Healer

Seems like Corn Dog and I are trading wacky childhood stories. Here’s another . . . kinda, sorta.

As a child, my first love was a woman who imagined herself perpetually on the verge of death. I am not a well woman! she would holler, and what did I know? I believed it.

The irony is, she wasn’t a well woman. Axis II diagnoses aside, my mother was a breast cancer survivor in the pre-chemo, pre-radiation, pre-tamoxifen era. She beat the odds.

Somehow, I was responsible — for the loss of her breast, her health, her youth. You took the best years of my life. Did she say that to me or to my father? Doesn’t matter; four- or five-year-old Doug took the blame.

I woke up early one Saturday morning (kids: in those days, we only had cartoons on Saturdays. I had no intention of missing a single one) to find a hole in our den’s screen door. My older brother woke up soon afterward and convinced me I had done it. It didn’t take much convincing; I felt certain I was responsible for everything. And so I made up a lie to deflect my mother’s inevitable anger.

“It was a bird!” I told her when she woke up and came into the den. “It, it flew in, and then it flew out, and it made that hole –”

“That bird was your father’s fist,” my mother said.

You mean it’s not my fault?

(Smart guy, my dad. A dumber man would have punched the wall and broken a few fingers.)

Yeah, it was all my fault. And I was always trying to make it better.

***

Some patients can never be cured.

They drive me nuts, these people. They’ve been to all the local docs, multiple university experts, and no one can fix them. They say they’ve tried everything, but when I pick apart their history, they’ve shot down the most promising treatment strategies.

The patient’s list of drug allergies fills a page. I’m sensitive to everything.

We have some great sprays. They’re absorbed locally in the nose with little or no systemic effects. Sprays give me a headache.

I know you’ve tried the proton pump inhibitors before, but if you weren’t modifying your diet, you were wasting your time. I have to eat before bedtime. It’s my low blood sugar.

These folks sabotage every suggestion, every attempt to help. Eventually, I realize that they’re here and I’m here for one reason only: to prove to them, No one can help me.

I hate these people. I’m here to fix you, God damn it.

***

Some people can never be rescued.

My mother had me rub her feet, had me get ice cubes from the freezer for her to chew. “Help me with my exercises.” She would lay on her stomach and I would lift each leg in turn, bending at the knee. Gravity did the rest.

Exercise.

I did whatever she asked, even held her hand during her difficult, um, movements, but I couldn’t crack her depression, her rants, or her rages. Her life was a misery to her and nothing I did made it any better.

***

Once upon a time, I found an injured bird and nursed it back to health . . .

Nope. Never happened. I wanted to be an astronomer (not an astronaut), someone who would make momentous discoveries about the nature of the universe. In kindergarten, my pal Kevin and I tried to draw a map of the universe using nothing but a pencil and a sheet of typing paper. Wish I’d kept those scribbles — I would have framed that paper, hung it in my office, and whenever any patient asked, “What’s that?” I’d respond in my most patronizing voice, “The universe, of course.”

I liked mixing things. You know how you’re not supposed to mix bleach with other cleaners due to the risk of making chlorine gas? I figured that one out myself. I bought pyrex ramekins with my spare change and those were my beakers. Laundry soap, vinegar, baking soda, and salt were my reagents. And as I got older, my laboratory expanded.

I wanted to be a scientist (a chemist — mixing shit was more fun than looking up into the sky) but my conception of science was based on science fiction. Too bad it took me thirty years to figure that out.

In college, I majored in chemistry but I leaned more toward molecular/developmental biology. My guidance counselor, a beautiful and tiny woman, told me I should consider medical school. MD researchers had better access to grant money, she explained, and they were paid better than PhD researchers, too. The plan made sense and would require little effort on my part. I had already taken the more macho version of every pre-med class so my prerequisites were met.

All except that little “clinical experience” thing. I’m not the son of a doctor, I have no doctors in my family, I had never ever wanted to be a doctor, and I had never volunteered in a hospital. My “clinical experience” was a big zilch.

My counselor fixed me up with a candy-striping position at a Catholic hospital in San Francisco. I lasted exactly one day. My job was to sit at the information desk with another volunteer and answer visitors’ questions, but in reality my job was to sit there and listen to the volunteer (an elderly woman) blather on about her hatred of folks who were poorer, spoke a different language, or had a different skin color than she. I was her captive audience.

I told the nun in charge of volunteers that I wouldn’t be coming back. She told me I should rethink my plans for med school. If I couldn’t handle a single day in a hospital . . .

Stupidly, I applied to nothing but combined degree MD/PhD programs. I screwed myself but I didn’t realize it yet: the other candidates had far better research credentials than I.

I got wait listed (the bad news) at Stanford (the good news). No one else wanted me. After a tortuous wait, I was accepted (the best news). After six months, I found a PhD program that wanted me: the Department of Cancer Biology.

That was late 1983, or maybe early 1984. The combined degree program lasted seven years, the ENT residency five years, and that whole time I still thought of myself as a scientist who was sneakily doing all this MD stuff to get paid better in the long run. I graduated in 1995 and it took me another three years to realize a few things.

1. I suck as a scientist.

2. Bench science, the real stuff, has nothing in common with science fiction.

3. I liked writing grants, but my grants were almost always shot down. Why? Because I spent 2% of my time in the lab, 98% of my time writing grants. Have I mentioned how much I liked writing grants?

4. I love teaching.

5. But I love my family a little more. So when my wife and son were clearly languishing in the Texas heat, I jumped at the chance to come to the Pacific Northwest. This was not without some grief on my part — hell, I had thought of myself as a scientist (or scientist-to-be) all of my life, and I really loved teaching — but that’s a subject for another day.

Point is, in 1998 I became a doctor. I couldn’t call myself anything else, couldn’t fool myself anymore. Funny thing, though: I was good at it. I noticed this in residency and again during my brief stint in academia. I discovered I was thoughtful, caring, and stubborn when it came to figuring out my patients’ problems.

I had become a healer.

What the fuck?

***

Can neurosis spawn virtue? Can swine poop pearls?

I can’t help but think it’s no accident I am where I am today. The kid who couldn’t make his mother better became the teen who couldn’t solve his girlfriend’s problems, who became the 22-year-old who couldn’t cure his wife’s illness, who became the adult who could at least fix a few people in his life.

Although not the people who mattered most.

D.

Sorry about the length, folks. How about we do some live blogging tomorrow night? 7 PST. Be there.