How silence can help us learn from our patients

As the patient talked, I found myself nodding my head. In so many ways, she was just like me. Highly educated, a professional, a woman who had worked hard and long to get where she was. And then cancer took it all away, or at least that’s the way she described it. She was diagnosed with metastatic cancer one year ago and finally had time to take a breath after the rigors of surgery, radiation, endocrine manipulation therapy, and chemotherapy. Nothing seems to have gone right for her; she was hospitalized with febrile neutropenia twice during the months of chemotherapy, she has osteoporosis and has had to stop the winter activities that she loves because of the dangers of falling on the ice. She is depressed and anxious and, for the first time in her adult life, completely unable to control what happens to her. As we talked, I could see how difficult it was for her to keep from crying. Patients often cry in my office; I keep a box of deluxe tissues on the table and a small garbage receptacle nearby. Her husband sat in the other chair, seemingly unable to offer comfort to her. In the moments when she stopped talking and struggled to keep her composure, he sat silent, unwilling or unable to break the heavy silence in the room. She described how painful it has been to give up the career she loves and how difficult it is to fill the empty days. She doesn’t have the concentration to read, and it’s been so long since she read for pleasure and not for work that novels and biogr...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Oncology/Hematology Source Type: blogs