Cancer: Personal, Professional, and Practice Impact

Excerpt

I remember the day vividly, a curse of my photographic memory. I had “tucked” my husband into pre-op and waited until he was whisked away for his 7-year overdue screening colonoscopy before proceeding with patient rounds. After I had seen two patients, I heard an overhead page, “Dr. Ramsakal please report to endoscopy!” I had an immediate “Takotsubo” moment, expecting a subsequent code blue announcement on my quantum leap to the endoscopy suite. The gastroenterologist calmly proceeded to show me the large, friable colorectal mass while my husband was still under anesthesia. I just shook my head in the affirmative. Dazed, my thoughts raced ahead; staging CTs, port placement, “sandwich” chemo/immune therapy, colon resection plus or minus colostomy, concomitant 5FU/leucovorin plus XRT to the surgical bed to prevent reoccurrence, etc. Then, of course, the turmoil of emotions kicked in. I tried to find a quiet corner at the nurse’s station before the tears started gushing. Whom should I call first? The logical answer was our son, the physician; he would offer some calm to this storm despite being a young father of a 6-day-old first child. …