Rhetorical Analysis Of 'This Is Where I Would Be Missed'

“This is where I would be missed”
There were two questions I feared asking. As I prepared for the interview I wrote them in my notebook and rehearsed them, I tried to plan out the conversation, I knew what she was going to say and I planned to simply write down her words exactly as I carefully and empathetically listened as a health humanities student. Yet, completely throwing my mental preparation out the window, I was surprised by her answers. She didn’t fear death, the hardest part wasn’t the anxiety of waiting for tests to see if treatment was working, it wasn’t acknowledging her mortality nor watching cancer taking a big part of her womanhood and overall body. She simply explained,
I wouldn’t say I have fears, I’m not afraid of anything.

Smith’s narrative embodies Eric Cassel’s interpretation of suffering, in his essay, “The Nature of Suffering and The Goals of Medicine, “This woman’s suffering was not confined to her physical symptoms, [the second] is that she suffered not only from her disease but also from its treatment, [The third] is that one could not anticipate what she would describe as a source of suffering” (Cassel, 8). During our conversation I did my best to let her lead and restricted my input to the minimum. She did speak of her treatment when I asked about it but in the sense of her overall story, it was surprising to find that most of her suffering due to her illness occurred outside of hospital walls. The pain and constant nausea were hard to tolerate but it was the consequence of these symptoms that affected her the most, it was the context of the illness that caused her the suffering she believed important to speak during our limited time. When looking at Mrs. Smith further than her physical body and rather as a whole person, the extra time it took her to get ready that caused her to be late to work in the mornings and those two SQF audit points is what really hurt her spirit. Likewise, the lymphedema itself caused her pain and discomfort, but the real suffering came from it permanently slowing her pace leaving her feeling like she couldn’t efficiently do what she considered was her great contribution to her