I
honestly spaced out during table
rounds* thinking about what I wrote yesterday. I wanted to make the analogy
more explicit, between the threat of Saddam Hussein using
biological and chemical weapons and the threat of cancer
metastasizing. (What is wrong with me?! I really, really should be
doing something else.)
Surgeon: We need to take you up to the OR stat
Patient: Why?! Now?
Surgeon (as he unlocks the wheels on the gurney and starts
wheeling the patient away): Yeah. You know how we gave you
radiation over 20 years ago to take care of your anal cancer? Well
now you've got a big tumor in your spinal column. I know that your
internist diagnosed it 12 years, and that you've been completely
stable with chemotherapy, that you're not even really that sick,
and that if we do the procedure right now before we give the chemo
a chance to finish working, there's a 100% chance that you will
lose some function of your legs. Still, a few years of physical
therapy will probably allow you to function almost like you are
right now. I haven't looked at the labs or the MRI, but I have to
cut you open right this very second. I think you're metastasizing
as we speak.
Yes, that's right. The only weapons of mass destruction
that Saddam Hussein is likely to have are the ones we gave him so
that he could kill Iranians. But that is nothing new.
Now, I will stop stretching this analogy too far before
it snaps and hits me in the eyes.
Gah. This blog is rapidly turning into more of a
medical blog than a political blog. We will adjust course soon. I
promise.
*table
rounds: when a team of doctors (and sometimes including medical
students) sits down at a raised, roughly rectangular surface to
talk about what happened to all their patients in the past 24
hours, sometimes as a precursor to bedside
rounds**, or sometimes as a complete replacement for
bedside rounds.
**bedside
rounds: the scene that you commonly see on shows like Scrubs where around ten to fifteen
people crowd around a patient and all of them continuously poke and
prod the patient until either they get bored, get puked on, get
feces on their hands, or until the patient threatens to call their
lawyer.