BOOK REVIEW : Steel Will Survives in an Iron Lung : A GRACEFUL PASSAGE: A PHYSICIAN LEARNS HOW TO LIVE WITH CHRONIC DISABILITY <i> by Arnold R. Beisser M.D.</i> Doubleday $16.95; 256 pp.
Dr. Arnold Beisser’s “graceful passage” is from polio, which completely paralyzed him at age 25, to a basic faith in human nature that has left him jubilant about life.
Beisser, who is kept alive by an iron lung, recalls some of his more bewildering and frightening moments: “I did not want to die. Some gross mistake must have happened, I thought. I was the doctor, not the patient; I was the physically strong one who helped others. Like millions before me, I thought, ‘I am too young to die.’ ”
More than the story of life incarcerated in an iron lung, “A Graceful Passage” is about a patient who is also a doctor living with grace even at the edge of a dark precipice. By helping himself overcome helplessness and fear, Beisser can better reach out to those who needed his help.
“There are more and more of them,” he writes, “and I will still use my creativity if I can, to see what I can learn.”
One of these pages’ most piercing moments describes the visit of a friend on a day when problems of skin, prostate and circulation have been plaguing the doctor with particular force.
“Life seems too hard,” Beisser confesses. “If it continues this way very much longer, I would like to end it all, and I would need help.” Beisser explains that physicians know from experience the difference between a “good death” and a hard one. They see little or no advantage in meaningless suffering, and they know how it can reduce the person to a humiliating subhuman level.
“My friends have the knowledge and means to prevent much degradation from overtaking them. They are luckier than most people, for they can keep some control over their lives.” And then he writes: “We must discover ways to place the decision back in the hands of the person whose life is at stake.”
While Beisser celebrates his right to “live and die as I wish,” he adds: “I have no desire to end my life except as a way of avoiding useless suffering. So as long as there is hope, I would like to stay. I have seen how degrading and humiliating senseless health-care intervention can be; I have seen the erosion of the spirit that can occur when people become caught up in years of that well-intentioned mishap.”
This is not an issue between him and God, he stresses, but between him and what man has created: a health-care system that essentially can take over people’s lives. “The greatest gift that could be given to me, or anyone else, would be to allow me to live in my own terms.”
At 63, Beisser, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA and recipient of the American Psychiatric Assn.’s Gold Achievement Award, still manages to triumph emotionally and spiritually over his long imprisonment in an iron cell. As a writer and patient who has struggled with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus for more than 30 years, I’ve learned a lot from Beisser.
Next: Elaine Kendall reviews “Titmuss Regained” by John Mortimer.