Richard Sidlow

Juxtapositions, Contradictions, Absurdities Richard Sidlow

The practice of medicine is intricate and immersive. It also challenges its honest practitioners with emotional challenges that belie easy navigation. As the title states, physicians are challenged with juxtapositions, contradictions and absurdities in the process of patient care that defy easy emotional assimilation. This work brings to light via several short, nonfiction essays examples of extreme family dynamics, unreasonable and intractable clinical scenarios, and heart-breakingly painful physician-patient interactions admixed with poems attempting to channel and express the author's pain. Challenging at times, but never boring, this work plumbs the depths of ignored and sublimated emotion felt by physicians for whom the mandate to be nonjudgmental and forever in equipoise is difficult to maintain.