What I've Learned from You: The Lessons of Life Taught to a Doctor by His Patients

By Scott Kelly and Karen Minster

What I've Learned from You is the story of the lessons of life taught to a doctor by his patients. It takes us on a journey from an inner-city trauma center to the bedside of a dying cancer patient. It explores human relationships and gives an intimate view into the window of the human condition. On the road to becoming a physician, Dr. Kelly longe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Art Heals Media
• Release date: Mar 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780991274314

Book preview

cover of what i've learnedtitle page.gif

For Caelyn and Elizabeth,

my angels on earth.

And for Deborah, forever.

WhatIveLearned_Stetho_EBook.tif

Knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.

—ANNA QUINDLEN

Contents

Foreword by Bernie Siegel, M.D.

A Note from the Author

Introduction

Preface

1. Unraveling the Connection between Mind and Body

2. Finding Strength

3. Light at the End of the Tunnel

4. Until Death Do Us Part

5. Be Present

6. Letting Go

7. Having the Courage to Open Your Heart

8. Finding Purpose

9. In Search of Happiness

10. Awakening from Near Death

11. In Search of Faith

12. First Do No Harm

13. Stopping Your World for a Friend

14. Watching People Fall

15. Moving Forward

16. What Money Can’t Buy

17. The Things We Take for Granted

18. Running Uphill

19. The Greatest Tool in Medicine

20. Accepting Responsibility

21. Determining Your Own Fate

22. What We Don’t See

23. Life Is Fragile

24. Losing a Loved One

25. Beautiful Love

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Copyright

Foreword

Bernie Siegel, M.D.

Author of Love, Medicine, & Miracles

and The Art of Healing

Scott’s book says it all. I learned these lessons many years ago. We receive medical information but not an education in medical school. We are trained to treat the result and not the cause. Physicians need to be taught how to care for themselves and their patients. The practice of medicine needs to be about people.

When I ask medical students to draw themselves working as a doctor they draw medical equipment, themselves, a desk, and a diploma on the wall. It is a rare student who is seen with a patient and treating that patient like a human being. A good physician helps patients find their self-esteem and love themselves. Physicians should help patients see how their lives can contribute to the onset of illness without guilt becoming an issue. Physicians should teach patients to survive.

Hope is not a statistical issue. It is about faith and human potential. Patient and doctors should be a team who communicate with one another. Survivors take responsibility for their life and work with their physicians as a team. They coach each other. Death is not a failure.

In Thornton Wilder’s one-act play The Angel That Troubled the Waters, the angel refuses to allow the physician to be healed. The angel says Without your wound where would your power be? … In love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve. I believe every doctor should be a hospital patient for a week. It would be a gift to both patients and physicians.

What I’ve Learned from You can teach us all to learn from one another.

A Note from the Author

The stories you will read in What I’ve Learned from You are based on real patients. You might ask, What about the doctor-patient relationship?

Excellent question.

How do I protect patient confidentiality but retain the essence of truth? I came up with the following with the help of friends, writers, lawyers, and the advice of a select group of my patients. The names have been changed, and some of the situations have been altered—occasionally also the genders—in order to protect patient confidentiality and to retain trust. The time line remains relatively intact.

After all, I plan on practicing medicine for a long time, and I don’t want my patients worried that they’ll be a chapter in my next book. The physician-patient relationship has enough challenges looming on the horizon. It needs to be nourished, respected, and protected.

Information not disclosed to me during the physician-patient relationship was obtained through research. I reviewed obituaries, relied on the memory of my colleagues, and interviewed family members. I did this to best represent my patients.

I reserve literary right to delete, subtract, or add information to make the story more intriguing for the reader. I did my best to retain the truth and honor the physician-patient relationship. I feel strongly that these stories need to be told, because without sharing them they, like all of us, will perish.

And I believe they deserve to live.

Introduction

LATE WINTER, 2006

Late one night, while sorting through boxes in the attic, I found an old journal. I brushed the back of my hand across the weathered leather. The hand-stitching was unraveled, the binder broken, the leather faded and splintered. I crouched down on the plywood floor and sat among the scattered cardboard boxes as my eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness of the light.

I smiled as I leafed through the pages. At the top of the first page, I had once written the words What I’ve Learned from You. As I read the stories, a wave of nostalgia overcame me… a vestige of a very different time of my life.

I closed my eyes, and in the theater of my mind I saw the first time I had written in my journal. It was the fall of 1994, and I had entered my third year of medical school. The once leafy trees were barren, and the grass was littered with gold and rust remnants. On my desk sat a pile of class notes and textbooks. Examinations were approaching, and I was overwhelmed.

I had leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. For the first time in my life, I had wondered if becoming a doctor was the right decision. A feeling had consumed me—the feeling that something in my life, a part of me, was missing—an unmistakable but palpable void.

I’d looked out my office window and seen a young boy playing in his front yard. He threw a red rubber ball into the air, then ran beneath it with outstretched arms. As he caught it and the ball thumped against his chest, he laughed and smiled. In that moment, I’d realized what I was missing… I’d lost my smile. I’d wondered what happened to the little boy inside me.

I had walked over to my bookshelf and picked up my journal and begun writing. It was my way of dealing with pain. Writing clarified my thoughts. It helped me to see the world more clearly and provided companionship in times of loneliness.

In those days, I didn’t feel like I had the time to invest in personal growth, so I had reached out to those around me. My patients, the ones who were hurting the most, were the first to embrace me. My patients had become my teachers. Even in their darkest moments, they’d opened their hearts and exposed their wounds. I had listened and paid attention, and I had written in my journal what I had learned.

After finding my old journal in 2006, I began rewriting the stories to share with my children. Maybe they could learn from them too. I hoped my patients’ experiences would help ease their transition through life and serve as a reference when the world was unkind. Just in case I wasn’t there to teach them.

But the challenge was daunting. The encounters had occurred throughout many different times in my life—medical school, residency, and the first years of private practice. How could I unify a collection of stories? Over the years, I wrote out the stories in bits and pieces in the hope of finding a common thread. And in a beautiful way, the thread appeared. The stories wrote themselves.

Now I share them with you, so that we can all learn from the wisdom and experiences of these remarkable individuals. Following each story, I added a reflection on the experience. An observation from a life lived in medicine. Sometimes my perception of the lesson had changed. I’ll share that with you too. Each and every day, I am still learning. I remain a work in progress.

What I’ve Learned from You is the story of human experience. It is the story of love and pain and healing and sickness and birth and death and all of the beautiful things in between. It is a front-row seat into the window of the human condition.

The answers to life’s questions are all around us. They lie within each of us. We need to open our hearts and pay attention to one another. I know this to be true.

My patients taught me so.

Preface

It’s the first day of medical school in our first year at the Medical College of Georgia in August of 1992. We file into the air-conditioned auditorium. Outside, the humidity is intense, the sun relentless. We sit perched on the edge of our seats; adrenaline pumps through our bodies, much as it does in athletes before they step onto the field.

Through the side door, our head anatomy professor, Dr. Gene Colborn, walks in: silver hair, short stature, rounding shoulders, and a commanding presence. His assistants follow him—the room silences. He walks to the front and stands behind a silver table with a white body bag lying on it. He approaches the microphone and brings it close to his mouth.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to medical school.

He pauses just long enough to take in the sea of students in front of him.

In front of me lies a woman who died in our university hospital last night. He looks up at us. She has graciously donated her body to science, so that you can learn from her… We expect you to treat your cadavers with respect—as you would a family member.

I sit back from the edge of my seat and take a deep breath. I realize there is no way I could have prepared for what I am about to go through.

1

Unraveling the Connection

between Mind and Body

WhatIveLearned_Stetho_EBook.tif

Body and soul cannot be separated for purposes of treatment, for they are one and indivisible.

—C. Jeff Miller

It’s a warm summer Friday evening in 1992, and Dr. Thomas Weidman stands at the top of a cadaver’s table with a human brain in his hand. Our anatomy exams for our first year of medical school begin on Monday. Dr. Weidman chooses to spend the evening with his students rather than at home. As an assistant anatomy professor, he helps write the exams and knows this one is particularly tough. He wants us to be prepared.

Staring at him, I can’t help but notice his appearance. He doesn’t look much like a professor. He’s short, bald, shaped like a pear, and waddles when he walks. Arthritis has settled into his hips and knees, but his physical appearance is deceiving. He’s as sharp as a tack, and his wit is unparalleled. He is a gifted teacher who can bring home a point like no one else.

Students gather around him and take notes at a feverish pace. He pulls a silver instrument from a tub, and the smell of formaldehyde fills our noses. He points the instrument at the base of the brain. This is the brain stem. Tell me exactly what it does.

It controls blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate, a student says.

Good, those are the important ones. He points to the cerebellum at the back of the base of the brain. And this.

The cerebellum. It controls coordination and balance.

He nods.

He points to the front of the brain. No one responds. Ever gone to a party and ended up getting naked and jumping into the pool?

All the medical students stiffen up, and no one raises their hand. Well, if you did… He points to the front of the brain, to the frontal cortex. This would be the part of the brain that was uninhibited from the cocktails you drank at the party.

Everyone chuckles and looks at one another. He never cracks a smile.

How about this one, then? Same part of the brain, but it also controls something else. No one responds. Ever lost someone you love, and you get that feeling—in the pit of your stomach? People nod their heads gently so others won’t see. But there are so many heads moving that everyone can’t help but notice a general sense of agreement. Well, this is also the place of feelings, or emotions. This is where it begins. His voice drops to a whisper. Long before it takes that permanent place in your heart.

He clears his throat gently, and I see the corners of his eyes well with tears. He quickly regains his composure and continues on.

line

Fall of 1994

Third Year of Medical School

Bernie sat back in his chair and stared out of the hospital room window. It was a pale, gray October day, and he watched the trees gently sway back and forth. Bernie’s mood was reflective. He was distant, guarded, and introspective.

How are you feeling? I asked.

Silence filled the room. He waited for what