PET scan machine
I’ve been thinking about oncologists lately. I think it’s hard for most of us to imagine a “call” to oncology, or choosing oncology as a specialty, if we ever think about becoming doctors at all. So much bad news to give. So much pain and suffering for their patients. And the very crude tools of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery to offer as treatment.
All these appointments and treatments have kept me focused on the physical body, but also draw attention to my relationship with doctors and other health care professionals.
Up to now, my medical experience has been primarily limited to “the annual exam.” And that means taking off my clothes, having a doctor, physician’s assistant, or nurse practitioner do some probing, with gels and instruments, and then press my breasts for possible cysts and tumors. In other words, it has been pretty intimate.
As kids we’d take off our shirts and the doctor would have us breathe deeply under the cold metal of the stethoscope. Then he’d give us a shot, a band-aid, and a lollypop. Occasionally, we’d hand over warm urine samples, before there was a system to slide them into the wall right from the bathroom.
But at the oncologist visits I don’t even take off my socks. The doctor listens to my chest through my clothes, asks if I have any abdominal pain when he presses there, checks my ankles for swelling, and then I just answer questions. We review numbers. I answer questions about side effects. We look at the schedule. We look at the computer more than my body– where my data is stored, data I also get weekly through “mychart” online.
It has struck me how very modest all this treatment is. Many chemotherapy patients use a cream to numb the port area and we’re instructed how to put Saran wrap over it to protect our clothes. The nurses, when they access my port through my skin to draw blood and deliver the chemotherapy, ask me to pull aside my shirt and bra strap so it doesn’t get the antiseptic on it– we don’t want to ruin the shirt! When I fainted the first day and was sitting in a chair afterward with debilitating abdominal cramps, one of the nurses pulled my shirt down to give me more privacy (really the last thing on my mind). It was a sweet gesture. She also rubbed my back, which was even kinder. When I get my Granix shots for a white blood cell boost, I unzip and present my belly for the shot, the most intimate I get with any of the treatments.
To be an oncologist feels closer to hard science than what I usually think of as medicine. My oncologist works with numbers, charts, scans, progress. He works with protocols and assessments and managing treatment. He “sees” the cancer (in my case we had a diagnosis and treatment plan before there was even a scan, just based on the report from the fluid in my lung) and then he treats it with poisons, various doses and kinds, and helps his patients with the consequences of the treatment. The best oncologists (and I have the best) also encourage patients and work with them to carry on their lives in a difficult time and be able to do what is most important to them. And I think he and the nurses have confidence in what they know and what they have seen– a certain predictability to the side effects and treatment cycles. And what they have read. And what is coming and how treatment has improved over time.
This past week I have been working on a Q&A piece with Dr. Anton Koekemoer. He is an astrophysicist in the Hubble Space Telescope program who works on the images coming in from deep space. He has become involved with The Saint John’s Bible project, which includes images based on the Hubble images, giving talks on science and Christianity– really talks on the beauty and glory of Creation.
What first struck me about the images on his site is how different they are from what I usually imagine space. I think of space as empty, dark, and still. But the images are full, colorful, and active. What does it mean to be a scientist and work with “views” of space like this? What does it mean to be a doctor and work with my scans, my weekly numbers, this constellation of atoms, of materials that give a picture of a person suffering and healing?
My next doctor will be a surgeon. I expect to meet with him or her once, maybe twice. And then that doctor will be in my body in a way no one ever has, cutting it and transforming it. And I will be unconscious and I would imagine veiled from sight. Strange. Powerful strange.
Information on the image from the Hubble Space Telescope above:
Object Names: Abell 2744, Pandora’s Cluster
Image Type: Astronomical
Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and the HFF Team (STScI)
What a wonderful writer you are, Susan! All the parts of life seem grist for your mill and get transformed into beautiful and inspiring stuff. I often re-read your blog posts. And I think of Horace, the Roman poet who said the poet is like a bee who goes from flower to flower gathering honey and wax–sweetness and light. Your posts are like that for me–both interesting and stimulating, but also full of inspiration and enlightenment. Thank you for sharing your craft and being with us.