Celebrating the compassionate courage of modern medicine
I'm old enough to remember the days when physicians maintained an almost God-like aloofness… a professional distance.
There was a rationale. Especially when dealing with cancer and heart disease, doctors and nurses are going to lose patients. Remember, nobody gets into medicine in the first place unless they’re motivated by compassion. If they allowed themselves to form emotional bonds with terminal patients, they risked burning out emotionally if their patients died. So, it made sense to practice their mercies from a safe distance.
Let me tell you a story. About 30 years ago, my father-in-law Ben was suffering from terminal lung cancer. His wife had already died of breast cancer and his faith in modern medicine was rather low. When he met with his oncologist for the first time, the doctor sat behind an elevated desk so that Ben was forced to look up at him when they talked. Ben was a man who had driven a landing craft onto Omaha Beach during World War II. Returning home, he built two houses for his family with his own hands. No training, he just did it.
When his next appointment was scheduled, Ben walked in with a step ladder over his shoulder. He climbed up to the top and told the doctor he wanted to demonstrate how he felt he had been talked down to at his last visit.
What did my father-in-law want?
“Look,” he said, “I know you can't save my life. I just want the honest truth about my condition. I'm a big boy; all I want from you is the truth.” Ben was a teacher. He knew how hard it was sometimes to get the lesson across.
Times Have Changed
Segue to modern times. Now it's my turn to walk into Cape Cod Hospital with stage 4 cancer. My doctor is Megan Emmich, DO. To my amazement, Dr. Emmich knew all about me, my teaching, my being a newspaper columnist. She wasn't just treating my cancer; she was treating me.
As I became part of the system, everyone I've met has treated me with the same level of friendship and compassion. Remember, nurses run the same emotional risk as doctors do. They know in advance that all the people they're helping aren't going to make it, but they've made the professional decision to open their hearts to us and take the risk.
This is, after all, what most cancer patients need. We're frightened. We have something in our bodies that's trying to kill us. So, we don't just need the best treatment modern medicine can offer; we desperately need to know the people treating us care about us as human beings.
When I began radiation treatments, the technicians treated each person who came in as if they were long-lost friends. When a friend of mine died in the ICU upstairs, one of the nurses told me she was with my friend as she died and comforted her with the certainty that her circle of devoted friends would take care of her husband and find homes for her dogs and cats. She said it was an honor.
I'm using this space today to point out something that most people either don't know, haven't noticed, or taken for granted. Something has changed. It may have taken some years for the change to happen, but the people taking care of us in our hospitals - and presumably in hospitals across the country - are not only treating us. They are not only saving our lives as best they can but are exposing themselves to the emotional damage that happens whenever we die anyway. I want people to appreciate that.
Love always entails an element of risk. Doctors and nurses used to protect themselves by maintaining a professional distance. Modern health providers, far more often than they used to, take that risk on our behalf. Whether I live or die, this is my chance to tell all of them, and all of you, how grateful I am.
Lawrence Brown, a cancer patient at Cape Cod Hospital.
