I’ve held many hands, been generous with my hugs, and tried to treat every patient as though they were my mother. I lost my mother to leukemia almost one decade ago. I know what it’s like to feel defeated by the health care system, by health care providers, by medications, and by the human body’s response to all of the above.
A patient will never forget a health care provider that took the time to make sure they understood their health status. Sometimes the best medicine is being able to grasp exactly what is going on. A patient with a solid knowledge base does not have a chance to question death when death isn’t even a possible outcome.
One of my patients was in her third decade of life when she learned she carried the BRCA gene. Testing positive for either BRCA1 or BRCA2 increases a person’s likelihood of developing breast cancer during their lifetime. She was distraught, upset, and kept reiterating, “Life will never be the same.” The information she had just received was devastating but she still had a long promising life ahead, after all, she did not have cancer. To avoid living the nightmare many women in her family faced, she was mulling over the idea of undergoing prophylactic mastectomies.
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