Of the Value of Honesty

Helmut Lauschke

Of the Value of Honesty

The Wonder of true Humanity

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Titel

Of the Value of Honesty

Humane psychology versus war psychology

To cut off the girl’s arm

The triangular conversation

Honesty and Authenticity

Honesty as a Disposition

Impressum neobooks

Of the Value of Honesty

Humane psychology versus war psychology

Dr Lizette said during the tea break, while the nurses cleaned the theatre room that her husband would not do long this work with the war psychology, because the demands were simply too high which exceeded the normal physical and mental capacity by far. “What is normal in a war?”, I asked and said: “Also we doctors are over-challenged and overworked, but war does not care about human issues and needs, because war is the destroyer of civilization and mankind. War is the devil who swallows the people and its children with the ruthlessness of the laws of likelihood.” Lizette said that war has its own psychology which differs by far from the psychology of her husband. I had the picture of a canyon in mind with the steep faces of the war psychology on one side and of the other psychology on the other side. I said: “I’m not a psychologist, however as far as I understand of psychology, it is directed toward the human being to achieve the internal balance and freedom and the internal peace rejecting any destructive attempts that the war brings to a large extent.”

The war psychology is not more than a grimace of disgust and destruction that has nothing in common with a psychology of human reasonableness with the great and fundamental values of mankind. It is the schizophrenia in the sick brains of our time and particularly in the moral-diverted brains of the loudmouthed politicians who don’t know what the psychology stands for. They connect the one with the other, the psychology in the human-educated way of civilization with the grimace of disgust and destruction. The ugly face of war psychology belongs in the devil’s pot of the pathology of ‘human’ sciences.

“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway. If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway. The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway. People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway. Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.” (Oscar Wilde)

I felt the agitation of Dr Lizette who stood in front of me. I stopped the elaboration about psychology and its pathology with the distorted face of the war psychology when both doctors went back to theatre 2 for the last operation. An old woman lay on the operating table she had a skin lesion on the right forearm with the clinical signs of malignancy. I washed hands and forearms and was with my thoughts far away to ask and discuss with colleagues the dubiousness and manipulative susceptibility of the psychology and its pathology.

A nurse pulled the operating coat over me and tied the laces over my back. The instrument nurse held the scalpel in her right hand when I entered the theatre room and pulled over the gloves and approached the operating table. I cut out the lesion and marked with a stitch the proximal end of the excision for the topographic orientation of the histological findings and covered the large defect with a skin graft taken from the right thigh and fixed it with thin stitches. The operation had been finished after the dressings and bandages were put on. The patient were brought on the trolley and carried to the recovery room. I thanked Dr Lizette and the nurses for the good cooperation and left the theatre room for the dressing room where I pulled off the sweaty green shirt and green trousers and dried the skin on head, neck and chest and put on the civilian clothes. I left the theatre building and took the passage to the outpatient department to see the patients in consulting room 4 where the Philippine colleague had started working two hours ago.

When I passed the waiting hall I had seen the ten-year-old girl with the swollen right upper arm in company with an old woman. Both say on the third bench in front of the consulting room. I took my seat at the table and asked the nurse to call the old woman with her ten-year-old grandchild. They entered the room and the old woman took a seat on the chair. A second chair on which the back was broken off was put for the girl left to the chair with the grandmother. I showed the X-ray of the grandchild’s right upper arm to the grandmother by going with the pen’s tip around the bony lesion.

The grandmother kept her eyes on the X-ray and followed with great concern the marking with the pen. The girl with the beautiful face looked with innocent eyes at me to get the glimmer of hope that the doctor can help her. Her eyes expressed the full trust in the doctor, while the desperation drilled a hole into my heart. I told the grandmother that the bone lesion is a highly malignant one that threatened the life of her grandchild. Fortunately, there were no secondary tumors [metastases] in the lungs and on the ribs on the X-ray of the chest visible, but only the amputation of the arm can save her life. I had the greatest difficulty to speak out the sentence with the amputation. It caused the impact of a ‘grenade’ on the grandmother who gave the grandchild a hug with her left arm.

The girl’s eyes lost the hope and became deeply sad. It moved desperately my heart that I became speechless for a moment. Grandmother stroke with her left hand over the grandchild’s head and hugged her again with her left arm. It took minutes of silent thinking and silent despair when the grandmother agreed with the operation and gave her consent and signed the operation form. She stroke over the head of her grandchild who became stunned with tears in her eyes. I put her name on the preliminary operating list. I got speechless because of the mutilation as the result of this operation.

Grandmother and grandchild left with the completed admission form and the signed operation form the consulting room for the orthopedic children’s ward. Both did not turn their heads back to me. I felt very much sorry for the girl in my heart when grandmother pushed the swing door open to pass through and was followed by the stunned grandchild with the big tears in her eyes. The tragic blows had hit heavily the family: the mother was sick and had to care for smaller brothers and sisters, the father was torn to pieces by a landmine and the ten-year-old girl with her beautiful face and tears in her eyes was on the way for an amputation of her right arm. I knew that the girl would never smile again as she had done in the afternoon of the previous day when she came alone and trusted the doctor that he would do something good to her.

Honesty is the fastest/shortest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. It needs a horrent input of personal humbleness and courage to come onto and follow this way, particularly in the time of the neglect and upside downs of the most fundamental principles in mankind due to the lack of knowledge, understanding and real humanity because by the deeper routed decadence in the arrogance and opposition against the basics of human creation.

Human honesty is needed to read and understand the books of wisdom. Honesty and integrity are the ground on which truth starts shining in its huge dimensions. The greatest truth is covered by humbleness and honesty. It saves eventually the human being.

You must improve your physical and psychological condition, because honesty and transparency make you touchable and vulnerable. The minimum of honesty is to stand up for who you are. Don’t be afraid, when people start shouting at you and will beat you. It is the lack of knowledge and understanding that you like to be humble and straightforward on the path of thinking and doing things on the way of your life.

Humbleness and honesty will force in the long run to a smaller and then to a bigger success, which people will rather misunderstand than to admit to you by congratulating and following you. Remain honest to you and the other people that on the way of your life the doors are ajar or open, but not locked.

Honesty needs a huge education and knowledge how things in life are going smoothly as far as possible. In you is the mirror to see in others what you like to see. Therefore give honesty if you want to receive respect, and give love if you want love. People who love you, they particularly deserve your true attention, humbleness and honesty.

Keep up what your parents taught you: namely showing respect, kindness and honesty. That these are the real and central values in life, you will understand more and more in the years to come. You will never have good friends and an impact on society without humbleness, respect and honesty. Therefore, change your attitude and approach to the people as to yourself.

It was lunchtime and Nestor asked me at the dining table for my opinion about the comment of the matron when she proposed that the superintendent should contact SWAPO (South-West Africa People’s Organization) to explain the danger of the shootings for the hospital and its patients. I supported her proposal and recommended that the superintendent has not to lose time to do so, if the hospital should be kept running. Nestor replied that he will think about it. He was a SWAPO-member since 1974 what he did confess some years later. Nestor told with a face of great concern that the military authority watched with eagle’s eyes the hospital and keeps up the suspicion that SWAPO-fighters were hiding on this premises. He mentioned in this regard that the ‘Sekretaris’ had given him a ‘friendly’ warning. “It is shilly-shallying that one side mistrusts the other side”, Nestor said and looked on his plate. I thought of the tight-rope walk when I asked him, if he had spoken to the medical director. “He cannot help and advised me to handle the matter cautiously, since he does not trust the military and the ‘Sekretaris’ as well”, Nestor said pensively.

We spoke of the injured of the previous night. Nestor expressed his horror of the war causing these mutilations. I said it were his black brothers who shot the shell with a Soviet rifle. It was not only a critical, but rather a dangerous situation with the hanging position between the chairs when the chairs were moving permanently that the hospital hung on a thread that could tear every moment. However, efforts from the hospital administration were needed to come out from the hanging position to make the lives of the patients and of the working staff saver. Aware of the implications of the decision that had to be met, Nestor repeated his sentence of hope that the madness will come soon to an end.

There were other big problems that the rural hospitals in the north, some had more than hundred beds, were run by nurses who treated the patients with TB, malaria and other common infectious diseases. They did small surgical procedures as well and saw huge numbers of outpatients on a daily basis. The nursing staff had serious problems to cope with the heavy burden of work that they asked urgently for a doctor. “We must help the nurses, though we are only a few doctors”, the superintendent said. He suggested that one of the black colleagues should join the hard-working nurses in those hospitals once per week, since they speak the language of the people and were familiar with their tradition and culture. I understood the point and offered my help spontaneously. It was rejected by the superintendent who said that I was needed most as a surgeon at the Oshakati hospital. We left the dining room and parted in front of the door of the secretary’s office.

I passed the waiting hall of the outpatient department with the fully packed benches and entered consulting room 4. The first patients who came for follow-up wore casts on their arms or legs. I reviewed the X-rays in comparison with the previous ones and removed the forearm cast on an old woman and repaired a short leg cast on a young man by putting on some new plaster layers. I came back from the plaster room when the Philippine colleague showed the X-ray of an old man on whom one hip did not show a joint cavity. The colleague asked what can be done knowing that a hip prosthesis was not available for these patients with the ‘empty hands’ and that the technical facilities did not exist at Oshakati hospital. I answered that only a stiffening operation [arthrodesis] can be done which could take away the hip pain from the patient.

The old man said in his language what the nurse translated, he will think about it. He grasped his long stick with both hands and pulled himself awkwardly up from the chair. He stood in his frailty, while his hands held tensely the stick in the height of his chin as he was something to say. He kept quiet and accepted his status of poverty, because it was his life. So he left in a limping gait the consulting room. The colleague gave the well-thumbed and creased health passport with the prescribed pain killers and some anti-inflammatory drugs to the son who followed the poor old man who was his father.

“It is a disgrace that we cannot help this old man”, I thought when I saw how difficult the man did walk. Patients came every day to the hospital with joint pain with or without effusion [hydarthrosis] due to the degenerative alterations with the advanced signs of wear. It were the old people who have worked so hard through their lives of privation. It was a hard message given to them after the X-rays were seen that they have to live with their worn joints by taking drugs against the pain. It was the discrepancy between the rich and the poor that for the poor the adequate treatment was not available, while the rich had the better life without pain. This gave me many times a headache. The old man with the painful hip disorder of restricted mobility walked with great difficulties with his thin and worked-up hands on the long stick in front. He had understood the situation as most of the old people did. It was the wisdom of his age and of his life in poverty and privation that the old man did not argue or complain except from pain. He should think and ask himself about the advantage of getting stiffened his hip joint.

A younger woman took the seat on the chair. She could not move the right elbow after she was beaten by her husband. The X-ray showed a dislocation of the joint with a fracture of the radial head. I put her on the couch in the plaster room and gave the injection for a short-time anesthesia and pulled the forearm in flexed arm position back into the elbow joint and immobilized the joint with a cast in the flexed position. The next patient was a woman who had torn the right index finger and dislocated the middle joint of the middle finger when she had collected branches for firewood. I took the patient to the casualty theatre and put her on the old operating table. After the injection against pain to the second and third fingers, I cleaned, did the debridement and sutured the laceration on the index and reduced the middle joint on the middle finger.