We forget. We forget how scary the world of medicine can be- infliction of uncomfortable tests, waiting for results of biopsies taken. We forget how bobbles in our care, from promises of return calls not kept to timetables unmet, jangle.
Since the summer, my father, a retired naval man with quite a way with stories (I think I got my love of speaking from him), has been quite hoarse. First treated with gargles and decongestants, his PCP then hit upon the possibility of GERD causing his hoarseness.
Pleased with a diagnosis that I could embrace, I held forth by phone and email on bed wedges, on nocturnal snacking, on twice daily PPIs with an H2 chaser for tighter control of acid.
When his symptoms only improved modestly, Dad was sent (with no small amount of kicking & screaming-in a bit of irony, my Pop doesn't like doctors... present company excepted) to an ENT. The direct laryngoscopy yielded a surprise-a vocal cord growth. The first biopsy was inconclusive for cancer, and a second procedure was performed, and then the ENT left the country for a (well-deserved, no doubt) two week vacation. No office colleague was deputized to deliver the diagnosis. Worse case scenarios were silently exhumed as the entire family researched the world of vocal cord disease on the 'net.
Upon the docs return, a diagnosis was delivered-a rare and relatively benign form of laryngeal cancer. Given the rarity of the condition, my Dad was sent for care to the Mayo Clinic in Florida.
Bobbles ensued. Although my Dad presented for his appointment, his biopsy specimens were MIA. On their arrival, a review showed that the local pathologist had been mistaken-Dad had frank old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill, straight-forward squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx. Unexciting...except to his family.
We navigated uncharted seas of radiation verses surgery in early stage carcinoma, of a local radiation oncologist verses at Mayo, of experimental radiation dosages verses standard. And I remembered to consider the view from the other side of medicine.
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own." ~Henry Ford
Perhaps you remember the 1991 Willam Hurt movie, "The Doctor", where a doctor becomes patient. A good, even touching movie, with the usual quota of bedpan and backless medical gown jokes. The take away? Medical personnel should experience all that they safely can to try to glimpse the view from the other side.
