Drawing from a 30-year career as a kidney specialist, Robert Allan Bear has penned a sensitive and thoughtful account of life in a dialysis unit that invites us to not only consider our health care system, but what it means to be a patient suffering from a chronic disease.
“In considering the subject matter, on one level it is a reflection of a group of individuals suffering from a chronic disease and what each of us can learn from it,” said Bear, who has called Canmore home for the past six years.
“It is quite emotional and it’s quite magical at the same time.”
Bear, who is no stranger to writing medical reports and articles, chose fiction over a factual telling for his story as it gave him greater freedom to connect with readers on an emotional level and to do so subtly.
“I thought fiction would be a much more powerful way to express that emotion and power than a more factual representation of what life in a dialysis unit would be like for people getting their treatment,” Bear said. “I was trying to create a heightened sense of emotion.”
In writing his novel, Sorrow’s Reward, Bear drew his inspiration from the Spoon River Anthology, written by Edgar Lee Masters in the early 1900s, which explores life in a small mid-west town through a series of interconnected vignettes.
Bear, who will sign books at Café Books, Saturday (July 30) from 2-4 p.m., used the notion of interconnected vignettes for his story based on the idea that a dialysis unit is no different than a small town where everyone knows everyone.
Sorrow’s Reward, which has reached No. 1 on the best seller’s list in Edmonton and No. 2 in Calgary, is a cross-section of society that includes patients, doctors, nurses, administrators, family members and health care industry representatives, all of whom overlap in the dialysis unit.
In between the vignettes, using standard prose, Bear created an ongoing dialogue between the two main characters to provide a forum allowing him to explore the larger, more serious issues, such as the health care system defining itself as “patient centered” when in fact, he says, it is not.
And, according to Bear, as one in 10 adults in North America over 17 years of age have a chronic disease, we all need to pay attention to the debate about health care. We also need to be active participants both in the debate and in our own care.
“People are surprisingly passive about their care and surprisingly accepting of the health care system through which that care is delivered. It just never ceases to amaze me how they are so often deeply disappointed and saddened by their experiences,” Bear said.
“I’m referring to just poor communication or lack of caring communication in the system, people just not taking the time to really try to connect with people.
“The solution in that kind of issue, quite frankly, is for patients to assume much more accountability for their care. To be more assertive about their needs, including the needs that are more emotional in nature.”
As Bear explores these issues, he wrote the vignettes like poetry, one sentence per line, which can at first lead to confusion about whether Sorrow’s Reward is a book of poetry or prose.
However, while the vignettes may create a challenge for some readers, they also serve to enhance the story by putting the focus solely on the characters and their observations and experiences.
That in turn allows Sorrow’s Reward to unwind slowly, drawing readers into what could have been an overly complex and involved story line if handled traditionally.
But as it stands, Sorrow’s Reward is an evocative and elegant read. And in terms of understanding the debate about health care, this is perhaps a better point to access that than trying to work through reports, studies, newspaper articles or television news.
Through his novel, Bear offers a personal account as seen through the eyes and the lives of the individuals involved in the process.
“There’s a need in our system for a higher level in patient focus and maybe this book is an opportunity to have more of a conversation about that,” he said.
Sorrow’s Reward, published by Kingsley Publishing, retails for $22.95.
