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Comment by User23 | Hacker News Reader

> Pediatric oncology.

That job must be nightmarish for anyone who isn’t a full-blown sociopath. I’m not a particularly empathetic person and I couldn’t start that job let alone stay in it for years.

Edit: > One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough…

This is the opposite of surprising. I imagine one of the appeals of pediatrics is significantly fewer of your patients die. That’s why pediatric oncology is particularly striking, it’s dealing with high numbers of deaths in a cohort where they are otherwise quite rare.

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Death is a virtually unavoidable part of working in medicine. One of the things I've heard over and over again from physicians is dealing with the first handful of deaths during medical school clinical rotations or internship after graduation. There's the second-guessing: what else could I have done to save the person's life? The healthy response seems to be becoming at peace with the fact medicine can't fix everything, accepting that nothing more could have been done given the current state of the field, and that those patients got the best chance they could have had at more meaningful life.

One of the attractions of pediatrics is, surprisingly enough, that there's less death as kids tend to bounce back from the kinds of things that would kill adults.

I know a doctor who works in pediatric oncology. (She is a singer in a metal group, too.) And a nurse from the same pediatric oncology department.

Neither is a sociopath and both told me that as of today, the job is much more rewarding than even 20 years ago. Most of their little patients leave the hospital in remission and deaths have steadily gone down during their careers. It is almost sacrilegious to say that aloud, but childhood cancer seems to be inching towards a "mostly solved problem" status. Contemporary long term survival of kids diagnosed with cancer is hovering around 80 per cent.

Interestingly, 70% of veterans who experience traumatic combat experiences will not have PTSD. 30% of veterans who experience the most severe traumatic combat experiences will not have PTSD.

Human beings are very resilient. Or at the least, there is a sub-population of us who are that way.

I like to think of myself as being in that sub-population because I have few triggers despite experiences that others might call traumatic: violent home invasion, car crash and roll over, nearly being run over by train.

I remember reading that PTSD rates are influenced a lot by perceived levels of control over the situation. It is not just how violent it was, but also whether you felt helpless.

PTSD is complicated.

"That job must be nightmarish for anyone who isn’t a full-blown sociopath."

Why do you have to be a sociopath, if you have the guts to help people, who need help? Even or especially if they are children? Sociopaths would do it for the money and prestige. A doctor with empathy mainly to save those that can be saved and ease the suffering of those that cannot. No need to insult or stigmatize them, because they can do, what you cannot imagine.

Are you saying that watching children die from cancer is fun and easy? To me it sounds like a nightmare. It’s obvious that I think that the persons who take that on are bearing a great burden. I don’t fault those that choose to lay it down. Do you?

"I don’t fault those that choose to lay it down. Do you"

I fault those, who say anyone capable of doing a emotional hard job, must be a sociopath.

Pretty bold statement to claim most pediatric oncologists are sociopaths. You took a big shit on some of the admirable people in our society

I didn’t claim that. I claimed it must be nightmarish, by which I obviously meant extremely emotionally taxing. Are you saying most pediatric oncologists aren’t emotionally taxed? The only ones who aren’t must, by definition, be sociopaths. Please try to not be offended by a tautology.

There was a young woman in my high school and University class, she was a bit strange. Extremely bright beyond her years, sociable, and got along well with both the teachers and most of the students. There was always something a bit off with her though. From early high-school, as soon as “career” talk got more serious, she had only one job that she claimed she wanted to do, “Pediactric Oncology”. Some of the teachers were also taken aback by her fervor and intensity, but also her consistency. Last I checked she’s in Med school somewhere prestigious, I’m sure she’ll be a great doctor, and that a lot of children will get the attention they deserve, but something worries me about the whole situation.

Oh no, was a person "a bit strange"? Were they "a bit off"? Think of the children!!!

It seems especially ugly to see that here on HN. I grew up as the "a bit strange" person in a small midwestern town. It sucked. it wasn't until I got the fuck out and got into tech that I got to be around other nerdy, non-neurotypical people like myself that I finally felt like I could breathe.

If you have a complaint about somebody, fine, make it in clear and precise terms. But this scary-scary vagueness looks to me like standard-issue neurotypical bigotry.

Hear hear! It’s really easy to paint someone as “a bit off” and imply without implying.

It’s important when noticing instances of this to request further clarification.

well sure, but on the other hand you don't know anything about the person under discussion. They are essentially a small very vague figure from fiction given the level of specificity you have for her. They are not having their reputation besmirched or anything, because nobody knows who they are, and thus probably don't require a rousing defense.

I would like to push against the notion that expressing ableist beliefs, as long as they don't affect the actual person who is a target of the ableism, doesn't deserve calling out. These sorts of expressions of opinions interact broadly with the community as a signal of acceptable and unacceptable ways to view people. Expressing this sort of callous willingness to imply someone one doesn't know all that well is dangerous simply because they have behaved some way differently also has the secondary effect of exampling that members of the community here are willing to describe strangers as dangerous if they don't conform to expected behaviors. This signals to nondangerous, different people that they are in danger of being labeled as dangerous, which is stressful for folks who just want to talk popcorn intellectual subject matters on an orange site.

It's similar to eg. why lgbtqia+ people have distinct memories about feeling unsafe in communities where "smear the queer" is a recess schoolyard game.

Nope. I know that I was that person on the other end of hopelessly vague casting of suspicion. And I know that a lot of people nod and get suspicious themselves.

I'm not concerned about the woman in question. I'm concerned about everybody else who gets treated poorly because they're "a bit strange". And because of that, I'm concerned every time I hear that sort of "different equals scary" talk, as it normalized poor treatment of perfectly good people.

This is an ableist viewpoint. For example, if she had a close childhood friend, cousin, family member, or she herself had experience with cancer, that would both cause trauma-based behaviors (such as being "a bit off") as well as explain her hyperfocus into going into pediatric oncology from a young age.

It sounds like you didn't know her very well and still judge her as dangerous.

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