Friday, December 23, 2011

How a Doctor Deals With Loss

10:58 AM

Admin Aldino Car Rent

A missed diagnosis results in death --- and a deeper understanding.

by: James Schembari

I WAS STANDING next to a friend at my father's wake in January when he nooded towards the door at an old man who had just arrived.

I hesitated, but then said coldly, "That's my father's doctor." This is the man who, as my father was wasting away from what we later learned -- three days before he died --- was cancer, told him and that he had Lyme disease.

The cancer was mesothelioma, a rare disease that is often asbestos-related and has been found in such people as construction and shipyard workers and navy veterans, like my father. He used to joke that as he fell asleep in his top bunk on a ship during World War II, the last thing he would see was the torn asbestos hanging from the pipes above his bed.

I have since discovered that the cancer sits in the lining of the lungs, hard to spot, almost impossible to cure. For all those who survived the war, it seems an unfair coda.

My father's short walk through the medical system had shaken me. I have always had faith in doctors, and the centre of my faith was the old man at my father's wake. He was not only my father's doctor, he had been mine since childhood. Yet when he walked into the wake, I had to control my anger. He stood by the coffin for a moment, and then went over to my mother.

"I thought you should know that I went back and looked over all the X-rays," he told my mum. "I wanted to know how I missed this. And even though I now knew what I was looking for, I couldn't see it. It doesn't turn up until the last X-ray. There's really nothing we could have done."

I could see the pain on the doctor's face as he spoke to my mum. He had said the words I expected, but which my anger hadn't let me accept: My father would have died no matter what anyone did.

How do doctors handle all the death they touch? And when they've known a patient for so many decades, do they feel they've let an old friend down? This doctor's final treatment of my father was to treat his family -- by having the courage to face us in our grief and in our anger, and to explain our loss.