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

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

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Tag: cancer

Fifty Minutes

Elizabeth Tyson-Smith February 17, 2012 No Comments

Elizabeth Tyson-Smith

“I know it will kill me,” my patient Jan says calmly. 

We sit in my office looking out on the river below, which glints in the fall sunshine. It is a warm day for November. Jan has just learned that her breast cancer has spread to more internal organs. 

Her doctors have told her that she will not recover.

I–who have had breast cancer twice–cringe inside. Jan’s blue eyes fix on mine, but she expresses no emotion at all. 

In 1990 a routine mammogram showed a bright white constellation in my breast. The biopsy was positive. I heard four words: “You have breast cancer.” I was forty-eight;

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Closing up the Cabin

Robin Schoenthaler February 10, 2012 1 Comment

Robin Schoenthaler

I met Burt the Monday before Labor Day. As I walked into the room, he stood up–a sturdy, fifty-three-year-old guy with a direct, sky-blue gaze. Although he was a little etched around the eyes, he mostly looked the picture of health.

Two years before, he’d had a cancer. It was treated and thought to be gone. But for several weeks now, he’d been having excruciating low-back pain; he rated it a ten out of ten. The day before, a new CT scan had revealed that his original tumor had spread to his liver and bones. A spiderweb of tumor damage in his spine was the cause of

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Natural Selection

Jeremy Shatan December 9, 2011 1 Comment

Jeremy Shatan

By the time my wife and I reached Hospital B’s exam room, early in the afternoon, we’d already put in a very long day. 

Across the room, which was no bigger than a galley kitchen, stood three doctors. One–I’ll call him the Chief–was the bearded, bushy-maned head of the pediatric oncology program. His explosion of salt-and-pepper hair made a startling contrast to his posh British accent. With him were Dr. Transplant, a small, kind-faced woman who specialized in bone-marrow and stem-cell transplants, and Dr. Nice, a genial young pediatrician with a Midwestern accent.

We were there with our fourteen-month-old son, Jacob. A week earlier, he’d had brain

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Genuine Touch

Jonathan Gotfried May 13, 2011 No Comments

Jonathan Gotfried

I was a medical student doing my fourth-year rotation on the oncology floor. The floor offered many new sights, and from the first, I was struck by the two mammoth massage chairs sitting in a corner at the end of the longest corridor. 

Their exaggerated curves were plastered with jet-black faux leather adorned with stitching details. Long, smooth armrests of oak jutted out on either side. The remote control was a virtual supercomputer offering thousands of programs designed to enhance one’s massaging pleasure–kneading, fast, pressure, heat, full-body massage. On either side of the plush headrest, strategically placed speakers would play soft classical music, drowning out the low hum of

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An Apology

Jordan Grumet April 8, 2011 No Comments

Jordan Grumet

I’m sorry, Mrs. Lewis, for not making it to the hospital to see you yesterday….

Yesterday was one of those days when I felt like I could never catch up. My wife was going downtown for work, and we had to get up early. While she prepared, I helped my two-year-old son get dressed. We walked my wife to the train, then waited for the nanny. She was running late: I finally made it out of the house by 7:20, ten minutes before a meeting at the office. Since I didn’t have any patients in the hospital–or so I thought–I could go directly.

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Past Medical History

Don Stewart January 28, 2011 No Comments

Donald Stewart

My career in medicine began when I was three years old.
Holding tightly to my father’s hand at the end of a dark hospital corridor, I couldn’t keep up with the heavy, sibilant stream of conversation flowing between Daddy and Dr. Mashburn, the man who had delivered me, who had sewn up my chin after I’d slipped in the bathtub a month before and who was now explaining the details of Mommy’s condition. Something, I knew, was making her bad. Sometimes her arms and her back hurt so much she couldn’t even pick me up.
My attention slipped away from the confusing drone of grown-up words and fixed on a bright black-and-white picture shining down from a lighted box on the wall. The

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Adam

Genevieve Yates October 22, 2010 No Comments

Genevieve Yates

I tried to focus on the chart in front of me, but it may as well have been written in Russian. I’d been awake for thirty-two hours, and my brain, thick with fatigue, refused to cooperate. I knew I shouldn’t be working, but I was too proud, too stubborn, too something to admit that I wasn’t coping. 

On the first day of my neurosurgical rotation, the resident I was replacing had told me, “Ten-to-fourteen-hour days, twelve days on, two days off. Say goodbye to your life for the next three months!”

I was prepared for the long hours, endless paperwork and ward-round humiliations. I expected that it might be necessary to take a leave of absence from my personal life. What I didn’t expect was

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Deja-vu

Justin Sanders October 1, 2010 No Comments

It looked like the skin of an orange–peau d’orange, in medspeak. My fellow interns and I had heard about it in medical school; some had even seen it before. As our attending physician undraped Mrs. Durante’s breast one sunny morning during our first month as interns, we knew that what we were seeing was bad.

Mrs. Durante wore a hospital gown and a brightly colored head scarf. She looked like a child lying in the bed: small, delicate, demure. Her face was pretty, her voice soft and deep. By contrast, the mass rounding out the side of her right breast bulged aggressively. It was firm to the touch, reddish against her olive skin. When asked, she said it hurt.

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Affected

Jessica Tekla Les September 24, 2010 No Comments

Jessica Tekla Les

During my third year of medical school I was performing a routine breast exam, more for practice than anything else. I was trying the concentric-circles-around-the-nipple technique, one of several I’d been taught. About halfway through the right breast I found a lima-bean-sized lump, not far from the breastbone. I took liberties with this particular exam. I poked the lump, tried to move the lump, squished down on the lump. 

I took such liberties because it was my own breast. 

At the time, I responded clinically. I thought to myself, I am twenty-seven years old, with no family history and no risk factors. Nothing to worry about. I knew the likely diagnosis, a fibroadenoma or localized fibrocystic change, both common in my age group. I

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Life, Preciously Poured

Kate Benham September 17, 2010 No Comments

Kate Benham

You pour a cup of pecans
Like a kid catching raindrops
In a bucket.
Careful not to spill,
Your fingers playing tremolo on a 
Violin-string cup measure.

Your bed-tucked
Mouth, warm, with
Tongue searching the lips
For forgotten first lines of bedtime stories
Like misplaced glasses, resting on your head.
I read to you, now,
In hospital beds.

Forehead wrinkles stacked 
In three creases–
Your crossword face,
Mouth-chewed pencil between your lips,
Scooping for synonyms 
As you now scoop sugar.

Patient tablespoons of vanilla
Heaped with the effort
Of standing up for fifteen minutes

Love spelled in spilled flour
By hairless eyelid blinks.

This mother’s day coffee cake
Streuseled with memories of able-bodied bike rides
Suspended in white hospital gauze.
It tastes like

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Falling in Love With My Doctor

Judith Lieberman September 10, 2010 No Comments

Judith Lieberman

The other doctors I consulted called him brilliant. His past patients praised his compassion. He actually responded to e-mails. And, lastly, he was known as the best-looking doctor at the cancer center. What more could I ask?

On the other hand, what choice did I have? After twelve years, I was facing a recurrence of a relatively rare oral cancer, located inconveniently at the base of my tongue. The treatment options were not great. The radical surgery recommended by one prominent cancer center could have left me unable to swallow, talk or eat normally.

My incredible husband stayed up many nights researching surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and all the combinations. On the bright side, my teenagers cleaned their rooms without being asked! 

The last

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James and Bob

Paul Rousseau July 30, 2010 No Comments

Paul Rousseau

I think his name was James, but I can’t remember for sure. What I do remember is the day’s heat, the metal cart and a rust-colored dog. 

Like many homeless people, James carried his belongings in a grocery cart–a sort of mobile home for the homeless, but without the protection of a roof, the support of four walls or the security of a front door.

I’d just walked out of the local Safeway store into its parking lot. He ambled over from a park across the street. His eyes were narrow, his face tanned and his clothes dirty brown from weeks of sleeping in the streets.

Being a dog lover, I found my eyes drawn to the dog–a mixed breed with matted hair,

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