and responsibility transition I’m witnessing in my clinic as a physician. What an honor to be part of it.
I didn’t respond to the main point of your essay, about medical trauma, but as someone who has both witnessed it and experienced it, I really appreciate you writing about it. You give me such hope.