Seeing What's Real

well let me tell you about something that happened when I was an intern at sloan-kettering Hospital one of the the great cancer Hospital in New York City and this was many years ago it was in the days before a hospice when the care of somebody who was dying became too difficult at home people were actually brought into the hospital to die the chief complaint was here to die right and I remember one such man it's so long ago that I no longer recall his name but I certainly recall his x-rays his bones were riddled with cancer and there were they look like Swiss cheese actually and there were big masses of tor in both of his lungs and in the two weeks that he was with us in the hospital every one of those lesions disappeared and they never came back now were we in awe certainly not we were frustrated obviously this man had been misdiagnosed someone had made a mistake and so we sent his slides out to several pathologists around the country for review and they all concurred that this was a cancer this man had an osteogenic sarcoma end stage and so we held Grand Rounds and the word had gotten out that we had an unusual case to discuss and so 350 people nurses and doctors showed up for this Grand Rounds and the case was presented the man was presented we saw his x-rays we saw his slides we heard the descriptions from his doctors and I remember the conclusion that was drawn by all of these health professionals it was decided that the chemotherapy which had been stopped 11 months before had suddenly worked you know to grade of scientific objectivity can actually make you blind now the embarrassing part of the story is that I never doubted this conclusion for the next 15 years when everyone is thinking inside the box it's hard to think outside the box but often outside of the box is where life is I sometimes think of professional training is like a disease you may be necessary to recover from it fortunately this is possible I am a recovering doctor this is what mr. e is a way of seeing a moment when the mask of habit that makes things familiar falls away and we can catch a glimpse of life itself so mr. e does not require us to do anything mr. e may simply require us to see familiar things and new ways and remember to wonder people who wondered rarely burn out maybe we all need to know a little less and to wonder a little more

Channel: Rachel Naomi Remen

Views: 10,963

Rating: 4.6712327 out of 5

Keywords: Rachel Naomi Remen, Medicine, Story, Mystery, Osteogenic Sarcoma story

Id: mtGWdtcOf2U

Length: 4min 19sec (259 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2013