Hi Pat. Amazing thread here. All these wonderful people understand what's important in life, and that it could easily be any of us in your predicament.
As a physician (radiologist), unfortunately i see really ugly things all the time. I have to call the doctor (whose often known the patient for 30+ years) to tell them their patient has "whatever." It takes the wind out of most of them - you'll never hear this side of it, but your doctor dreads calls from me, dreads having bad news to share with you, dreads that someone in their care has been afflicted with something bad. We're trained to stay objective and be able to distance ourselves from the matter at hand (which is actually good, otherwise we'd have difficulty coping) but it always hurts. For this reasons, I make it a point to call other doctors when the news is really good. For example I read a CT on a paient who had widely metastatic ovarian cancer, whose last 3 scans looked worse and worse, but on my scan, the tumors had all shrunk to barey measurable size. I called the oncologist to give her some really good news.
We in the medical profession are just people - we get sick, we fail, we regret - and we listen to music, we hope, we try to smile. Sometimes no matter what we do, mistakes are made, people/patients misunderstand us, call us arrogant, heartless, greedy and so on.
It' an honor and an awesome responsibility caring for people - and I hope you're happy with the people taking care of you: that they're competent, compassionate and considerate, that they temper reality with hope, that they offer extra supprt to you and your family.
Anyway, no matter how much i may think we (docs) suffer with our patients, it's nothing compared to what you - the patient - and their families suffer. Hang in there, keep the faith, and enjoy the music!
Art
As a physician (radiologist), unfortunately i see really ugly things all the time. I have to call the doctor (whose often known the patient for 30+ years) to tell them their patient has "whatever." It takes the wind out of most of them - you'll never hear this side of it, but your doctor dreads calls from me, dreads having bad news to share with you, dreads that someone in their care has been afflicted with something bad. We're trained to stay objective and be able to distance ourselves from the matter at hand (which is actually good, otherwise we'd have difficulty coping) but it always hurts. For this reasons, I make it a point to call other doctors when the news is really good. For example I read a CT on a paient who had widely metastatic ovarian cancer, whose last 3 scans looked worse and worse, but on my scan, the tumors had all shrunk to barey measurable size. I called the oncologist to give her some really good news.
We in the medical profession are just people - we get sick, we fail, we regret - and we listen to music, we hope, we try to smile. Sometimes no matter what we do, mistakes are made, people/patients misunderstand us, call us arrogant, heartless, greedy and so on.
It' an honor and an awesome responsibility caring for people - and I hope you're happy with the people taking care of you: that they're competent, compassionate and considerate, that they temper reality with hope, that they offer extra supprt to you and your family.
Anyway, no matter how much i may think we (docs) suffer with our patients, it's nothing compared to what you - the patient - and their families suffer. Hang in there, keep the faith, and enjoy the music!
Art