such small hands

Happy Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T21:31:00.000-05:00

The Poet's Child

2009-03-23T11:48:00.002-05:00

A sad end to a life beset by tragedy. Sylvia Plath's son committed suidice last week. We had just read her poem, "Fever 103" in class a few weeks back, in which she mentions her "Hothouse baby in its crib,/ The ghastly orchid/ Hanging its hanging garden in the air,"

I don't know if I will be able to read that poem again.

The Doctors Who Remain

2009-02-12T21:00:00.004-05:00

This is an email I wrote to the executive director of our county medical society as we struggle to accrue participants for this year's Legislative Day.

Good morning Stu,
I'm not sure what time your conference call is today. We have our emergency medical staff meeting this evening at 7pm. Thank you for the buttons. I will give these out as well as the 3/3/9 ones that Barbara sent last week.

I understand that the number of respondents here at JTM and SCH have been less than half of last year. But I must say that the ones who have responded have been well informed and continually passionate. I think what you will have this year is a smaller, more focused, less angry, but also less afraid, a more willing group. If this is what MSSNY expects throughout the state, it should inform the message of the rally. Please convey this on your conference call today:

These are the doctors that are still here. That have witnessed the crisis of access in healthcare firsthand. These are the doctors who have stayed in NYS and kept their practices running amid the pressures of high malpractice costs and shrinking reimbursements as well as the most devastating economic crisis to hit our state and this country in our lifetime. The rest are gone. They left the state, retired early, or have left medicine completely.

The ones who remain are the doctors that still care for you and your loved ones, our patients, whether you are in foreclosure or homeless, in network or out, unemployed or uninsured, these doctors will still take care of you, as they always have.

All around us we see loss and ruin. It is incumbent upon the doctors who remain to use the trust, compassion, stability, and hope built into every doctor-patient relationship they have to reflect these qualities and lead our practices, hospitals, communities, and our legislators here, in Albany, and in Washington, DC to a stronger, safer, healthier future. We are the doctors who remain, and we know what we need to do.

Thanks, Stu, for all your hard work.

What if the mightiest word is love?

2009-02-07T12:11:00.002-05:00

Just for you... a link to Elizabeth Alexander's, "Praise Song for the Day" which she read at President Obama's Inauguration.

And a link to her appearance on the Colbert Report.

Enjoy.

WRITE MORE THANK-YOU NOTES

2008-12-31T15:32:00.005-05:00

Deconstructing a New Year's Resolution

It's good. Really good. Possibly the second-best New Year's resolution I've ever made! (First best is still Drink more water, but that's for another post.) I am so pleased with this one that I started in October, for the Jewish New Year.

Write

In the last few pages of Atul Gawande's book, Better, he offers five short but broad suggestions for a surgeon, physician, or anyone to improve his performance. One of these is "Write something." Every day, write something. It doen't need to be perfect, but you should choose your audience. Write something that you know, or think may be read. I liked this suggestion. Really, I liked the whole book, and have tried to enact a number of the suggestions Gawande recommends.

Write more

OK, been there. I once had resolved to write more...anything when I felt like I wasn't incorporating creativity into my daily life, and musings. I wrote letters, I started a blog, and then another, and another. I wrote poems, then another and another. I couldn't stop. I still can't.

In preparation for his confirmation, my son has to document some service to the community. The requirement was minimal - 15 hours or so. I thought, "No problem, he volunteers at school events, and serves at the altar at Mass on Sundays. He's set." Then we found out, the community service mut be something new, something he's not already involved with.

So it should be with New Year's resolutions. I shouldn't resolve to do something if I'm already doing it.

Thank-you

This time of year, we hear a lot about gratitude. The holiday season kicks off with a feast based on thanks. We count our blessings. We thank our gods. We appreciate the goodness in our lives. But what of the power of thanks directed? Attempts to engage and involve the people whose actions, whose very beings make us truly grateful are rewards in themselves.

Thank-you notes

There, I've said it. Consice, directed, filled with gratitude, framed in context, yet forward-looking. Mary Hunt, business writers, writers everywhere have extolled the contents of a good thank-you note. I'm giving myself a year to write more of them and figure it out myself. Happy New Year. And thank you for reading.

OBAMA PICKS POET FOR INAUGURATION DAY

2008-12-17T18:05:00.002-05:00

When I first listened to this interview with Elizabeth Alexander, called Obamapoetics, I had not heard of her. Now, she joins the ranks of Robert Frost, Miller Williams, and Maya Angelou who will read their poetry at a Presidential inauguration.

Poetry and Medicine at JAMA

2008-10-24T17:17:00.002-05:00

Great news, everyone, three of my poems were accepted this week for publication in the Journal of the American Medical Association. I am tickled, of course. Feel like I've given birth to triplets! This certainly took some of the sting out of having to watch and root for the Phillies this postseason. Cheers!

Poetry: The Sound of the Stock Market Crashing

2008-10-09T15:43:00.002-05:00

Christ Among the Moneychangers, 1929
by William Logan

Among shivering bankers the coin went false,
and on damp walls the shreds of tapestry
repented the cost of flowers under glass,
the foul pool swollen with fish, small vanities
whose scales were weighed out coolly in silk thread.
The stink of plaster corrupts the polychrome
and carp convert in secret to the cause
of wall-eyed ancestors flaking under crests
now mangy lions rise rampant to protect,
their hair shirts still acrawl with louse and worm.
The raggled matrix of an hour’s peace
cannot reform crude factions of a state
never alone except among the mad,
who on their knees vomited up pale blood
that splashed like taxes on the flagstones.
Sumptuous deaths in the shade of politics,
and then the posthumous careers, the charter bus,
the cure of hunting hawks and not their masters.

William Logan, “Christ among the Moneychangers, 1929” from Vain Empires. Copyright © 1998 by William Logan. Reprinted with the permission of Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. For online information about other Penguin Group (USA) books and authors, see www.penguin.com.Source: Vain Empires (1998).

This and other poems can be found in the substantial Archive at The Poetry Foundation.

Poets Save the Economy, and Sarah Palin's Words to Nowhere

2008-10-02T09:22:00.004-05:00

Couldn't resist reading this piece in The Onion, NEA Funds Construction of $1.3 Billion Poem. I think this is the best use of federal funds that I've heard in weeks, don't you?

Are we having fun yet? EVERYONE who loves to play with language, and especially those nutty folks who love to study language is having a blast with Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In Slate magazine, Hart Seeley examines the Poetry in the Governor's words, while Kitty Burns Florey (which I think may be a pseudonym for my 6th Grade English Teacher) makes a noble attempt to Diagram Sarah Palin's sentences. Enjoy!

I NEVER MET HIM

2008-09-10T22:06:00.004-05:00

An erudite, opinionated, extremely intelligent, and sublimely talented (the best kind of) poet died tonight. His name was Reginald Shepherd, and although I never met him in person, I had often turned to his blog when I needed a boost of humanism and intellectualism to fill that which seemed missing from my otherwise full, busy life. I remember when he got colon cancer, and following his continued attempts to write and write and write, even when he wasn't feeling so great. The last few months he had been so sick, with a horrifying spread of the cancer to his liver. The most recent entry in his blog had been composed from his hospital bed, and transcribed by his partner, Robert. In it, he memorializes a mentor of his, Alvin Feinman by applying all the critical skill he could muster to a luscious, piece of heartbreak, "True Night." I'll link to his posting here, and on Reginald's true night and the eve of our truly darkest day, post an exerpt from this poem:

True Night

So it is midnight, and all

The angels of ordinary day gone,

The abiding absence between day and day

Come like true and only rain

Comes instant, eternal, again:

As though an air had opened without sound

In which all things are sanctified,

In which they are at prayer—

The drunken man in his stupor,

The madman’s lucid shrinking circle;

As though all things shone perfectly,

Perfected in self-discrepancy:

The widow wedded to her grief,

The hangman haloed in remorse—

I should not rearrange a leaf,

No more than wish to lighten stones

Or still the sea where it still roars—

Here every grief requires its grief,

Here every longing thing is lit

Like darkness at an altar.

As long as truest night is long,

Let no discordant wing

Corrupt these sorrows into song.

from, "True Night," by Alvin Feinman, discussed on Reginald Shepherd's Blog and in his book, Orpheus in the Bronx.

POETRY AND COLONOSCOPY

2008-05-06T18:03:00.003-05:00

Leave it to a poet to turn a colonoscopy into a political statement! Click and read, Colonoscopy Sonnet by Sandra M. Gilbert. Now I KNOW I missed my calling.

A BIG TASK FOR SMALL HANDS

2008-01-31T17:06:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I joined an ad-hoc committee with some other physicians on our medical staff. We are organizing efforts to visit Legislative Day in Albany on March 4, 2008 to express our concerns about the medical malpractice crisis. Click here to survey national efforts, here to join our state and local efforts, and here to read my own (too) personal account. Thanks.

Aura and Mystique

2008-01-16T16:55:00.000-05:00

I thought I was over him. Really done. Convinced myself it was a stupid infatuation. This was the news, the real deal breaker. Getting a 24 year old Brazilian girl pregnant...how could he?

In a jealous frenzy the likes of which I only vaguely remember from high school, college, OK medical school, too, I scrambled the internet for a cool 15 minutes, investigating the rumor, looking for reliable news sources, pictures, confirmation. These jealous frenzies are much easier now that there is an internet. In the past, confirming such infidelities required hours of sleuthing, sneaking, not to mention driving. And with each mile under my wheels, each sad song on the radio, my jealous anger would dissipate, undermining the power of a woman scorned.

And now it was happening again, every news clip, every glossy picture makes my heart melt and think how could I every begrudge, bemoan, besmirch or be over him?

Then, I found it, a journal entry, in his own handwriting, on the internet. He confirms it, a baby due in six months. Says he's "stoked and wowed." But just reading the words, seeing his face again, listening to the music he loves, understanding how he's gone on with his life and I with mine...I realize I'll probably never be over him. I can only be happy for him and remember the only advice he's ever really given me, "just keep living."

POETRY AND BASEBALL

2007-09-29T09:30:00.001-05:00

"Do you know what it’s like
To be chased by the Ghost of Failure
While staring through Victory’s door?
Of course you do, you’re a Mets fan"

FRANK MESSINA, the self-proclaimed Mets Poet.

Forget alcoholism, depression, and suicide...to be a real poet you have to be a Mets Fan!!! Just ask Frank Messina, self-proclaimed "Mets Poet," who is likening this season's Metropolitan's collapse to the fall of Troy. Just like a poet...alluding to the classics.

THE RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT

2007-09-28T16:47:00.000-05:00

OK, I figured out what to do. I just deleted one of my blogs that contained ALOT of my previously unpublished poetry, because I'm finding that many publishing venues will not accept work if it has been published somewhere before, AND most are including internet publishing , even blogs! I guess it makes sense. Why would they want to print something if it is readily available on the internet for free?

So, until further notice, (most of) MY POETRY WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE ON MY BLOGS. Sorry to disappoint my legion poetry fans, but you'll have to wait until it comes out in print, or is accepted by some reputable e-lit 'zine, like The Long Island Quarterly or Literary Mama.

Blogs and Patient Privacy

2007-07-28T09:45:00.000-05:00

I worry when I hear stories of doctors blogs being attacked, or worse, used in court during malpractice litigation. Apparently, anonymous discussion of a patient's problem on an anonymous blog, with adequate disclaimers, can be traced to the author and considered an invasion of patient privacy. I worry now, about my blog, The Wounded Surgeon, posting my experiences during cancer surgery. But wait, I AM the patient whose privacy I invaded. I worry about publishing my poetry, at least as obscure as blogging, but often inspired by patients and their stories. I worry about my latest blog, Constipation Corner, which I wanted to set up FOR patients, with a link from my practice's website, and on which I planned to post some relatively reliable information regarding the disease processes I treat every day. I worry that I am now sucked into this "culture of worry," and that the same forces that have driven up the cost of healthcare (fat managed care companies, shrinking reimbursements, rising malpractice insurance rates, fear of being sued) are now seeping into and suffocating the last breaths of pure expression and pure communication between a doctor and her patients, between a surgeon and her self.

I worry what to do with such small hands.

The Trouble with Legislating Poetry

2007-06-05T16:48:00.000-05:00

In the early 1800's Percy Bysshe Shelley argued that "Poets and philosphers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." The "unacknowledged" part was driven home at Monday's meeting of the Nassau County Legislators where 6 of 7 county lawmakers voted against the appointment of Maxwell Corydon Wheat, Jr. as Nassau County's first poet laureate, saying some of the poets' writings were offensive to our troops.

In disbelief I read the article in Newsday. Then I watched the video at Newsday.com/LI. Then I checked some email from my poetry friends...we had been tracking this event since the Nassau County Legislature had voted last year to create this position, a ceremonial post, to be held by an artist residing in Nassau County who would commit to promoting poetry in the region. He would be required to give two public readings each year, visit schools and libraries, and foster appreciation for the art of poetry, and receive no stipend. I even found an invitation to the event -- poor, unknowing poets thinking it was a done deal. Little did they realize that there were no laurels for a crowning that day. I think I hear some of them in the background of Wheat's video cackling their disappontment, what to do with the banner.

Hold on to it, girls. In an excellent essay in The Guardian last fall, Adrienne Rich spoke of the importance of poetry as a different way of seeing, as a reinvention of vision, as a freedom to express our existence in this world. Poets are the defenders of this freedom, this democracy. Poets protect our freedoms in ways that legislators never will. And they'll do it without a stipend, if you'll let them.

Sleepless in Setauket

2007-02-11T12:39:00.000-05:00

As the Democrats bevy up for the '08 Campaign, (did anyone see the hysterical parody of the DNC meeting on MadTV last night?), I am throwing my hat into another ring, with THREE NEW POEMS on my poetry site, BardParker Poets' Society. Speaking of society, I am considering entering the world of Internet Poetry and joining an online poetry forum, after spending some time on the IBPC website yesterday, and realizing in the past year how little time I have to attend actual bricks and mortar poetry readings or workshops. We'll see...

The New BLOGGER!!!

2006-12-27T21:35:00.000-05:00

To celebrate the new format and features now available on Blogger, I've posted a few new poems on my poetry blog. Hoping that I might be able to flesh out my blogs with the new mobile blogging features, as well. And for those of you who have decided to be more organized in the new year...never mind, say "Yes to the Mess."

Warm Milk

2006-11-30T03:05:00.000-05:00

In a time that seems long ago, I was in college. My best friend/study-buddy/soul mate and I were taking a break, maybe even doing laundry. It was, of course, two-thirty in the morning, and for us, "miles to go before I sleep." Not even sure I would even ever sleep again, I asked my bud what she did when she couldn't sleep. She told me about warm milk. She took out a saucepan and brewed up what was left of the quart in the fridge. I still remember the steam rising off the creamy white magical substance she poured into mugs she and her roommates had lifted from the cafeteria. I can still feel the sweet warmth filling my throat, blanketing my heart, filling my stomach.

Twenty-some years later, I am tossing in bed. It is, of course, two-thirty in the morning, but now the miles to go are the happy result of late nights studying Cyto/Hist and Mammalian Phys. Now it's miles of colonoscopies, reams of patient charts, cold, sterile rooms, warm, squirming guts. Tears and hugs, wounds and bandages. I really should get some rest. Time for some warm milk.

COMING SOON ! ! !

2006-07-20T16:36:00.000-05:00

My latest contribution to the Blogosphere, Constipation Corner, will feature articles of interest to my patients, and anyone with problems related to the colon, rectum, and anus. Look there for the latest info on constipation, incontinence, rectal prolapse, laparoscopic colon surgery, fissures, hemorrhoids, abscess, fistula, and warts! The list goes on when I try to index the myriad causes of a pain in the ass. See you at "The Corner."

FDA APPROVES CERVICAL CANCER VACCINE

2006-06-08T21:35:00.000-05:00

The Food and Drug Administration announced today approval for the use of Gardasil, a vaccine developed to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), strains of which are the cause of 70% of all cervical cancers and 90% of genital warts. Currently the vaccine is approved for use in girls and women between the ages of 9 and 26, but has been shown in studies to be most effective in girls and women who have not been exposed to the virus, itself the most common sexually transmitted disease. See The Wounded Surgeon, for my recent posts on this issue, and click here for the New York Times article on the subject.

Patient Perspectives on Colorectal Cancer

2006-05-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

In 2005, a group of clinical investigators in Houston, headed by Neil Love, MD, began a project to gather information about patients being treated for colorectal cancer, and to disseminate this information to physicians who regularly treat and recommend treatments for colorectal cancer with the hopes of facilitating the complicated process of introducing, sorting through, understanding, and utilizing the myriad options available to patients. They called this project the Research to Practice Colorectal Cancer Patient Education Initiative.

One hundred fifty patients with colorectal cancer were surveyed and answered questions ranging from their initial diagnosis, their participation in clinical trials, recovery from chemotherapy, even patient grading of physicians and patient education needs. The results have been published as a monograph, distributed to physicians, and are being used to further develop educational aids for patients. The goal is to produce an audio/text patient education program designed to provide information and perspectives on critical aspects of chemotherapy for colorectal cancer.

I received the monograph in the mail this week. As I read it I will post comments here.

Give Them Some Credit

2006-04-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

You know I'm a sucker for "National (fill in your favorite cause or hobby) Month." But this is a good one. Apparently, somebody named May National Museum Month! As you may also know, I love museums. In fact, on my sister blog, The Wounded Surgeon, I talk about how I turned an appointment for pre-surgical testing into a day at the Museum of Modern Art.

I heard on the radio that Bank of America is celebrating National Museum Month, too. They are granting free admission to selected museums in nine northeastern states to anyone bearing a Bank of America or MBNA ATM or Credit card.

So visit a museum in May. I'll see you there!

Synchronicity

2006-04-22T23:00:00.000-05:00

Once you change the curtains, you have to paint the walls. I have a PALM IIIxe, which is a primitive version of the handheld PDA that now exists as a smartphone, mp3 player, and a digital camera. I changed my computer at work last month and suddenly realized that I had lost the software for the Palm operating system. A quick visit to Palm.com allowed me to witness all that I've been missing, but not having the money, or the need for anything more sophisticated, I decided to download some updated software for the operating system. Three hours later...I was wading through all the incredible sites that are available for the PDA. Avant go is a fabulous site, with hundreds of PDA friendly channels that can be updated each time you "hot sync." Here are some other great sites geared toward PDA users in the medical field:

pdaMD -- great information about handheld resources for healthcare personnel
epocrates -- handheld drug information database, including formulary and pricing info
merck medicus mobile -- good resource for latest medical news with capacity to launch searches from your PDA

Of course, with all these great applications, I may have to upgrade my palm to a Treo 700 or Life Drive mobile manager. Some pretty expensive taste for such small hands!

Who needs poetry?

2006-04-14T18:15:00.000-05:00

I do.

See what other poets think in this Newsweek article, "Poets Debate National Poetry Month."

The Cruelest Month

2006-04-11T22:19:00.000-05:00

If you are anything like me, you spent most of Colorectal Cancer Awareness month on my new blog, The Wounded Surgeon, and now find yourself well into April, which we all know is National Poetry Month. One of the best Poetry Blogs I've run across is out of the Harper Collins Publishing House, and is called The Cruelest Month. Check it out...if you dare.

My other nascent blog, Bard Parker Poets' Society, will be more devoted to poetry and literature, and I've furnished it with some links that I use to stay in touch with contemporary poetry, but I haven't had much time to work on it, and I'm not sure quite yet where it's going. Getting late. Need rest. Yankees won their home opener 9-7 this afternoon. Ahhh.

Hooray for Hollywood

2006-03-12T15:58:00.000-05:00

Recovering from my own recent surgery by starting a new blog, The Wounded Surgeon. Wanted to keep the such small hands fans up to date on the latest events and attempts to increase Colorectal Cancer Awareness countrywide.

Hollywood meets Motown event in NYC
The Super Colon Tour 2006 -- hits Washington, DC this month. Soon in a city near you?

Approximately 140,000 new cases of colorectal cancer are diagnosed every year and another 56,000 people die annually of this disease. But colorectal cancer is a disease that can be prevented and cured if detected and treated early.

Prevention techniques include regular screenings, a healthy diet and regular exercise. If detected, colorectal cancer requires surgery in nearly all cases for complete cure, sometimes in conjunction with radiation and chemotherapy. Between 80 and 90 percent of patients are restored to normal health if the cancer is detected and treated in the earliest stages. However, the cure rate drops to 50 percent or less when diagnosed in the later stages.

Studies have shown that patients treated by colorectal surgeons -- experts in the surgical and nonsurgical treatment of colon and rectal problems -- are more likely to survive colorectal cancer and experience fewer complications. This is attributed to colorectal surgeons' advanced training and the high volume of colon and rectal disease surgeries they perform.

To learn even more about Colorectal Cancer, visit the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons website.

Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month

2006-03-08T14:14:00.000-05:00

Falling a little behind in my attempts to promote Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Please visit the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons website for important information and links to many helpful resources.

2006-01-22T23:48:00.001-05:00

LIKE CHURCH

When
When do you
When do you find
When do you find time
When do you find time
To write?

Early in the morning.
Wife at church.
Kids asleep.
Computer on.
Another chapter, paper, poem.
Early.
On Sundays.
Like Church.

In 1994 I did a rotation at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. I thought, at the time, that I wanted to be a surgical oncologist. It was my first exposure to “REAL” surgeons. Not the gentleman farmers who did surgery as a hobby. Not the rich mamma’s boys who became doctors to please their parents. Not the frustrated jocks who took hammer and drill to broken old hips and arthritic knees. Not the dinosaurs who spent 4-5 months in Florida each year.

Real surgeons – who thought about surgery, read about surgery, dreamed and wrote about surgery. The thought leaders who operated and healed, who learned and taught, who read and knew. Dare I say…academic surgeons.

There I met D.E., head of GI surgical oncology, who mentored me through that rotation. He was a clean-cut Stephen Colbert look alike. He copied an article for me, insisting on doing it himself, turning the spine on the platen glass perfectly – no wasted space, no wasted time.

He closed out of a chapter he was writing on his computer to show me some data he was collecting on Medullary Carcinoma of the Thyroid. I asked him when he found the time to write. He told me Sunday mornings. Every Sunday morning – like church.

I woke up this morning and wrote propped on a pillow in bed. Even when I try, I usually can’t sleep in on Sunday mornings, too used to waking up early most other days of the week. So I wrote, in my journal, this poem, and another two verses of a poem I last looked at months ago. I wrote of a patient who haunts me, a dream I had, and I pondered adding yet another resolution to my lengthy list. Finally, I had answered a twelve year old question for myself. Sunday mornings – like church. Inevitably, this led to the birth of another related question…how do I fill the time that I am NOT writing?

Allergic

2005-06-21T22:12:00.000-05:00

I chuckled as my patient explained that a highly respected, but recently retired local dermatologist once told him he was allergic to his own sweat. He has suffered for many years from many different skin disorders, including psoriasis, eczema, seborrheic keratosis. He even required excision and a skin graft for a squamous cell carcinoma of his groin. Now he was complaining of dry, itchy skin in both of his groins and around his anus. I recommended some ointment with zinc oxide in it.

I went to the hospital to make rounds. The patient I was seeing had a severe exacerbation of ulcerative colitis. This chronic inflammatory condition of the colon had been well controlled for two years with anti-inflammatory suppositories. When my patient fell ill with a virus that she caught from her daughter, she grew severely dehydrated from vomiting and the symptoms of her colitis flared. She had days and days of uncontrollable bloody diarrhea. Being a firm believer in alternative medicine, and convinced that her symptoms had been allayed for two years by herbal remedies and acupuncture, she drank Gatorade, swallowed vitamin supplements and refused to go to the hospital.

When she grew so weak she could not get out of bed, her husband called an ambulance and brought her to the Emergency Room. She was admitted to the medical service, resuscitated with IV fluids and started on high dose intravenous steroids. Her severe electrolyte imbalance was slowly corrected, but her diarrhea continued. Even after a week of steroids the inflamed lining of her colon forced out bloody, watery, mucoid stools seven to ten times a day. She grew weaker, afraid to eat. Her blood count dropped. Her legs swelled as her nutritional stores were depleted. She was incontinent, unable to get to her bedside commode to meet her explosive stools. She asked me to pray for her.

My partner tried to insert a central venous catheter into her subclavian vein so we could pour high protein, high calorie liquid nutrition into her system to try to make up for all the food she could not eat and all the fluids she was continually losing. His bedside attempt was unsuccessful. We relied on the interventional radiologists who were able to thread a catheter into place using fluoroscopy.

Now it was time to start talking about surgery. Because of the drastic nature of the surgery to correct this disorder, it is usually reserved for the most severe, life threatening cases. It would involve removing the entire colon and rectum, leaving her with either a permanent ileostomy, where the small intestine is brought to skin level and waste exits the body into a bag on the abdominal wall or a connection between her small intestine and her anus. Neither of these options would make her completely normal. Her stools would always be frequent and loose. Any lesser surgery would leave her at risk for persistent inflammation and cancer.

My patient was in better spirits as I entered the room. Not quite as weak, tolerating some soft, bland foods, perhaps seeing the prospect of surgery as a light at the end of the tunnel. She wondered out loud why this was happening to her, how all the herbal supplements, the vitamins, the acupuncture and her family’s prayers could have failed her.

I sat on the edge of her bed and began to explain, “It’s almost like you are allergic to your own stool…”

Overheard

2005-06-18T20:48:00.000-05:00

("Rhetoric is heard," said Yeats. "Poetry is overheard.")

Dad

Love ~ George

Dad

My favorite person

The person who helps me battle

through the battles of baseball

He's the most honored and trustworthy person

of my very life

He teaches me the very things

in life's little mysteries

He helps me to the top

He is my person who will show me

the way through life

He is the person who

will protect me

He will lead me though life

He is the person that will make me happy

just the way I want it

and I will make him as happy

as he wants

Faith and the Faithful

2005-05-08T13:43:00.000-05:00

“Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” (Luke 7:50)

I suddenly felt myself in the middle of a Terry Schaivo case. I was asked to evaluate a patient for surgical insertion of a feeding tube. The gastroenterologist who called on me was a friend, who recently lost his mother to Pancreatic Cancer. He had tried unsuccessfully to place the tube percutaneously. The patient he needed me to evaluate was a young woman, 45 years old when she was first diagnosed with colon cancer five years ago. She had refused surgery at first, being of such faith as to want to leave things “in the Lord’s hands.” She finally agreed to surgery, which my associate performed, to uncover an advanced rectosigmoid colon cancer which had spread to multiple lymph nodes. He recommended she see a medical oncologist for further treatment. She refused any chemotherapy or radiation, wanting again to leave it in the Lord’s hands.

Now, five years later, she allowed herself to be admitted to the hospital, without an appetite, and unable to eat. There were two other people in her room, who introduced themselves as her husband and her sister. Each time I tried to speak directly to the patient they would call out, interrupt, ask me to be careful what I say, assure me that this patient was “at the end of her race,” although they were still “hoping for a miracle,” and seeking some way to provide her with the nutrition she needs. They complained about the medical doctor who had been assigned to her case, about the service and how paltry her meal trays were. They asked me about other surgical means of providing nutrition, central intravenous catheters and venous access ports. They even tried to take me aside to impart more of their insight into her plight when finally the patient called out, “Wait! I want to be in on this, please.”

Immediately I pressed to her side. Her face was gaunt, her cheeks hollow, her belly protuberant with a cancer—filled liver sitting like a loaf of bread at the upper part of her abdomen. I could see now why my GI friends had had such trouble placing a tube through the wall of her stomach. I wondered why they even had tried. She lapsed in and out of drowsy conversation. I asked her what she wanted, how she felt. She explained that her mouth was so dry, she could barely speak. I asked her to try to swallow, to try to eat. Her husband swabbed her mouth with a small blue sponge on a plastic stick . She said she would do her best. I told her I would, too.

I went out to the nurses’ station to write a note in the chart. I called my friend to tell him what I thought. I wrote in the chart that I did not believe that any further surgical intervention should be pursued. I reiterated that her prognosis was extremely poor. Her medical doctor had given her less than a month. I ordered her some high protein and calorie oral supplements in case she couldn’t tolerate anything else on her trays, and stressed that she should be kept as comfortable as possible and be seen by the hospice service. I inferred that she should be discharged home and allowed to die with dignity.

A beleaguered nurse (aren’t they all, lately?) approached me to find out what we were doing to her next. I explained my position, and she seemed relieved. “So, they are starting to get it?” she asked.

“No, I’m not really sure that they do.” I answered.

“Well, I’m not even sure who they are,” the nurse replied. She proceeded to describe the strange dynamic of her patient and her visitors. They had rearranged the bed and furniture in the hospital room so the patient would be facing a wall, where they had hung a large banner. I had noticed the banner and recognized the words as from the Bible’s Book of Psalms. I hadn’t noticed a picture, that the nurse described as strange and somewhat disturbing, although she had herself been raised in a Christian family she said it was not something she recognized as belonging to any particular Christian denomination. She said that the patient’s visitors were sometimes many and that they would stand around her bed and chant to heal her. The one woman who had introduced herself to me as the patient’s sister had even approached this nurse once and laid her fingers on her head and pushed her back with some force. She had questioned the nurse several times both about the patient’s food and her attending physician. Once, when the patient had refused to take a stool softener that was ordered, because she anticipated having trouble swallowing it, the visitor insisted that she need it and that the nurse should be more forceful with her patient.

The strangest part was a phone call this nurse received that morning. It was from a woman who introduced herself as a physician’s assistant and explained that she lived in California. The nurse said this woman was grief—stricken on the phone, sobbing that SHE was the patient’s sister and asked if “they” were there. When the nurse mentioned to the caller that her patient had many visitors, the caller sobbed some more and stated that “the Group” had not allowed her to communicate with her sister for many years, and that she had only just found out now that she was ill and that she was in the hospital. She said that she understood that according to HIPPA laws the nurse would not be allowed to discuss the patient’s condition with her, but she requested that if “they” were there, not even to mention that she had called.

I agreed with the nurse that this was truly an unusual situation and that the patient’s visitors were equally insistent with me. I told her how important it would be for her to continually remember who her patient was and to respect her wishes and anticipate her needs above all else. I closed the chart, left it with the unit clerk and headed for the elevator. I knew the nurse would try her best. I had faith that my patient would do her best. I believed I would, as well.

Medicine: "And the survey says..."

2005-03-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

My husband answered a survey online last week that helped him realize how much he knew about fuel efficient driving habits and how his driving fit in with those around him. My brother answered a personality quiz that told him he was most like the character of the boa constrictor that swallowed an elephant in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Surveys are used in research and medicine all the time. I use questionnaires such as the Cleveland Clinic Constipation Score, the Fecal Incontinence Severity Index, and the Fecal Incontinence Quality of Life Survey to measure patients’ response to specific treatments and procedures. Market researchers use surveys to understand a product’s performance.

Any reader of women’s magazines such as Glamour or Cosmopolitan will tell you that we can use surveys and quizzes to learn more about ourselves as well. Who hasn’t glanced at results of quizzes on sex or relationships to see how they measure up?

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Please visit the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons’ website to take a quiz that could save your life. Let me know how you did!

Science: Tangled Bank

2005-03-10T22:07:00.000-05:00

For an exciting glimpse into the latest and greatest blogging on science and medicine, check out the Tangled Bank #23, hosted by grrlscientist, on her blog Living the Scientific Life.

Medicine: Family History

2005-03-04T02:25:00.000-05:00

A 61-year-old retired nurse came to see me in my office. She had an ascending colon cancer, and I scheduled her for a right hemicolectomy. The frightening thing was the circuitous route that she took to end up in my care. The only thing that had ever really bothered her was her knees. She retired several years ago to care for her husband, who died just last year from complications of diabetes. These last three years, spent mostly at her ailing husband’s bedside, she gained a tremendous amount of weight, and the arthritis in her knees grew worse and worse. Now, as a widow, trying hard to move on with her life, she was finding it difficult to get around at all. Her average 5 foot, 6 inch frame was no match for her 278 pound body. She consulted an orthopedic surgeon who recommended both knees be replaced.

In preparation for her knee operation, she was found to be anemic (low red blood cell count). The orthopedic surgeon started her on Procrit, a medicine to help boost her body’s ability to make fresh blood. Her internal medicine doctor insisted she have a workup to rule out any source of gastrointestinal blood loss, and sent her to a gastroenterologist. The gastroenterologist did an upper endoscopy and found some minor gastritis (stomach inflammation). The same day he did a colonoscopy and found her cancer. The gastroenterologist sent her to me.

I spoke with my patient’s family after her operation yesterday. I met her two sons, her daughter and son-in law. I explained how her size had made the operation more difficult, and how important it would be to have her up and out of bed as soon as possible. They thanked me for all the hard work, and for taking care of their mom, and explained that it was truly her knees that saved her. In the past ten years, her youngest son had had some benign polyps removed at colonoscopy, her daughter had polyps of a premalignant nature removed, and her older son had actually had a cancerous polyp removed endoscopically. Their mother, so busy caring for their father, had not gone for a colonoscopy in fifteen years, and never, never would have gone for one again if it had not been for her aching knees.

A family history of colorectal cancer is a serious risk factor for colorectal cancer. Your risk is higher when cancer occurs in primary relatives, which include your parents, your brothers and sisters, AND your children. For more information about colonoscopies, colon cancer screening, and what you can do to decrease your own risks of colorectal cancer, visit the ASCRS website.

Medicine: The Slide Show

2005-02-25T20:33:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite uses for my digital camera is its ability to be connected to a television and play a slide show of all the pictures stored on the camera at that time. I availed myself of this feature on Tuesday night at my sister-in-law’s house, to give my mother-in-law, Joe’s sister’s, and their families a glimpse into our lives of late.
We sat and enjoyed images of our new house, clothed in the first snowfall of the season, a cat show that we took in at a local convention hall, a late Christmas present exchange we had with my side of the family upon my father’s return from a visit to the Philippines. Suddenly, the images changed. On my sister-in-law’s widescreen HDTV was a gruesome image: a fungating, friable, nearly obstructing rectal cancer.
I yelped an apology, jumped up from my seat and started fumbling with the buttons on my camera. Images, taken during a colonoscopy, which I had loaded onto my camera in preparation for a power point presentation I was going to give at Tumor Board conference, flashed on the giant screen behind me. My audience was mesmerized, and begged me to leave the pictures running.

Then came the questions:
Ø What is that yellow stuff?
Ø Which part is the cancer?
Ø How old is this patient?
Ø Is she going to live?

Clumsily at first, then with a confidence and clarity that must have come from giving a similar talk in November at our hospital’s Colorectal Cancer Symposium, knowing this patient’s history well, and dealing with colon and rectal cancer on a daily basis (now, it seemed, even when I was on vacation!), I answered their questions.
This patient is a 43 year old hairdresser from Poland who came to me for rectal bleeding. She smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, and spends most of her day on her feet, styling hair. She has no family history of colon cancer and assumed that the bleeding was from hemorrhoids.
I found the cancer on flexible sigmoidoscopy, in my office. The rectal ultrasound, which I also did in my office, showed how invasive the cancer was through the rectal wall, and that a lymph node in the area appeared suspicious for metastatic disease. Her CT scans showed some cysts on her ovaries, but no evidence of other organ involvement.
She is currently undergoing intensive chemotheraphy and radiation therapy, which I will follow in 6 – 8 weeks with her surgery, a low, anterior rectal resection. She will spend 5 days or so in the hospital after her surgery, and recover over the next two to three months at home. Her other doctors and I will watch her very closely for two to five years, looking for signs of distant spread or recurrence (return of the cancer). Once she is five years disease-free, her chance of recurrence is very slim.
My family was blown away. Not even the pictures of my adorable son at the vineyard that we stopped at on our way out that day could dampen the intensity of the story they just heard, the images they had just seen.
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. The word is out in my family. How about yours?

For more information about Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, please visit:
Ø The American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons
Ø Preventcancer.org
Ø The National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable

Family: Brotherly Love

2005-02-21T05:01:00.000-05:00

Is it at all possible to do so much? Is it possible to be a surgeon, a mother, a wife, a poet, a friend, AND A BLOGGER? Perhaps it is the thinness of the hour that feeds these fears, these doubts. Or the vastness of possibility in this newfound medium, so easy to set up, I'm set before I'm ready.

We drive to Philadelphia in the morning. To visit with my mother-in-law, recovering from treatment of a microscopically metastatic breast cancer. We all can't wait to see her, to touch the peach fuzz that must be growing back by now, to banter about social security and health insurance, to drag her to A.C., her old stomping ground, or back north with us to our still-new home, a house she helped us buy, yet hasn't been able to visit since last summer.

So I must post, with haste, my first post on my first blog. For in the morning we visit the City of Brotherly Love. Is it at all possible to do so much? I am grateful for the opportunity to try.