If you’ve come here looking for Peter Bach’s recent New Yorker essay on his wife’s death, it’s here. And here are my thoughts on his essay.
A Well Blog post series in the NY Times, written by Peter Bach, MD, an attending physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in NYC, chronicle’s his experiences with his wife’s diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer.
As painful as it was to read of Bach’s wife’s breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, I found reading the comments section on the first few posts to be equally difficult. The comments ranged from supportive to downright vitriolic, as patients took the opportunity to vent at doctors and a medical system that they perceive gave Bach’s wife better access to treatment than theirs. The bitterness that comes through these comments is astonishing, but should not be.
Fortunately, as the series has progressed, the bitter comments have subsided. (And Bach has a much better photo…) His most recent post on how his wife’s doc refused to spout recurrence numbers for them was quite thought (and comment) provoking.
So, Doc, why not just tell us our odds?
Ruth’s oncologist elaborated on his refusal, promising he would tell us the number just as soon as we told him what probability of recurrence would cause us to make different choices for our lives.
Neither of us had an answer.
I encourage you to spend some time reading this excellent series and discussion it has prompted. I wish Dr Bach’s wife all the best for a speedy recovery and both of them many years ahead together.
It has been an excellent series. The timing with Movin Meat’s wife’s diagnosis/treatment startled me.
It seems like, on the anonymous internet, people really direct their fear and anger, don’t they? I mean, most people probably don’t feel that they can direct their fear and anger about medical issues (and especially cancer) at their own doctor, but they can and do on the anonymous internet.
It seems like most professions have their blind spots. For teachers, it’s often hard to understand how someone could have problems with the things one most enjoyed and had an easy time with in school (which is sometimes why people become teachers of a specific subject). For doctors, it seems like there’s a really common narrative about seeing illness really differently when it hits one’s own life or loved one. I’m guessing that’s because most young folks start out healthy, including future doctors, and the training teaches one to distance oneself effectively?
But that particular blindspot seems especially offensive to responders on the internet, doesn’t it? Is that because the people who are angry are angry (in part) because they think their pain (emotional, physical) has been ignored by the very people (or ones similar) who are suddenly writing about the epiphany that “hey, cancer sucks!”?
Hi Dr. P,
I wouldn’t have described the New York Times readers who commented on Dr. Bach’s post as “vitriolic”.
Rather, as a heart attack survivor and thus a ‘frequent flyer’ consumer of health care services, I could certainly identify with their sense of overwhelming frustration and even desperation.
For example, one commenter (who said her doctor’s nurse actually “laughed out loud” at her request for an appointment to check “troubling symptoms”) wrote:
“Dr. Bach and his wife, though certainly and justifiably terrified by this diagnosis, will never have the faintest clue what the rest of us contend with.”
She is sadly correct. While we wouldn’t ever wish a serious diagnosis like cancer or heart disease upon anyone, few if any of us non-docs could even dream of getting the kind of immediate and preferential consults and treatment that Dr. Bach describes. His wife’s doctor, for example, probably did not “laugh out loud” when they had the temerity to request an immediate appointment for her.
No wonder patients reading this, as bardiac says, “Hey-cancer-sucks!” story may simply think: “Welcome to my world….”
The only good part of the Bach family ordeal is that this experience will change the way he practices medicine forever. More on this at “When Doctors Become Patients” at http://myheartsisters.org/2011/02/14/doctors-as-patients/
Carolyn –
I guess it’s all about perspective, isn’t it? As a doc, the comments stung fiercely when I read them, and my heart went out to Bach, who I imagine did not expect them either.
Best,
Peggy
The perspective changes, only somewhat, for a physician when he or she is faced with cancer. Physicians are already on the inside track. They know the questions to ask and what they should expect. The treating/attending physicians will never treat one of their own the way the rest of us are treated. As a physician you also know who the “good docs” are and who you should avoid, unlike the rest of us who are subjected to medical errors and impaired physicians. You bet this makes for angry patients and families. You (the vast majority of physicians) stand by watching your colleagues who should have had their licenses taken away years ago and you do nothing when you know a patient is in danger because of medical errors, impairment, and just plain bad judgment. You will never know what the helplessness feels like until you are an aged person, unable to care for yourself, and your caregivers treat you like human waste. That is my experience with the medical industry in this country. You personally move to change what you see going on around you and I will have some respect. Otherwise, you are no different than the rest us and your wife’s outcome should be the same as the rest of our loved ones.
The first installment of this blog left me so angry that I couldn’t even respond to it. I have since wondered why, and to a great extent it was just that the doctor’s wife’s experience was indeed, so different from mine, and that of many other patients. I will only say that when my internist recommended a surgeon (after I had gone down to the lab to get the biopsy report myself, because my doctor never received it, and therefore found out that I needed to see a surgeon as I was walking back to work)one of his criteria was that “he’s reported to be a nice guy!” I lucked out..he was also a good doctor.
I think his story, in the Dec. 2014 issue of the Reader’s Digest, is just as heart wrenching as if he weren’t a doctor. All jobs have “perks”, and his is the inside track of fellow doctors and their capabilities. He worked extremely hard and paid thousands for his medical degree. Why so harsh on him? Doctors have emotions like every other human being. His character showed through his story as a kind and compassionate person. Check your anger in an appropriate spot somewhere else, not at him.