Cancer doesn ’t take away from the beauty of life

As an oncologist, I have spent my career learning how to break bad news. I am still not entirely sure how to tell my children about the tumor in my pancreas, why I will be gone from our home next week for a Whipple operation, or my excuse for abstaining from wrestling matches for the foreseeable future. I am blessed with two kids, temperamentally diametric: a careful, sagacious nine-year-old daughter and an impetuous, free-spirited six-year-old son. Tragically he has inherited MEN1 from me, but I suspect this is providential insofar as his demeanor is better suited to a lifetime spent engaging the health care system in tumor surveillance. He finds the human body fascinating — the grosser, the better — and has already chased his sister around our house with pictures from a recent endoscopy. He loves my guts. He was not always so bold. On his first visits to the beach, he was tentative to enter the water. This was an uncharacteristic caution for him. He was a boisterous child with blatant disregard for gravity, willing to fall to fly. Once bitten, never shy, thin, white lines propagated on his skin like rings in a tree: a new year, a new scar. Continue reading ... Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Gastroenterology Oncology/Hematology Primary Care Source Type: blogs