In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope

by Rana Awdish

“I’m so sorry that this is the diagnosis, and I know we’ve discussed the prognosis already, and it’s difficult to face. Would it be alright if we talk a bit about how you envision spending your time, from now until whenever the end may be?”

We rewarded failure. Practicing yoga together, I’d congratulate him if he fell. “That was amazing! You took such a big risk that you ended up falling. I am never more proud of you than I am when you fall.”

is an ironic paradox that medicine has become. We disembody doctors and expect them to somehow transcend that handicap and be present in their bodies, empathic and connected. Physicians who have had to learn to disengage from their own emotions to function naturally divert their gaze around the emotions in the room.

the anchors intended to moor us had actually pulled us under.

We were the light needed to heal each other. People get shattered in many ways, and they heal through different means as well. Each of my wounds had healed differently. I have

one scar that is a pale, thin, perfectly straight line. It is eight inches long and runs from just under my breastbone to my navel. It recalls a wound intentionally created with a surgeon’s scalpel, the one they made to remove half of my diseased liver. The edges the scalpel produced were sharp and clean, and could be brought together neatly. It healed well. In medicine we call it “healing by primary intention.”

believed healing to be clean, academic and straightforward. It’s far more humble, and honest, informed by an ocean’s weight of suffering. And despite a sense of forward progress, I know the strength of the tide and the constant threat of the undertow. We’ve all felt it now. And though we are building the ship as we sail it, it is finally being built. Because no one else should have to drown.