Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology

American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
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Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology

JCO's Award Winning podcast Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology features stories, dialogue, and personal reflections that explore the experience of living with cancer or caring for people with cancer, hosted by Dr. Lidia Schapira.

  1. -6 H

    Episteme: Knowing Your Patient

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology poem, "Episteme” by Dr. Michael Slade, who is a medical oncologist at Washington University School of Medicine. The poem is followed by an interview with Slade and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Slade highlights the tension between what is known and unknown and what spoken and unspoken as physicians try to care for our patients without destroying their ability to live with their disease. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Episteme, by Michael J. Slade, MD, MSCI  I know you know, must know. The tides have woken you night after night after night, borrowed blood flowing in and now out, unaided by your dwindling marrow. You must know your story is read and written in a perfecta tense. You must know the end somewhere deep in your empty bones.   Still, you speak of summers, of fish caught or lost beneath the calm surface of a distant lake. “There’s nothing to do in December,” you say, skin pale in the cool light leaking from the door. It’s late now, deep in the evening and my knees ache as I nod and wonder about a different world where you were not you and this was all decided months ago.   “Day by day,” I mutter and shuffle to my next door, leaving you alone to wait on the cataclysm, on that night when the blood of strangers runs wild and catches your breath, that night in the ICU, where they wait, tube in hand as you sweat and shake, where I still promise to care for you knowing, knowing you will never wake again. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories, the Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira. I'm a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today we are joined by Dr. Michael Slade, a Medical Oncologist at Washington University School of Medicine. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology poem, “Episteme.”  Our guest’s disclosures will be linked in the transcript.  Mike, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us. Dr. Michael Slade: Thank you, Lidia. It's great to be here. Dr. Lidia Schapira: It's a pleasure to have you. Let's start by talking a little bit about your relationship to writing prose, poetry. Is this something that you've always done? Do you want to share with us a little bit about what it means to you and when you have time to write? Dr. Michael Slade: I'd say, I have absolutely no formal training as a poet or honestly in anything else, but this is something I've done since college. And especially starting in medical school, this was really a deliberate practice for me to try to find a way to unload some of the harder experiences that we can go through as medical providers. Dr. Lidia Schapira: It's interesting to hear you say that. Many of our authors have talked about using their writing as a way of processing emotionally difficult experiences and just very important meaningful experiences. But there's so much artistry in your work. I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about that. How do you find the relationship to not just the writing as a way of processing, but as art that you want to share and publish. I've seen that you've published poems, quite a few of them in the last year alone. Dr. Michael Slade: Yeah, I would say the publishing piece of this came very far down the road for me, that I've been writing for over a decade before I think I even submitted anything for publication. And for me, the ability to publish is more of a- Is a way of putting yourself out there and as a motivation to really re-examine what you've written and not just scrawl it on a piece of paper and sort of stick it back on a shelf somewhere, but to be able to go back to some of these experiences and really delve a little bit deeper, both with the language, but also what was the experience? Why was this meaningful? And often th

    21 min

  2. 22 OCT.

    The Holiday Card: Processing the Unexpected Loss of a Patient

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology article, "The Holiday Card” by Dr. Laura Vater, who is a gastrointestinal oncologist at Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center. The article is followed by an interview with Vater and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Vater shares how she processed the unexpected loss of a patient and how a colleague unknowingly helped her cope. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: The Holiday Card, by Laura B. Vater, MD, MPH  I kept her family holiday card tucked into the side pocket of my black briefcase for a year and 3 months after she died. I carried it back and forth to the office each day, never viewing it but with a deep awareness of its presence. It was a transitional object, my therapist said. I took it with me for reasons that were not logical or even fully clear to me—perhaps part of me thought if I kept it in that dark space, then maybe her death was not real, after all. Death is not new to me. Much of my work as a GI oncologist is palliating my patient’s symptoms and helping them navigate the end of life. But she was not supposed to die. She was a vibrant, kind person, and I was treating her for a potentially curable condition. A team was assembled, a tumor board discussion was held, and a comprehensive plan was derived from published clinical trials and national guidelines. She was on track to finish chemotherapy and recover. She was meant to have decades more with her husband and teenage children.  This is what gnawed at me—death out of place. It was during a nap on a normal day, months into her treatment course. There were no proceeding symptoms or perceptible changes. The autopsy showed no apparent cause of death. Amid it all, her family was kind and expressed thanks. “She was grateful for your investment in her,” they said. “She felt cared for.” Rechanneling my distress, I rechecked the dose of every chemotherapy agent she received, along with each supportive medication. It was all per protocol, verified by pharmacy teams, and infused without adverse reactions. Yet, the questions remained. I continued to carry the weight of responsibility, along with the holiday card. In clinic the next week, I met a patient with the same diagnosis. Again, there was a multidisciplinary discussion, and we planned to give him the same drug regimen. After reviewing the more common side effects with him, a lump formed in my throat. “In exceedingly rare cases,” I said, “cancer treatment may lead to death.” My eyes began to water, and I pushed back the tears to answer his remaining questions. He completed the treatment and, over time, had no sign of recurrence. Many more patients followed with the same diagnosis and positive outcomes. And the card remained in the bag.  Over a year later, a senior mentor and I had a shared patient with two malignancies. We carefully discussed and managed her care, but she unfortunately had a rapid clinical decline and was admitted to the intensive care unit. Her family elected for comfort care, and she died soon after. We saw each other in the hallway the following week. “Just awful, wasn’t it?” he said. I exhaled and nodded.  Perhaps he could see the invisible burden I carried, and he sighed. “We do the best we can with the data we have, but we’re treating terrible diseases. Sometimes, bad things happen that we cannot predict or prevent. We did everything we could for her.” Something deep inside me released in that moment. Often, mentors do not realize how healing their words can be—even brief ones shared in passing on a busy clinical day. Eventually, on a quiet afternoon at home, these words gave me the courage to reach into the side pocket of my work bag and remove the white envelope. My name was written and underlined in royal blue ink. Slowly opening the card, I saw once again a snapshot of life: a beaming family with arms around each other amid a blanket of paradise-green trees. They were huddle

    21 min

  3. 30 SEPT.

    Rain Talk: Finding Words of Comfort at the Bedside

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology poem, "Rain Talk” by Dr. Karl Lorenz, who is a palliative care and primary care physician and Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. The poem is followed by an interview with Lorenz and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Rain Talk, by Karl A. Lorenz, MD, MSHS   Rain splattering, a cacophony of glassy dollops plopping, sliding, colliding, crashing, plashing melted pearls. Drops careening, onto the ground now streaming, seeking, trickling, slowing, flowing into a rill of connections.   Water nourishing blades of grass becomes a field of forage, or the smallest sprout of a redwood fairy circle. Life springs forth from the pitter patter, as words too, joined in thoughts, converge, merge, spill, flow into action.   You lay cancerous, stoically shrouded. I stood frozen, purged of words, anxious amid the pulse, beep, thrum, dry rustle of nurses’ coming and going. A stiff-coated doctor fractured the quiet— “I wish things were different.”   Her words fell stinging. Fighting soul ache, I gripped your shoulder. Grimacing, muffling sobs, as gasps, a gurgling cry, erupted into a torrent of tears clouding sight. Reaching, we grasped hand over wrist over hand.   Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello, and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I am your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today we're joined by Dr. Karl Lorenz, a palliative care and primary care physician and a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology poem “Rain Talk”.  At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures.  Karl, welcome to our podcast, and thank you for joining us. Dr. Karl Lorenz: Thank you for inviting me. It's such a pleasure. Dr. Lidia Schapira: I'd like to start by asking you a broad question about the role of literature and poetry in your career as a physician, educator, and palliative care physician. Tell us a little bit about the history and trajectory of your participation in the arts. Dr. Karl Lorenz: Yeah, thank you. Well, arts have had varied expressions in my life. I was a musician for many years, and I'd like to mention that because there's so many similarities between the types of art and overlap, and I think, what they teach us and how they engage us. But I was an instrumental musician for a long time, and then actually I studied opera and sang choral music in Los Angeles, which was really wonderful. I became a writer, I guess at some point. I was an English major as an undergrad. And the funny thing is I was an English major because I thought, “Oh, you know, I want to be a doctor. I'm not going to get to do this again.” And of course, that turned out not to be true, but it also was a portal, I think, into the emotional and meaning based motivations that I had for entering medicine anyway, which is an interesting place to start, right? And thinking about what drives us toward medicine, but also what sustains us. And in the time after entering medical school, I've had a bit of a drought with regard to writing. I wish that I had had more mentoring when I was actually studying medicine and training, but you're just scrambling to live during those years. Afterwards however, those experiences were so powerful that I did find myself scribbling from time to time, not necessarily constructively. And over the years, I learned that maybe I could do a little bit more with that. Dr. Lidia Schapira: So tell us a little bit about the origin of this beautiful poem. Is it something that you scribbled in response to a particular event and then came back to months or years later? How does this emerge? Dr. Karl Lorenz: So I've always aspired, or at least in recent years, especially aspired, to be m

    17 min

  4. 10 SEPT.

    Just Humor Me: Laughter in the Cancer Clinic

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology article, "Just Humor Me” by Dr. Stacey Hubay, who is a Medical Oncologist at the Grand River Regional Cancer Center. The essay is followed by an interview with Hubay and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Hubay share how even though cancer isn't funny, a cancer clinic can sometimes be a surprisingly funny place. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Just Humor Me, by Stacey A. Hubay, MD, MHSc   Most of the people who read this journal will know the feeling. You are lurking at the back of a school function or perhaps you are making small talk with your dental hygienist when the dreaded question comes up—“So what kind of work do you do?” I usually give a vague answer along the lines of “I work at the hospital” to avoid the more specific response, which is that I am an oncologist. I have found this information to be a surefire conversational grenade, which typically elicits some sort of variation on “wow, that must be so depressing” although one time I did get the response “Great! I’m a lawyer and a hypochondriac, mind if I ask you some questions?” After I recently dodged the question yet again, I found myself wondering why I am so reticent about telling people what I do. While discussing work with strangers in our hard earned free time is something many people wish to avoid, I think for me a significant motive for this urge to hide is that I do not actually find the cancer clinic to be an overwhelmingly depressing place. Admitting this to others who are not engaged in this work can lead to at the very least bafflement and at worst offense to those who believe that laughing while looking after cancer patients is a sign of callousness. I am an oncologist who laughs in my clinic every day. Of course, the oncology clinic is sometimes a bleak place to work. Cancer has earned its reputation as a fearsome foe, and the patients I see in my clinic are often paying a heavy toll, both physically and emotionally. Many are grappling with their own mortality, and even those with potentially curable cancers face months of challenging treatment and the torture of uncertainty. Yet somehow, perhaps inevitably, the cancer clinic is not just a place of sadness and tears but also a place of hope and laughter. Although most of us recognize humor and use it to varying degrees, few of us consider it as an academic subject. A few lucky souls in academia have taken on the task of developing theories of humor, which attempt to explain what humor is, what purpose it has, and what social function it serves. Although there are almost as many theories of humor as there are aspiring comedians, most explanations fall into one of three categories: relief theory, superiority theory, and incongruous juxtaposition theory.1 Relief theory holds that people laugh to relieve psychological tension caused by fear or nervousness. I suspect this is the most common type of humor seen in a cancer clinic given the weight of fear and nervousness in such a fraught environment. The second category, people being what we are, asserts that sometimes we laugh out of a feeling of superiority to others. It goes without saying that this sort of humor has no place in the clinician patient interaction. Finally, we laugh at absurdity, or as Kant put it, at “the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.”2 This last category is also surprisingly fruitful in the oncology setting. Laughter in the cancer clinic is still to some extent considered taboo. Near the start of my oncology training, I remember laughing until my stomach hurt with my attending staff in the clinic workspace between seeing patients. What we were laughing about escapes me now, but what I do clearly recall is an administrator in a buttoned-up suit striding over to us in high dudgeon. “Don’t you people realize this is a cancer clinic?” she admonished us. “This is not a place for laughter!,” she added before striding of

    32 min

  5. 27 AOÛT

    Scotch and Pizza: Humanizing Care in the ICU Made All the Difference

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology article, "Scotch and Pizza” by Dr. Paul Jansson, who is an Emergency and Critical Care Physician at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. The article is followed by an interview with Jansson and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Jansson share his perspective as a critical care physician and how one question can serve many purposes all at once. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Scotch and Pizza, by Paul S. Jansson, MD, MS  “Would you tell me about J?,” I asked. What was she like? I made eye contact with one of her sons, who looked back at me, somewhat puzzled.  “You mean her illness?” he asked, quizzically. Immediately, I worried that I had lost the family, all sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in the cloistered conference room. No, I responded, can you tell me about J before the illness? What was she like? J came to the intensive care unit (ICU) in the early hours of the morning, only a few hours after making her way from the emergency department to the oncology ward. Admitted with a diagnosis of failure to thrive and dehydration, her CT scans made clear the extent of her cancer’s spread. Over the last few months, she had shown remarkable improvement with each serial round of palliative chemotherapy, beating the cancer back and holding it at bay, one round at a time, but it had now spread seemingly everywhere, despite medication, despite molecular testing and targeted treatment, and despite her tenacity. Overnight, she became more and more confused, her electrolytes deranged from days of poor oral intake, now admitted to an unfamiliar environment. Her lungs, bearing the brunt of her disease, had further suffered over the week as she aspirated. As her breathing became more labored, a nasal cannula progressed to positive pressure ventilation. By early morning, she was unresponsive, and the early morning phone call to her family had led to a panicked reversal of her Do Not Resuscitate/Do Not Intubate order. And so she came to me, mechanically ventilated, blood pressure supported by an armada of vasopressors, her body failing, which brought us back to that small room. We didn’t have the chance to get to know her before she got sick. I looked around the room, meeting their eyes. We only know her like this. What was she like before all of this? In my first months of intern year in the ICU, I had seen this technique used in family meetings. Initially, I adopted it as a matter of routine, copying the methods I had seen used by senior residents and attending physicians. As I came into my own as a physician, developing my own style, I began to see its value. It opened my eyes beyond the Comprehensive Flowsheet and the Results Review spreadsheet that scrolled into infinity. It showed me why I was doing what I was doing and who I was doing it for. “She loved scotch and pizza.” The room was silent, and we looked around. Her oldest daughter, a nurse herself by training, had broken the silence. Together, she clarified. I know it’s a weird combination, she said, but she loved scotch and pizza. It must have been something from college. We all glanced around for a moment, making bewildered eye contact, before the entire room broke into laughter.  “She made a mean coleslaw,” volunteered another brother. “And a great hot dog.” “She was a fantastic mother,” reported the next. “She was my soul.” Thus far, her husband had sat quietly in the corner, the face of stoicism. He was a retired physician, a self-described man of few words. A moment of silence as we all looked toward him, across a conference table, barren except for half-used boxes of tissues, surrounded by children on both sides. She was the best thing that could ever happen tome, he continued. Another long pause, until the words spilled forth. When I would leave her to go to work, I felt incomplete. When I returned home, I felt an immense sense of being at peace. When I was with her, I was calm. She made me who

    23 min

  6. 13 AOÛT

    Mandatum: Accompanying a Patient Until the Very End

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology poem, "Mandatum” by Dr. David Harris, who is an Associate Staff in the Department of Palliative and Supportive Care and Program Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. The poem is followed by an interview with Harris and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Harris share how his team honors a patient's spirit TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Mandatum, by David Harris, MD   Where does the soul reside in the darkness of the body?   Does it flicker along the highways of nerves up the spine up the neck to the globe of the skull   or does it pulse, a lightening bug in the vast caverns of our bellies?   The foot was his answer his left, to be precise.   The cancer mushrooming from his heel a small price for a soul.   We told him he had a choice: We would take the foot or this sarcoma would take all of him.   But when he chose, we did not understand.   We told him a hundred times in a hundred ways.   We told him he did not understand could not understand so could not choose.   He told us he once walked all night through the cold to reach us. “When I die I want to be whole.”   The foot where our flesh greets the earth’s flesh. Where our weight collects builds presses down.   Where else would a soul want to be when we slip bare feet into sand letting the cool stream run over?   We washed and wrapped the foot in white, clean cloth then unwrapped it, to wash again. Washing as the cancer grew.   Washing as the soul flickered. Each day washing. Choosing what we could not understand. Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I am your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University. Today we're joined by Dr. David Harris, Associate Staff in the Department of Palliative and Supportive Care and Program Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology poem, “Mandatum.” At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures.  David, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us.  Dr. David Harris Thank you, Lidia. It's wonderful to be here.  Dr. Lidia Schapira: Let's start by talking a little bit about your process for writing. You're a published author. We've published one of your beautiful poems in the past. This is, I believe, the second time. So tell us a little bit about when you write, why you write, and when you decide to share your writing with others through publications. Dr. David Harris: I think my writing starts when I have an experience that feels profound and sticks with me, and there's a certain way that feels in my body. I'll leave a room and I'll say, something happened in there. It didn't just happen to the patient, but something happened to me. It'll be one of those moments, and I think we all have these that we keep coming back to, a patient that we keep coming back to, sometimes even a single sentence that somebody said that we keep coming back to. And over time, I've realized that when I have that feeling, there's some poetry there, if I can sit with it. And I spend a lot of time just sitting and thinking about the story and trying to find what pieces of it are meaningful to me, what images are meaningful. And from there, after a long time just sitting and experiencing and listening to myself, then I begin to write, and the writing piece ends up not taking that long. It's much more of the first piece.  Dr. Lidia Schapira: And tell me, why did you choose poetry? Or do you write prose and poetry, and we just happen to be talking about poetry? Dr. David Harris: I find poetry to be so much easier than prose. One of the things I love about poetry is that so much is left unsa

    17 min

  7. 23 JUIL.

    It Mattered Later: A Patient Turned Doctor's Perspective on Fertility Loss

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology essay, “It Mattered Later: A Patient Turned Doctor's Perspective on Fertility Loss” by Dr. Margaret Cupit-Link, who will be a clinical oncologist at Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, MO. The essay is followed by an interview with Cupit-Link and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Cupit-Link shares her personal experience with childhood cancer and the importance of educating patients on the known and unknown consequences of their therapies so they can, when possible, participate in fertility preservation. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: It Mattered Later: A Patient-Turned-Doctor’s Perspective on Fertility Loss, by Margaret Cupit-Link, MD   I was 19 years old when I had to make one of the most important decisions of my life. The problem was, at 19 years, it was not important to me—yet. With piercing clarity, I recall the very first time I heard the word sarcoma. My leg had been hurting, and I had just undergone magnetic resonance imaging. The doctor spoke of abnormal tissue. As a pre-med student, I blurted out the words, “it’s cancer, isn’t it,” and waited for him to reassure me. He did not—he could not—reassure me. The days and weeks that followed are still a blur. There was more diagnostic imaging, a biopsy of my tibia, and placement of a subcutaneous port in my chest. When we learned that the Ewing sarcoma growing in my leg was not metastatic, my family celebrated; meanwhile, I struggled to eat, sleep, and breathe, unable to accept the reality that I was no longer a healthy college student. I was a patient with cancer. Before my chemotherapy would begin, my mom and I had to give legal consent. Technically, I had to give consent—as if I would choose to say, “no thanks,” to the only treatment that could give me a fighting chance to keep living. With each potential side effect that was mentioned, I felt a piece of my morale slip away. Was I going to die? Maybe. Regardless, I would lose my hair, my appetite, my immune system, and my independence. Should I be lucky enough to live through it, I would be susceptible to a host of late effects from chemotherapy, one of which was infertility. Infertility, I felt, was the least of my worries; it paled in comparison with heart failure, secondary malignancies, and death. As a 19-year-old, I did not want children. My career goals were my priority, and I had yet to be in a serious romantic relationship. Starting a family was not on my agenda. So, on the worst day of my life, when all I cared about was staying alive, I was told I could choose to undergo ovarian stimulation to harvest follicles in a somewhat experimental process that would delay the start of my chemotherapy by several weeks. Without hesitation, I said no. At the time, I did not realize I was lucky to have had time for such a conversation. My diagnosis and presentation allowed for a small delay before treatment; I would later learn that many patients do not get that luxury. A little over a year after completing therapy and returning to college, I developed hot flashes, night sweats, and mood swings. On the basis of the levels of luteinizing hormone, follicular stimulating hormone, and anti-Mullerian hormone in my blood and an ultrasound showing ovaries without follicles, I was diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency and told it was unlikely my ovaries would recover. I was not heartbroken or even disappointed; I was still so thankful to be alive. I did worry, however, what this would mean for my boyfriend, the person I wanted to marry. To this day I am amazed that he, as a 20-year-old man, was completely accepting of me and my infertility and that never changed, even after he became my husband. Near the end of my pediatrics residency, I came to understand the term baby fever. My coresidents were getting pregnant, my sister was having a baby, and my husband and I were settled down in our very first home. I visited a reproductive endocr

    33 min

  8. 9 JUIL.

    Three Days was Enough: Accepting Hospice Care

    Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology essay, “Three Days was Enough” by Dr. Teresa Thomas, Associate Professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. The essay is followed by an interview with Thomas and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Having medically adjacent experience, Thomas shares her personal story of helping her family come to terms with hospice care for her father. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Three Days Was Enough, by Teresa Hagan Thomas, PhD, BA, RN  My dad agreed to receive hospice on a technicality. It happened after weeks of trying to get him home oxygen. My brother drove him to the oncologist’s office, and I helped him get into the wheelchair. He did not complain, but just asked me to hold his coffee mug, smiling because I snuck him a fresh donut. Three months before, dad was well-maintained on treatment for a neuroendocrine tumor. It was not until two separate, non–cancer-related hospital admissions kept him off treatment that the cancer saw a chance to hijack his body, take over his organs, and lead to a precipitous decline. As we waited for the oncologist, I told dad not to downplay his shortness of breath. But he wanted to look good enough to get chemotherapy the following week, the only way he saw to resolve his lymphedema and keep the cancer at bay. He failed the oxygen saturation test by one point, and having not qualified for home oxygen, we drove home disappointed without further recommendations or support. The sense of defeat was maddening. We were batting down an escalating onslaught of health issues at home only to be turned away from the professional caregivers when we most needed their advocacy. I was enraged that all the work arranging the appointment led to nothing and disappointed for my dad as he sat consumed in his pain and shortness of breath. His oncology team was supportive when his health was stable but did not have the skills or systems to proactively help us manage the dying process. I channeled my disillusionment with the health care system by calling in favors for a palliative care consult, both aware of my privilege but also stopping at nothing to give relief to my dad. A few days later, my dad and mom were willing to accept hospice care for the singular purpose of getting oxygen. I was sitting next to my dad in his home office, amix of posters from his travels abroad and family wedding photos surrounding us. When he asked for my thoughts about hospice, I carefully laid out what I saw as the benefits—namely, he would immediately qualify for home oxygen and get a level of care beyond what his oncologist could offer. But as I tried to give him all the words I knew from my professional life, I just saw the man who raised me staring back at me hoping for a way out of the painful, weak state he was in. He was not giving up on treatment or controlling the cancer. I was not going to change that. I wanted that, too. Now his eyes were sunken, all the fat gone from his face, and his entire body working to breathe. His belly was large, the tumor taking over, and his legs swollen with lymphedema. I felt the boniness of his shoulders and back. There was no coming back from this. I was in disbelief that he was dying so quickly, selfishly wanting him to stay but also knowing he deserved a pain free death. He agreed to enroll in hospice, with the plan that he would unenroll and try to get more treatment. I wanted to be right there with him, treating this as a temporary detour and not the end. I looked him directly in the eyes, searching to see any recognition that he would never get treatment again and that this was it. Not seeing anything, I tried to open the door to discussing death, reminding him how tenaciously he had fought to keep this cancer controlled and acknowledging the need to focus on his quality of life. I desperately wanted to have an open discussion about dying, but his stoic Irish mentality kept us from having that heart-to-heart. Initially, I was disap

    28 min
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À propos

JCO's Award Winning podcast Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology features stories, dialogue, and personal reflections that explore the experience of living with cancer or caring for people with cancer, hosted by Dr. Lidia Schapira.

Informations

  • Création
    American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
  • Années d’activité
    2018 - 2024
  • Épisodes
    100
  • Classification
    Tous publics
  • Copyright
    © American Society of Clinical Oncology
  • Site web de l’émission
    Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology

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