The Journey Of Professor Bearing In The Movie Wit

The movie Wit is a movie that follow the journey of Professor Vivian Bearing and her journey as she has been diagnosed with Stage 4 Ovarian Cancer. Professor Bearing made the decision to subject herself to very strong experimental chemotherapy. This movies follows her as she faces death in the eye and also offers a series of monologues giving her personal opinion on her diagnoses as well as an analysis of her relationship with Dr. Kelekian, Dr. Posner and Susie. Throughout the duration of the movie there are some things that become apparent; the doctors have little concern about Vivian’s well being, Susie and Professor Bearing had developed a bond and Dr. Bearing was not prepared for what the intensive treatment intelled. Throughout the movie

I saw several themes that we have discussed in class relating to EOL decisions, nurse and doctor relationships, health literacy and the role nurses play.
While watching Wit at first it was not so apparent to me how often the doctors didn’t listen because the are convinced that they are experts and know what’s right for anyone. I believe this is because often time when people talk to doctors then consent to a lot of things they don’t know anything about and I saw Professor Bearing do the exact same. Although she is a scholar she found herself getting caught in the same problem that many people who are not health literate. It was very interesting to see an academic fall victim to this and this is something you see throughout the movie.
Within the movie the theme of doctors thinking they know everything continued after Professor Bearings first eight rounds of chemotherapy had concluded. During the scene Professor Bearing comes to the hospital in chills and Nurse Susie has to come to her rescue for one of multiple times. Nurse Susie comforts her and assures her that she will get something done. When Susie finally gets doctors and expresses her concern about the dosage of chemotherapy they and they disregard what she says and validate it by saying “Professor Bearing is strong”. This continued when Nurse Susie asked the doctor to give Vivian the medicine option where she can control her dosage of medicine so she can monitor her pain and the doctors decided against it. Two things were very clear that the doctors didn’t value nurse Susie’s opinion as a colleague and that they did not consider how Vivian felt but only looked at what they thought would work best for them and their research.
Towards the end of of the movie they writer focused a lot on Vivian’s right to make end of life decisions and focused even more on how often end of life decisions are respected. During the movie it is clear that Nurse Susie and Vivian have a relationship and I believe that the author choosing her to ask about the end of her life. I think this was good on the writer’s behalf because end of life decisions is very personal and are usually things that are shared with people you are close to like parents or children but Professor Vivian doesn’t have that relationship with anyone Nurse Susie was the closest. It is interesting to see how healthcare professionals over time can take the place of family or friends.
Although Vivian and Susie have a good relationship that is not something that happens overnight, them speaks a lot to how the ability to develop a relationship and communication network is instrumental in end of life decisions.

If Vivian and Susie would’ve never developed a friendship Vivian would’ve lived a life of misery. Vivian would’ve been miserable without her DNR and basically would been diminished to nothing more than a lab rat, simply being a pawn in Dr.Kelekian and Dr.Posners experience, luckily Vivian had Dr.Susie to advocate for her. I also think that it is very interesting that despite the fact that Professor Vivian is a scholar she still needed someone to advocate for her. It shows that advocate isn’t just for those who may be mentally, physically or educationally

disadvantaged.
In this movie we got to see how taboo actually having DNR is, we live in a society where they are not socially acceptable.

This goes back to the moral and ethical standard we have created for society as well as the multiple misconceptions concerning DNR’s and making the decision to no be resuscitated. Often times the decision to not be recesistatated is seen as human beings playing God, and is often aligned with a person committing suicide and often seen as a selfish decision. This is definitely a misconception as DNR are given for several reasons sometime to remove financial strain from family members and sometimes to simply so a person won’t have to live life as a vegetable who can’t not breath or advocate for themselves in anyway shape of form. While I do not this I would sign a DNR I do understand the benefits of making the decision to essentially end your

life.
All and All, throughout the movie of Wit there were a couple of very prevalent themes. For one it is apparent the divide between nurses and doctors. The movie Wit give a glimpse into the life of scholar Vivian Bearing, former English professor who is now undergoing experimental chemotherapy for her stage four Cancer. While watching Wit you also get a chance to see the importance of communication between patients and staff and how important it is to be advocate when you are educated or you have an insight that a patient may not have. You also get a glimpse into how social unacceptable DNR as well as how necessary they are in some situations. To conclude, Wit brings urgency to the importance of end of life planning as well as having the ability to make a decision as an informed citizen or finding someone to advocate for them.