“Hark to Beaumont. Softly, Beaumont, mon amy. Oyez à Beaumont the valiant. Swef, le douce Beaumont, swef, swef.” Beaumont licked his hand but could not wag his tail.” T.H. White, “The Once and Future King”. For the past couple of years, my life has been pretty easy. I… Continue reading Another Dog, Same Breed, As Soon as Possible
Tag: Chemotherapy
An Extraordinary Life
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so”—John Donne On a Sunday in January, 2014, I opened the New York Times Opinion section and stumbled upon one of the most unusual essays I had ever read. It was written by Dr. Paul Kalanithi, who at the… Continue reading An Extraordinary Life
When Cancer Comes To Call
A patient story tonight, from Jackie: It was one of those days. I had been to the gynecologist the week prior because I somehow knew the sporadic bleeding which I had experienced was NOT a simple Urinary Tract Infection for which I had been treated three times. My doctor did the scrapings and biopsies… Continue reading When Cancer Comes To Call
For Ellen
“to live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go” Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1 As a parent,… Continue reading For Ellen
The Glass Is Half Full
A couple of weeks ago my nurse came to me with a request for a consultation. Since our schedule has been packed full lately, she’s been asking me where I can squeeze patients in. She said, “I’m not sure about this one—he says you treated him twenty years ago and he wants to see you. … Continue reading The Glass Is Half Full
Primum Non Nocere
I don’t have much in the way of eyebrows. They were victims of too much plucking back in the 1960’s and when you do that, sometimes they don’t grow back. There’s a very nice woman in Solana Beach who shapes and darkens what I have left, infrequently, when I bother to think about it which… Continue reading Primum Non Nocere
Happy Birthday To Me
Ex-marines are some of the toughest patients I ever see, when it comes to dealing with pain from cancer. And CAREER ex-Marines have the market cornered on toughness. Take for example, an elderly friend in Kansas who woke up one morning with severe upper back pain, feeling faint, and decided as was his Marine Corps… Continue reading Happy Birthday To Me
Another Thanksgiving
Every year when the time changes and the days get shorter and the nights longer, I start to feel it. By the time that the halls are decked with boughs of holly, now shortly before Thanksgiving, the season of airport delays, of frantic last minute shopping, of eating and drinking too much and then doing… Continue reading Another Thanksgiving
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
How Do I Know This is Working?
This is the question I get asked the most: “So Doc, how do I know that this is working?” Sometimes my patients come to me with visible or palpable disease—something on the skin that they can see fading away, an enlarged lymph node in the neck that shrinks visibly during treatment, a lump or a… Continue reading How Do I Know This is Working?