Little doctor big thoughts
Posted: February 23, 2010
Thoughts from a little doc iRx: An oncologist’s prescription for treatment
Oncology allows room for the humanistic side of medicine. A lady presented today for a follow-up on her metastatic uterine carcinosarcoma. She had been feeling very weak from her chemotherapy and needed another treatment and a CT scan. She wanted to go to Monterey for two weeks over the holiday to visit her son, but it interfered with her treatment schedule and she would have to come home early. The oncologist told her not to worry, and to come in when she got back for her treatment.
This recommendation was not on the treatment schedule published by the American Cancer Society, but it was on Mary’s* treatment schedule. Why? She is 85 years old, with metastic cancer. A visit with her son may be the best medicine for her. Will her cancer progress faster given the treatment delay? Maybe. Will this be her last Christmas either way? Probably. The oncologist knew this and governed her treatment accordingly.
This is what I love about oncology. You see a patient for a prolonged period of time, in a manner that no other practitioner experiences. You get to know what matters to them and their family. It is one of the few practices that you can stray from published guidelines and still remain in practice. You can make treatment decisions based on the person, not the disease.
Amid a practice of dying patients, success lies not in the prolongation of years, but in the improvement to your patients’ health. And even though you know how it ends, there is great satisfaction in contributing to the well-being, both physical and mental, of these patients in their time of sickness. *name has been changed
Third-year SOMA student Anne Kennard uses writing to reflect on and share her medical school experiences in her blog, www.littledocthoughts.blogspot.com.
Kennard, who has an interest in OB/GYN, says she loved to write creatively as a child, but “lost the motivation as I went through college with a major that was heavy on scientific writing.”
After starting her clinical years at SOMA, she decided to document her experiences with a blog.
“I didn’t want to forget these thoughts from my early years of doctoring, and I wanted to have something to share with family and friends to let them know what I was up to. The process of writing has allowed me to work through and make sense of the things I am seeing – both good and bad.”
Writing, she says, “allows me to turn things that I find funny, confusing or sad into a written piece that I can share with others. It lets me organize for myself all the new things I am experiencing.”
She’s surprised at the success of her blog, which is her main outlet for creative writing. “I really thought this would be of no interest to anyone with the exception of my mother, and I have been so thrilled that so many people have enjoyed it and passed it on to others.”