The Physician Hero

While saying good-bye to my patients,  in anticipation of my retirement from my internal medicine practice, three patients told me that I had saved their lives.  How?  The stories were remarkably similar and went something like this:


You discovered my blood pressure was high and you corrected it.  You found that I had diabetes and you got it under control.  You listened carefully when I talked to you about chest pain and you promptly got me out of danger with cardiac surgery.  My father died at fifty-two; I'm seventy-four.  You saved my life.


During my early years of practice, there were occasionally similar sentiments expressed.  I had trouble accepting the praise as I thought, first of all, that a doctor should be fiercely modest.  So I labored to explain that a number of doctors and nurses had made major contributions to their well-being.  


Deep down, I felt I had just done my job, one that thousands of doctors could have done as well and maybe better.  It was business as usual.


There also was the wariness of being put up high on a pedestal knowing that could make delivering the goods difficult in the future and sometimes impossible.


It wasn't, however, business as usual for my patients.  It was magic.  All of it: the stethoscope, interpreting the labs, interpreting their story and so on.


They weren't buying fierce modesty or any explanation other than that I had saved their life.  


Finally, it became clear to me that having a life-saving,  magic wand toting doctor, who could rescue a patient from the jaws of calamity was, for them, an unassailable belief and need. No wonder they bristled and were viscerally upset when I attempted to brush off their praise and claimed ordinary powers.  


It took some years but I finally learned to accept praise for saving a life.  The key thing,  I discovered,  is to empathize, tasting the praise but never swallowing it.    


On the other hand,  there are times when praise is manipulative and needs to put a doctor on guard.  It is usually served up in a cloying manner with offers of haloes which are, in the end, dented.


So, ultimately, when the patient tells us we are their hero, let's put on our capes and be grateful for the opportunity to heal and give comfort.


And who knows,  perhaps I did, after all, save a life.