As part of out physical diagnosis class, we are assigned to a preceptor site in order to practice our physical and history taking skills. Joy of joys, my preceptor is an Oncologist at a VA hospital. As I've already posted, oncology is not even on my list of career list, but I gots to do what I gots to do and I put on as positive a demeanor as I can muster at this point in my young medical career.
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I walk in the door 10 minutes early, get a cup of coffee and have a quick introduction to the office staff and nurses. We've got 2 patients on the docket for the day. The first patient is cooperative, pleasant and even humerous at times in spite of his scars, his fair prognosis and his lovely home situation. His history went about as smoothly as I could have dreamed, and we were only responsible for vitals and a head and neck exam, which had several pertinent positives related to his prior surgery. His BO was just 2/5 so, I could deal. I was thinking to myself that if every patient were like this, oncology might not be so bad. We went over the history and physical quickly before the next patient and nothing but good comments.
Then the shadow of the next patient and his 6'4" son darkened the door, but not my elevated mood...yet. Patient was wheeled in the door by his son and after a cursory introduction we got down to business.
Bostonian: So, why'd you come in today?
I could tell but the look in his son's eye that he was not a happy fellow and that the proverbial . It was about as obvious as his name "PAUL" branded across his belt. He launched into a story about how they had been bounced around between 4-5 doctors, the last two without even a perscription for his father's 8/10 pain presumably related to the softball-sized necrotizing axilary mass that had been misdiagnosed twice as an abscess with clean cultures and cytology. The son wanted answers, then and now. I kept it together...
Bostonian: Since it's your first visit, the Doc and I need to get as much information as we can in your words so we don't miss anything. So any other medical problems?
Son looks at me like I have 2 heads and again son launches off on a tirade of how his father had 15 surgeries for his diabetic feet, stents for his CAD, a complicated small cell lung CA and now this on top of it all. It's all in this packet. Can we just look at my dad's lump, get something for his pain and get the hell outta here? He tossed the tome onto the desk. I looked at my preceptor for help...
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Now as part of my medical education, I've already had about a year of training in how to take histories and practiced them in a little pediatric office, as well as the ED this summer on a few patients. We learned a nice little outline form of questions that flows from one to the next, how to be empathic, how to extract what we need from uncooperative patients, how to deliver bad news and how to deal with our own emotions. NEVER ONCE did they attempt prepare me for dealing with a large and aggravated man who is uncooperative and afraid to hear what is going to come out of one of our mouths: that his father is dying. Another smooth day 1 experience...just like I expected.
*****
My preceptor took over at that point. Needless to say, these folks were having a tough time understanding what was going on. I sat through probably one of the most painful patient encounters I've ever witnessed that stemed from a non-native English speaker trying to distill oncology down into plain English for a patient that was not willing to listen and jumped to about 50 conclusions that were incorrect. As a medical student, I cannot actually offer medical advice nor council anyone on medical matters...just ask questions and poke at them. I have never bitten my tongue so hard in my life to keep myself out of trouble. 60 minutes later, when the patient education portion of the interview was over, the doc had managed to get the pertinent points across to the son and their case worker that would schedule everything for them, I needed another cup of coffee and some quiet time. We debreifed quickly and I left as fast as possible.
My worst nightmares of oncology came to life before my very eyes: telling someone that they have months to live, no cure for what they have, you're going to have side effects in the attempt to make the rest of your life a little bit longer, your family is going to suffer, you are going to suffer.
I have never felt so exhausted at the end of a day. When I got home, I sat down and drank a nice deep glass of whiskey in silence while staring at the wall, vented to my girlfriend for 20 minutes on the phone and watched some mindless TV. A week later when I have to write up the H&P, I can barely bring myself to do it.
What is it in me that causes the visceral discomfort of telling someone that they're going to suffer and die? Whatever it is, I don't want it to go away. It may have been one of my least fun experiences in the clinic, but I felt like a human being for the first time while wearing the white coat. The armor was chinked.
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