The Crab Diaries – Page 23 – The great Greek physician and teacher Hippocrates (460 BC-370 BC) described several kinds of cancer, referring to them with the Greek word "carcinos", meaning crab or crayfish. This name comes from the appearance of the cut surface of a solid malignant tumor, with the "veins stretched out on all sides as the animal the crab has its feet, whence it derives its name."

Let’s Get Physical

In his great book “Cutting For Stone”, Abraham Verghese describes one of his main characters, Dr. Marion Stone, as being obsessed with a certain aspect of the physical exam. Dr. Stone, as the dictatorial chief of surgery at a major Boston teaching hospital, has drilled into his residents the necessity of performing a rectal exam… Continue reading Let’s Get Physical

The Purple Bathing Suit

“April is the cruelest month” T.S. Eliot Although I have spent my professional career battling cancer, cancer is not the cruelest disease. Tonight I was looking through old photographs that my father had taken to a print shop to be scanned on to a disk. He sent me a copy, but I had not had… Continue reading The Purple Bathing Suit

Men in Scrubs

The other day I was sitting in morning conference and one of my colleagues walks in wearing scrubs. I have no idea why he was wearing scrubs because we are not surgeons, but I assume he had been doing some procedure in the OR. Now this particular man is short in stature, but huge in… Continue reading Men in Scrubs

Dammit Janet

There is cancer. And then there is CANCER. The first refers to the ones we discover early, excise completely and move on—a tiny rent in the whole fabric of a life, easily mended or patched but never quite forgotten. But the second, CANCER in capital letters—these are the ones that can never be discovered early… Continue reading Dammit Janet

My Front Man

My front man is a woman. I learned the value of a front man in a radiation therapy department when I was a resident, and the front man Paul was a man who greeted one hundred and fifty patients a day with a smile and a word of encouragement. The actual sex of the front man… Continue reading My Front Man

Have You Done Your Sexual Harassment Training Yet?

The bureaucrats finally caught up with me. When you work for the state, even if you’re a university medical center employee, not a bona fide government worker who puts the phone on voice mail and spends the rest of the day saying “that’s not in my job description”, there are just certain things you have… Continue reading Have You Done Your Sexual Harassment Training Yet?

Bad Tidings We Bring

Yesterday was one of those bad days at work. With my resident, I had seen a patient in consultation a week ago, a very nice man with an evil cancer—metastatic malignant melanoma—who had been referred for post-operative radiation therapy. We were waiting for another test to be done which would help us with our radiation… Continue reading Bad Tidings We Bring

Men Who Stare At Goats

Fifteen years ago, I had a patient who was crazy. He called himself the Red Baron, and drove a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado around town, red with the biggest tailfins you ever saw. He wore a scarf, and goggles, and smiled and waved at everyone he passed on the road. Everyone knew he was a few… Continue reading Men Who Stare At Goats

Hunger Strike

The Q’s will not eat. My two female deerhound sisters, Queen and Quicksilver, aka Quibbets and Little Grey, are coming four years old in January. They are both AKC Grand Champions and as such, I have not spayed them yet, thinking that perhaps I will breed a litter, my first since my only prior litter… Continue reading Hunger Strike

You Play Hardball, Kid

Whenever I have a female medical student, as I did today, I always catch them looking at a framed cartoon on my desk and smiling. The cartoon is an original hand lettered Doonesbury strip by Garry Trudeau, and it is indeed larger than life, each section about five by four inches. If you look closely,… Continue reading You Play Hardball, Kid