And You’re Waiting There, Not a Care in the World
An old familiar feeling hit me today. It started with a spurt, from the heart I assume (the fons et origo of emotion according to experts), then messily sprayed the rest of the corpus with layers of turmoil both scalding and icy.
The result was me holding a patient’s chart in two benumbed hands while burning with humiliation at the note attached to the front: “Patient has decided to change oncologists.”
I suddenly had a vision of myself as a young teenager in a swimsuit covered with peace signs, pressed up against a chain link fence surrounding the city pool on a crepuscular summer evening as I watched my long-haired girlfriend walk through the grass toward me. I held my breath as she approached but before I could speak she produced the ring I had bestowed upon her just a fortnight ago and handed it through the cruel links, along with a note. “Here” she replied, then said no more. I stood stupified against the coming night. The silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token. I cried:
“I scarce was sure I heard you!” while running for the entrance. Here I opened wide the door - darkness there and nothing more.
Nothing more, because I had just been jilted - and today’s breakup hurt just as much as it did back in those days when the radio poured out summer songs that melted young hearts as fast as a Bomb Pop left on the sidewalk.
I guess it is a sign of vulnerability but I have never become inured to being fired by a patient. It bothers me that someone would prefer another doctor’s wisdom, another doctor’s beside manner, another doctor’s eyes for the future. After all the time I had spent counseling him, why did this new patient abruptly want to leave me? As I stood over my desk, re-reading the request to send records to a rival oncologist I made a mental list of possible reasons, wallowing in what the psychiatrists call projection as I steamed over this incident. I considered a few causes:
1. The patient was in such profound denial about the diagnosis that he was exhibiting what the headshrinkers call displacement - that is, instead of becoming angry at the disease cancer he was angry at me for being the bearer of bad news about the ugly details of treatment and prognosis. This is known in businesses far and wide as “kill the messenger.”
2. The patient found my personality shall we say unappealing, and thinking it would clash with his own, decided to switch rather than fight (cf. Bernard Law Montgomery vs. George Smith Patton, Jr.).
3. I’m an abject failure as an oncologist and should be summarily executed cometh the dawn.
Of course I assumed that the answer to my being cashiered was behind door number 3, and proceeded to twist my mind into a barbwire of self-doubt and rationalization. I tried to recall what it was about his demeanor or statements that augured this rejection, but could not find any clues. If I had pranced into the exam room dressed as Groucho Marx, or slurped a Big Gulp while reciting a soliloquy about my recent holiday in Antigua, or had peppered my interview with such interjections as “Have you selected a funeral home yet?” I could understand why one might have considered my leadership to be less than inspiring. No matter how much I pondered I still could not explain the dismissal. I could see myself trying to sleep tonight, holding a contest between this rejection and the stiff-arm I got from my old sweetheart to see which one would fuel my insomnia. I was so ashamed I almost hid the chart from my staff but then decided like a forlorn lover to confront my heartache directly. I marched up to my secretary and demanded to know why this patient had fired me.
“Oh, he liked you but wanted to get his radiation closer to home, so he asked for a medical oncologist in the same town.”
They say it’s going to be hot for the next several days - some real afternoon scorchers that will put the pant back in the dog and take the pants off of the swimming-hole gang. I think a dip in a shimmering blue pool might be just the cure for the bright red cheeks I sported as I heard the truth as to why I was minus one patient. Maybe I’ll take the rest of the day off and head on down to the nearest oasis for a little quiet time. They might even play a dreamy old song over the loudspeakers and carry this overwrought oncologist back to the days when love stretched its suntanned legs by the water and the storm clouds of adulthood stood far off, too distant to be seen by adolescent eyes.
