What A Doctor Should Be – ©Karen Angotti
by Eric Rutulante • June 10th, 2010 • 1 Comment » • Family of Lyme, Guest Authors, LymeBites Blog, Lymenaide Awareness Campaign
(The following article is copyrighted and being used in it’s entirety with permission from the author).
Helen Raser’s friend, Karen Angotti, is the mother of a beautiful young woman, Lisa Marie, who has been sick with lyme and co’s for about 20 years. Here is one of Karen’s many beautifully poignant pieces based on her long and difficult journey in the world of Lyme Disease. You may repost this article in its entirety only, please do not excerpt it, per Karen’s request.
WHAT A DOCTOR SHOULD BE
©Karen Angotti
A doctor should be a hero, a knight in shining armor, the sheriff in the white hat. A brave, courageous defender against wanton diseases and virulent pestilences that kill, maim, and destroy. He should be someone who doggedly pursues the enemy without a thought of retreat. Relentless and determined, he fights until the last breath is gasped and the last, faint heart beat is pumped through the struggling body of someone he may not even know. For this is his mission, to fight death and pain, to endeavor to soothe, heal, and relieve. It is a thankless task for death and suffering are as much a certainty as anything in this world. For as soon as one hideous disease demon is squashed with his seemingly pitiful weaponry, another more dreadful and fierce replaces it; and the battle begins anew.
A doctor should be someone who cares more for people than for money or prestige. A doctor who does not care is like an airborne blind pilot who cannot see the runway or read his instruments. All the knowledge in the world will not land that plane without the eyes to see. And likewise all the knowledge in the world will not cure a patient that a doctor blinded by indifference and apathy cannot see is truly ill. For a real doctor will listen to his patients with a heart of concern. He will listen to all his patients not just those who are comely of form, polished, refined, and educated. And adding that working knowledge of the patient to his book knowledge and experience, he will attempt to piece together a treatment that will work. No computer can compete with this ability. For though computers can spit out a diagnosis based on symptoms and then prescribe a standard treatment, no computer has a heart that can see and hear the patient with his own peculiarities and idiosyncracies like a real doctor can. Compassion is at the heart of that indefinable “art of medicine.” Without it, a doctor might as well be replaced by a timesaving, efficient state-of-the-art computer whose memory has less capacity for error than a frail, fallible human mind.
A doctor should be humble realizing that his craft is far from perfected. Medicine is a science that is constantly changing and growing; and the modern “discoveries” of today may soon become the obsolete “discarded failures” of tomorrow. Only a doctor who is humble enough to recognize the gaps in knowledge that exist can begin to have the kind of open mind that considers intriguing, new ideas and possibilities which may become the discoveries of tomorrow. For if one thinks he knows all there is to know, he no longer looks for answers and the three little words, “I don’t know” cannot pass through the sweilling lump of pride in his throat. Pride can construct an impassable roadblock on the path to the future.
A doctor should be someone who enters not a profession but a ministry–someone who is there to serve not to be served. People (even doctors) are not at their best when they are sick and scared. Who would not be irritated by listening to endless complaints all day long year after year? Only someone who realizes that the reason for choosing this calling was to alleviate as many of those complaints as possible. And given the impossibility of curing all of these ailments, the reward must not come totally from the lessening of complaints or the adulation of patients but from the knowledge of a service well rendered. The greatest satisfaction must come from knowing that you have done your best sometimes against seemingly impossible odds. Unraveling an intricate, diagnostic puzzle, using an innovative technique, or maybe simply holding someone’s hand and saying, “I am sorry.” These are the things that make being a doctor worthwhile. These are the intangible things that make the endless complaints, petty annoyances, and invasions of time bearable.
A doctor should be someone who is honest and trustworthy. Qualities that we often ascribe as more necessary for bankers and accountants. But which has more intrinsic value–mere money or an irreplaceable life? Trust is necessary between doctor and patient or a crucial element that may mean the difference between life and death is missing. If a doctor is saying one thing to a patient and writing another in the chart or gossiping about him with other doctors and nurses, then a sacred, unspoken trust has been broken; and the breach may impinge the entire relationship.
A doctor should be someone who is courageous and undaunted by the challenges which he most surely will face. There will always be some in every profession who are dishonest and even evil, those who will use their power for gain no matter how many or who it harms. “All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.” In medicine, perhaps more than any other field, it is imperative that the good men restrain the unsavory. For if they do not, who else will have the necessary knowledge or expertise to do so?
A doctor should be someone who is kind and discreet for ill-spoken words can scar
and maim as surely as a knife. And because these hidden scars are indetectable by any test or examination, they almost always cause a pemanent affliction–most notably a communication rift between doctor and patient that cannot be bridged.
A doctor should be someone who loves what he is doing so much that he would do it even if he were not paid or otherwise compensated. For in this ongoing battle between life and death, God’s most precious creation, Man, must inevitably confront his soul.
To my doctor, Edwin J. Masters, M.D., who showed me that a doctor could be what he should be.
Karen Angotti
