fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Latest Voices

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Latest Voices

Big Exit

Seven days after we cut out your voice box, you announced that you were leaving. You flung yourself off the bed, ripped at your hospital gown and propelled yourself down eleven flights of stairs with the precise, dramatic flair of a seasoned, stage actor. You were a sight to see.

I followed you down, down, down; my blue scrubs, too big, slipping down over my hips as I ran. There was no stopping you.

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The Return

 
Catherine and I had been through my symptoms, diagnosis, staging, treatment and hormone-deprivation therapy. “It’ll be like a menopause,” the consultant had said, and it certainly was. Through flushes, mood swings, emotional fragility and a whole host of side effects from the drugs, she was there, supporting me all the way. Then the treatment was done, a fading memory that had strangely enriched our lives, bringing insights otherwise unobtainable. As I said, half-jokingly, I got in touch with my feminine side. 
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My First Prostate Cancer Screening

 
According to the National Cancer Institute, about 11.2% of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime. When caught early and treated, the five-year survival rate is 100%.
 
When Prostate Cancer Awareness Week began in 1989, my hospital decided the best way to educate the public about prostate cancer was through screening. We offered men in the high-risk group (ages forty to seventy-five) free prostate checks, and about a hundred men preregistered. Participants had their blood drawn for the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test and received a physical exam from a urologist, who felt the participants’ prostate gland

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A Different Perspective

 
As I started my third year of medical school on the consultation psychiatry service, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was naive, afraid, and honestly unprepared. Or that’s how I felt anyway. 
 
My first patient was a man who was referred to our team because of depression. I was sent to talk with him before the rest of the team, including the attending physician, made its rounds. The man was 77 years old but looked more like a older 50. As I introduced myself, a gentle smile formed on his face.
 
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It Eats At You

What is it like to know you have prostate cancer and do nothing to combat it? The medical term for my husband’s treatment plan is “active surveillance,” but watching and waiting sure doesn’t feel very active.

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When I Think About Prostate Cancer

When I think about prostate cancer, I see myself and the men I’ve been close to as ducks in a shooting gallery. The passage of time gives the Grim Reaper more chances to take a shot at us.

Ping.

My dad got prostate cancer twenty years ago.

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Spend Your Life Learning How to Live

I met George Sheehan, a noted cardiologist as well as a legendary runner and writer about running, in August of 1986. I had been designated to pick him up at the airport in Aspen, Colorado, late the night before he was to speak at a conference that I was managing. We hit it off immediately.

That first meeting, I learned several months later, happened to fall only a few days after he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

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My Father’s Prostate

 
As a newly graduated, idealistic physician assistant in 1991, I enthusiastically took to heart all recommendations for health promotion and disease prevention screening. The PSA test was encouraged for all men at that time, and when I found out my father had not been offered what I had been taught was a life-saving test, I beseeched him to have it done. He did and it turned out his PSA was elevated, initiating a medical journey that I am still processing over twenty years later.

 

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Discovering Dependence

I am an independent woman, used to taking care of myself and others. But that self-image was dashed five years ago, when I fell and shattered my elbow.

I tried to gather my dropped purse and Chinese takeout but didn’t realize I couldn’t even gather my body until a stranger knelt beside me and said, “Let me stabilize your arm.The ambulance is on the way.”

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