There are times when it becomes readily apparent that this just isn't a job.
A woman in her late 70's came into the office today with her daughter for a pain on the left side of her chest. She has been pleasantly demented for several years and has been rapidly spiraling downward for the past six months ever since her long time roommate past away. Recently I even started her on an atypical antipsychotic for some hallucinations and wandering she had started. Her anorexia so severe she has had difficulty maintaining her weight at 80 lbs. My exam showed a large and hard breast mass almost certainly cancerous and, given the size, almost certainly metastatic.
After my exam I stepped out of the room to allow the patient to change clothes and when I re-entered I explained what I feared this was and given the patient's overal health recommended a much more palliative than curative approach.
While my pleasantly demented patient remained as pleasant as could be through all of this, her daughter broke down in tears. She had watched her mother slowly dwindle for years, but this hit her differently. This was cancer.
The daughter turned away from us for a moment in an attempt to collect herself, but when she took another look at her mother the tears only returned harder. Her mother reassured her just as she must have when she was a little girl. "It'll be okay," she said. "You don't need to worry." As the two of them hugged I scooted back in my stool and just took a moment to watch a mother trying to take care of her little girl up until the very end.
The Country Doctor
A woman in her late 70's came into the office today with her daughter for a pain on the left side of her chest. She has been pleasantly demented for several years and has been rapidly spiraling downward for the past six months ever since her long time roommate past away. Recently I even started her on an atypical antipsychotic for some hallucinations and wandering she had started. Her anorexia so severe she has had difficulty maintaining her weight at 80 lbs. My exam showed a large and hard breast mass almost certainly cancerous and, given the size, almost certainly metastatic.
After my exam I stepped out of the room to allow the patient to change clothes and when I re-entered I explained what I feared this was and given the patient's overal health recommended a much more palliative than curative approach.
While my pleasantly demented patient remained as pleasant as could be through all of this, her daughter broke down in tears. She had watched her mother slowly dwindle for years, but this hit her differently. This was cancer.
The daughter turned away from us for a moment in an attempt to collect herself, but when she took another look at her mother the tears only returned harder. Her mother reassured her just as she must have when she was a little girl. "It'll be okay," she said. "You don't need to worry." As the two of them hugged I scooted back in my stool and just took a moment to watch a mother trying to take care of her little girl up until the very end.
The Country Doctor