Page 74 - Men’s Health - USA (December 2019)

LIFE
COOL DAD
Paging Doctor Dad
SAMUEL SHEM could be rational and levelheaded with his
patients. But with his own daughter? Not so much.
THE CALL CAME at 5:00 A.M., waking
us both up. My wife answered. It was our
25-year-old daughter, Spring. She was in
pain. My wife handed the phone to me.
“What’s up, hon?”
“I can’t sleep. I felt sick to my stomach
when I went to bed, and now it really
hurts.” I asked where. “My right side, low
down. Keeps me awake. I’m scared.”
I am a doctor, a product of the Harvard
medical system with skills I’ve gathered
in decades of practice all over the world.
Through my training, I’d been taught to
Rule Out—the standard practice of diag-
nosis whereby, by virtue of the patient’s
history, physical examination, and tests,
I rule out each possibility until whatever
is left is the likely diagnosis. And so I
asked Spring all the critical questions.
“I think you have appendicitis,” I said.
“You always say that,” she replied.
Doctors, like it or not, are trained and
conditioned to distance themselves from
their patients, thinking (falsely) that
they have to be objective. But be “distant”
from my daughter? Impossible. Any
symptom, such as a cough, rash, diar-
rhea, or headache, would become a dread
72 December 2019 / MEN’S HEALTH
diagnosis of the worst case. True, the
more common symptoms of dengue fever
are high fever, pain, and nausea, none
of which Spring had had, but what about
that rash, doctor?
When Spring was five, her face puffed
up like a tomato and she was having trou-
ble breathing. My mind raced through
all the usual suspects and landed on
the obscure disease tularemia. Having
never actually seen a case of tularemia,
and because its symptoms (pain, trouble
breathing, swollen tonsils) can be found
in so many diseases, I felt very proud of
myself for coming up with this tricky
diagnosis. It’s usually caused by exposure
to infected animals, including rodents,
goats, and rabbits. We had a rabbit! We
rushed to the dermatologist. He took one
look. “Poison ivy,” he said. I believe the
“...idiot” was implied.
After that 5:00 A.M. call, my wife and
I drove to meet Spring at the ER. Our
daughter was ashen, scared, hunched,
and pressing a hand to her abdomen.
Nurses guided us to the emergency ward
and put us behind a curtain. Spring was
getting worse and worse. She was flushed
and then chilled. I told our nurse that I
was a doctor and I really thought it was
appendicitis and we had to hurry. Nei-
ther doctor nor appendicitis nor hurry
seemed to register.
I pictured the appendix exploding. I
switched from Informed Worry to Paren-
tal Hypochondria, a syndrome in which,
awash in the most elemental love in the
world, we imagine the worst.
I peeked out from the curtain. Noth-
ing. There did not seem to be any doctors
around, and where were all the patients?
Then I remembered—and my panic
increased. Not only was it a Sunday; it was
Yom Kippur. Clearly they were under-
staffed. Finally the surgeon arrived,
spoke to us calmly and patiently, did a
careful exam, and got the results of the
blood tests and CAT scan.
He declared that Spring had acute
appendicitis, and that he would oper-
ate right away. I was right this time.
Spring, brave-faced, waved goodbye to
us as they wheeled her gurney down the
corridor. The surgical risks, and all the
real screwups I’d witnessed, flooded my
reason. Tears came to my eyes. It turned
out that her appendix had indeed been on
the verge of rupturing.
I, like most parents, had feared the
worst—which does happen, remember.
As a doctor, but especially as a father, I
have an urge to “fix” things for Spring, to
give her the best and most painless life
possible. I never really grew out of those
early stages of parenting, when my child
was helpless and I was needed and that
felt good but also drove me crazy.
But I now realize that Spring didn’t call
me early that morning for a diagnosis.
She called me for support. There’s some-
thing special about her knowing that she
could call us early in the morning—at the
age of 25—and ask for help. I couldn’t fix
her that day, but I
+ could be with her as
Stephen Bergman, she was being fixed.
M.D., is a professor of The fact that I had
medical humanities
the right diagnosis
at New York University
School of Medicine didn’t matter. It was
and the best-selling the fact that we were
author (under the pen there to receive the
name Samuel Shem)
of Man’s 4th Best diagnosis, regard-
Hospital, out now. less of what it was.
ILLUSTRATION BY JASON FORD