Post created by Josh and Tayler
In another heart-rending episode of “The Good Doctor,” next to the storyline of a pre-teen boy going blind sits another patient isolated in a giant bubble on account of her immune disorder, awaiting a decortication surgery that poses considerable risks.
Of all the systems in our bodies, our immune system is arguably taken for granted the most. With an annoying, lingering cough the past few weeks in the aftermath of an awful go with the flu, Josh has stubbornly avoided the Wellness Center in privileged reliance on his weakened immune system. I have also been fighting a lingering cough from a general virus I was diagnosed with two weeks ago.
As Tayler and I watched this episode, it made us stoked to learn more about our immune systems and the lengths it goes to fight infection, because, as sadly represented in this episode of “The Good Doctor,” we are all so vulnerable to the pathogenic world we live in without it. Now, sit back, eat your oranges, and swallow some zinc, as we learn together how to appreciate and take care of our immune systems by empathizing with someone who doesn’t have one that works.
The patient we are introduced to is suffering from a condition called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder (SCID), the worst of its kind. One doctor informs her of her imaging results which show infected tissue on her right lung, attesting to her breathing issues. The decortication surgical procedure she requires would remove a restrictive layer of fibrous tissue overlying the lung, chest wall, and diaphragm so as to allow the lung to expand again. Her concern, however, is the specific precautions the doctors will take to ensure her protection from additional infection. It is obvious that this patient has gone through these types of procedures before, enough to know the risk that all of this costs in order to hopefully be cured.
Queue Dr. Melendez, “I assure you, we’ll be taking every precaution to keep you safe.” A nod more to a talented scriptwriter than to a young woman who might just be tired of doctors and hospital rooms, the patient responds with an appropriate balance of both sass and wit, “Dr. Melendez, this building is a glorified incubator for every infection on the planet. Considering I don’t come with an immune system, I don’t need assurances; I need you to tell me how you’re gonna not kill me.” Dr. Murphy (the show’s main character) proceeds to itemize every step the doctors will take to keep her transport and surgical environment sterile.
Flash-forward to the operating room, due to an unforeseen difficulty in navigating the surgery through gloved inlets through the bubble in which she is incased and in a nerve-racking attempt to save the surgery, the doctors decide to take her out of the bubble weighing the risk of airborne infection against surgical accessibility. The surgery appears to be a success until later on in the episode during a post-op check-up with Dr. Murphy who spots the signs of yet another infection: high fever, high BPM, and early signs of sepsis. The patients worst nightmare begins to come true. After all, the patient was vocal and thorough about making it known that this was one of her greatest concerns.
In rebuttal to Dr. Melendez’ decision to go with the safer option of treating her symptoms with antibiotics, the two resident doctors offer gene replacement therapy as a viable, though risky, cure to her condition. Dr. Murphy appeals to her emotion in empathizing with her pain of loneliness (because she has to be isolated all the time) by opening up about the loneliness he has felt with autism, and how he has found healing in friendship.
Unzipping her hospital room bubble, in contemplation of the life she might have if the gene therapy works, the young woman paces toward the hospital window surveying the night’s city lights. Whether or not her immune system returns back to normal, she seems resolved in her hopeful defiance against continuing to live an isolated life. While the episode does not show the result of her therapy, it leaves viewers with the assurance that one’s condition is not oneself. The lesson seems to be that we can learn to live in freedom from our ailments or at least our natural response to them, even while suffering them.
We hope you all are healthy and getting good sleep (haha…ha…ha). If you are a praying person, please join us in praying against sickness and feelings of isolation on our campus. This bug, corona or otherwise, can’t take us all! Good immune system or not, you got a Jesus who touched lepers. Did you ever consider healing them was just as much a miracle as touching them without himself getting leprosy? I suppose Love requires some of us future nurses to do just that—to take the risk of being near to the sick, that we all might experience God’s healing grace.
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