When the Cancer Doctor Leaves

A couple of had been offended. Unbeknownst to me, my hospital, ever environment friendly, had despatched out a letter informing sufferers of my departure and providing the choice to decide on any considered one of eight different docs who might assume their care — even earlier than I had an opportunity to inform a few of them in individual. How had been they anticipated to decide on, and why hadn’t I informed them I used to be leaving, they demanded indignantly.

I felt the identical approach as my sufferers, and shortly despatched out my very own follow-up letter providing to pick a specialist for his or her particular varieties of most cancers, and telling my sufferers I’d miss them.

I then spent weeks apologizing, in individual, for the primary letter.

And although I all the time inform my sufferers the very best reward I might ever hope for is their good well being, many introduced presents or playing cards.

One man in his 60s had simply acquired one other spherical of chemotherapy for a leukemia that saved coming again. I believe we each knew that the subsequent time the leukemia returned, it will be right here to remain. When I entered his examination room, he greeted me the place my different affected person had left off.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving me.”

Before I might even sit, he handed me a plain brown bag with some white tissue paper poking out of the highest and urged me to take away its contents.

Inside was a drawing of the metal truss arches of Cleveland’s I-90 Innerbelt bridge, with town skyline rising above it.

“It’s beautiful,” I informed him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You can hang this on your office wall in Miami,” he recommended, beginning to cry. “So you’ll always remember Cleveland.” And then, Covid-19 precautions be damned, he walked over and gave me an enormous bear hug. After just a few seconds we separated.

“No,” I mentioned, tearing up. “I’ll hang up the picture and always remember you.”

Mikkael Sekeres (@mikkaelsekeres), previously the director of the leukemia program on the Cleveland Clinic, is the chief of the Division of Hematology, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center on the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and creator of “When Blood Breaks Down: Life Lessons From Leukemia.”