Entry tags:
[book post] The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by Ross Douthat
A relative of mine had a brain tumor when he was very young. Large, in a difficult-to-reach spot, and certainly lethal if untreated.
His father immediately called around, asking for, not the best oncologist in the country, but the best brain surgeon. His father opinion's was, there is tumor that is hurting my son, I want it out, and I want it out now.
This was not the recommended course. It was not the course with the statistically-most-likely-to-be-positive outcome. The safer course would've been some chemo and some other techniques to at least try and shrink the tumor before performing an operation; the odds of brain damage or fatal complications when doing an operation with a tumor that large are outrageously high.
But. The father found a surgeon that was willing to try. Mayo Clinic. The operation was scheduled for the following week.
This story, surprisingly (and thankfully!), has a fine ending. The tumor came out; the cancer didn't come back. The relative did have permanent injury from the operation—a dodgy leg and a few other quirks—but that's a small price, relative to the life the relative's lived since then: happy, healthy, doing work he loves, beloved by his church community, and generally living a good life.
So obviously I don't think this father made a bad choice. It's not like he was choosing between chemo and weird-herbal-supplements; both of the options he considered were perfectly valid medical treatments. He chose the one that was riskier, but honestly neither course of treatment had great odds; when you're choosing between two bad options, "I like surgery better than chemo" seems as good a choice as any.
But I do think that choice—the big, physical, dramatic action, versus the patient, strange, quiet waiting—points at some larger peculiarities in how we think about medicine.
( Read more... )
His father immediately called around, asking for, not the best oncologist in the country, but the best brain surgeon. His father opinion's was, there is tumor that is hurting my son, I want it out, and I want it out now.
This was not the recommended course. It was not the course with the statistically-most-likely-to-be-positive outcome. The safer course would've been some chemo and some other techniques to at least try and shrink the tumor before performing an operation; the odds of brain damage or fatal complications when doing an operation with a tumor that large are outrageously high.
But. The father found a surgeon that was willing to try. Mayo Clinic. The operation was scheduled for the following week.
This story, surprisingly (and thankfully!), has a fine ending. The tumor came out; the cancer didn't come back. The relative did have permanent injury from the operation—a dodgy leg and a few other quirks—but that's a small price, relative to the life the relative's lived since then: happy, healthy, doing work he loves, beloved by his church community, and generally living a good life.
So obviously I don't think this father made a bad choice. It's not like he was choosing between chemo and weird-herbal-supplements; both of the options he considered were perfectly valid medical treatments. He chose the one that was riskier, but honestly neither course of treatment had great odds; when you're choosing between two bad options, "I like surgery better than chemo" seems as good a choice as any.
But I do think that choice—the big, physical, dramatic action, versus the patient, strange, quiet waiting—points at some larger peculiarities in how we think about medicine.
( Read more... )