I, like most people live day to day, passing along a chain of petty and momentous events throughout the day but not out of the ordinary daily life experienced by the people around me. But through having had an unusual trajectory into life, parental and family background, childhood experience, quirky personality, and exposure to momentous events in society and personally as a physician, scientist, and notorious eccentric. Although I will tell of a number of extraordinary “once in a lifetime” experiences, my focus will be to keep to those that I believe have universal human meaning, perhaps even a life’s lesson. I will keep each installment to between 600-1000 words so they can be read in less than 3-4 minutes. Longer stories will be told in a linked series of parts, each of the same ‘bite size’ portions.
I will initially try to group the stories by themes and sub-themes, within the categories such as “personal history”, “scientific discovery”, “greatest medical cases ever” “life lessons learned”. But I suspect in the breadth of time the readers will see the stories all coalesce by time-line, by theme and story line, into a single life story.
All in Interesting medical cases
The hospital approached me and offered to have their lawyers defend me. Good on them for trying but I already knew about this trick: The hospital lawyers defend the hospital and don’t give a damn about the residents and interns. They come and go. Their best fallback position (or even an opening position!) is for the hospital is to admit the resident screwed up. The CMPA pays and they are off the hook.
The Intern was typically way out of his depth, knowing little about these conditions, having never seen them, much less saw them managed. So was I, by the way. My staff was at home sleeping. If I called them, their advice would be suspect as they were remote, didn’t know the patient, and it would have been years and years since they handled things like this. At the end of the day, I was on the spot, I was responsible and therefore I took charge.
I was pissed that he would write that on an official medical document. I stood up, ripped off my gloves and ran into the nursing station where Dr. Simoo was sitting.
: “Can you tell us why we should not withdraw your hospital privileges effective immediately?” A withdrawal of privileges for cause would effectively end my career as a doctor. I was totally blindsided by this. There was no hint of this when I was told I should meet with Mrs. Hunter.
Its about 10:00 p.m., I am about to wash up and go to bed. The phone rings.
“No cancer.” I kept repeating to myself. “Regret” I said. “He ate himself up alive” I repeated. “He just willed himself to die”. “There was nothing I could do.”
The next day I got all the rest of the tests back. I presented the patient to my staff at ward rounds. “Cancer.” he said. But as labs trickled back, no sign of cancer.
I said “Ma’m, look at me and look at him. When did he last look like me?” She said “before 3 weeks ago”.
