A letter to a doctor
Sometimes, doctors can forget what makes their practice personal - what makes the practice of medicine treating people, rather than treating the illness. Unfortunately, this happens all too often, especially the elderly.
The journal Annals of Internal Medicine published this letter that a senior had written to his wife’s doctor after her death. I think all health care professionals should read it - but I think that everyone else should read it too. It’s important to read right to the last line.
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Filed in Musings...aka Just Stuff 5 Comments so far
Donna Hull on 09 Feb 2009 at 11:47 pm #
This is such a touching post (if you click the link and read the letter.) All doctors should be required to read this. My family lost my elderly father about a year ago. We still talk about the kindness some of the doctors showed to us and about the other doctors who lacked the bedside manner that their job requires.
Jennifer Margulis on 10 Feb 2009 at 4:17 pm #
Thank you for posting this. I feel so sad for the letter writer, who lost his wife recently to breast cancer.
Jennifer Margulis on 10 Feb 2009 at 4:21 pm #
In case people don’t have time to click to the link, these were the most relevant paragraphs, to me:
Dear Doctor,
[...]
Had Donna been in the hospice program much earlier, I would have been able to secure a lot of assistance in taking care of her. It became increasingly difficult to help her shower and shampoo, and I had a devil of a time trimming her nails and keeping her hair fixed in the ponytail that she loved to wear even at 71 years of age.
I am ashamed to admit how unaware I was of the progress of the disease. I should have been smart enough to realize, as these things began to take place, that the end of Donna’s life was coming sooner than I had expected. I don’t know why I thought it would be months away. Perhaps after 7 years of being her caregiver, I just assumed it would go on that way indefinitely.
There were many things I could have done differently and better. And there were many things that never got done because I just didn’t understand the time constraints under which we were living. Her children would have spent much more time with her had I been able to advise them about the seriousness of her condition. Because I did not realize it, I failed to alert them, and I know they feel guilty about not having visited more often.
But enough of this discussion. The whole point, Doctor, is to try to motivate you into handling your future terminally ill patients somewhat differently. If you yourself don’t feel comfortable with doing the counseling, why not get the patient in the hospice program right away? Those people know how to do it, are experienced in doing it, and, as I could tell even from my short experience with them, do it beautifully.
Claudine M Jalajas on 11 Feb 2009 at 3:30 pm #
Ugh… so sad.
I could feel this man’s angst.. Also sad that the doc never contacted him afterwards.
Claudine
April on 12 Feb 2009 at 5:13 pm #
Maybe things would be different if more of us stopped to write to doctors (and published our letters) when we have information that may be “useful” for them. My great aunt told her doctor that she’d been losing weight. The doctor brushed off her concerns, basically telling her that old people lose weight. A few months later my aunt was diagnosed with cancer. A few months after that, she was dead.
Considering the progression, I don’t think that there would have been any difference in prognosis from that initial visit until the end. I just wonder if the doctor was “protecting” my aunt…or was incompetent. I don’t know that I could write a letter as free of rancor as his, but maybe if those of us who had issues with doctors could do that - and could veer away from self-centeredness just a bit - somebody else’s doctor might read our words and treat their patients differently.