Healing

Initially appeared on doktorko.com 3/12/2005.

Last week i took care of a morose, elderly male with T12 paraplegia from a spinal tumor as well as FAR ADVANCED Coronary Artery Disease. Seriously - all his major coronaries were pretty much scarred up, with precious little more than trickles of blood squeezing through. Obviously, he needed a Bypass. Problem was, he didn't want it.

Fine; he's old and high-risk anyway. Maximize medical management, tweak his other systems, and send him home. So i went to his room and went through the usual rigmarole.

Any more chest pain? No.

How about shortness of breath? No.

Belly pain? Nausea? Vomiting? No. No. No.

And so on and so forth.

I don't know what possessed me, but after running through a full review of systems, i just looked at him and quietly asked: Well, how are you doing overall? How do you feel?

Deep sigh. Not... too good.

And just like that, he broke down. Apparently, he had lost his parents at a young age. Later on, his wife died. Last November, his daughter passed away. Everyone he ever loved had been systematically taken away with no rhyme or reason.

His eyes watered over but his voice remained firm; this was a man who was used to keeping his pain to himself.

Silence. Then i say: i'm sorry. You probably don't know me from Adam.

Another sigh. It's just that no one's ever asked me how i FEEL.

Well eventually, i got the name of a close friend of his who just happened to work in the Heart Center, extracted her number from the operator, called her up, and asked her to please come up to see him. She happily agreed.

Later that night, when i dropped by to check up on him, he was GLOWING - blocked arteries and all.

We changed over the next day, so i never knew how his situation turned out. In all probability, he got a couple of prescriptions and went home to wait for the Big One.

In the final analysis though, it doesn't even matter. Because even though we didn't fix his coronaries, i'm sure we fixed his heart.