I slept badly throughout the night of 23 March. I was concerned about what was in shop the subsequent day. The following morning, I had x-rays and blood exams at the Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg. At about 11 o’clock I had an appointment with Dr Bengt Bergman at the lung clinic. It was the third time I had met him. I was to be informed regardless of whether or not the intense chemotherapy I had undergone had been effective. I shall return to that shortly.
I had begun to regard him as “my” physician. Needless to say, I had attended clinics with other medical doctors, but they all maintained that cancer treatment was conducted by a team that included nurses, well being care assistants and doctors. And that is correct, of course. The treatment and diagnosis of cancer is incredibly complicated. Each patient’s situations are distinctive. Nonetheless, it was critical for me to meet the same physician when it was time for an evaluation of how the chemotherapy had progressed. One of the recurrent crucial remarks about the Swedish wellness support is that individuals are continuously meeting different medical doctors. I can recognize this criticism. New medical doctors indicate that a patient has to begin once again from square a single in conducting a dialogue with an unknown person. I had no need to have to do that with Bergman. By the time of our third meeting we had been on the very same wavelength. He knew how I imagined and expressed myself, and I knew how he stated what he had to say.
We met in his office following he had assessed the exams and x-rays I had been subjected to earlier that morning. I had now undergone half the fundamental chemotherapy. Obviously, my fear the preceding night had been concern that the treatment method had proved to be ineffective – what would come about following in that situation?
Bergman chose his phrases very carefully. He desired to be precise. Not to say also much, nor too little. But the x-rays had been clear: the tumour in my left lung had stopped developing, at least for the minute, and may possibly even have diminished somewhat in dimension. The indications that there was cancerous harm in components of my lymphatic glands had disappeared.
So the chemotherapy had been successful. There was no reason not to proceed with the therapy.
Bergman passed a deemed judgment: “We can regard this as a breathing room,” he mentioned.
I understood quickly what he meant. The situation was positive, but we necessary to steer clear of counting chickens just before they have been hatched. I was still critically sick. Quite seriously ill. But the chemotherapy had succeeded in halting the progress of the aggressive cancerous cells.
Naturally, when I left the hospital I felt relieved. A breathing space was surely not to be sneezed at.
That very same evening my wife, Eva, advised me about something she had heard on the radio. A medical doctor had been speaking about the artwork of health-related treatment method. “Nobody talks about ‘the art of health-related treatment’ presently,” she said. “But that’s what it all boils down to, even so.”
She is proper, of course. When you have lived for virtually 70 many years, as I have, you have really a wide expertise of medical doctors met in excess of the years. Physicians in different scenarios, in different nations. I do not believe I have ever come across an absolute dud, someone I have run a mile to get away from. Clearly, some have been far more capable than others some have been impatient or preoccupied other people have seemed to have unlimited time available.
But the medical doctors I remember most plainly are people who have displayed what can be described, undoubtedly by me, as the innermost subtleties of the art of healthcare therapy. Alleviation, consolation, maybe even cure, often includes a dialogue in which the patient and medical doctor learn how to talk to one particular an additional, and if possible generate a continuity. Medication and other remedies are never ever adequate in themselves. If the patient doesn’t recognize what the medical doctor is saying, or if the doctor is unwilling or unable to interpret the inquiries and worries of the patient, the dialogue that is at the very heart of health care treatment method will never ever materialise.
Bengt Bergman chooses his words carefully. That is the essence of confidence based on reality, and not on illusion.
Now, as I compose this, virtually 3 weeks have passed because that restless evening on 23 March. Tomorrow I shall start the fourth and last session of chemotherapy in this first phase of remedy. I really feel in pretty great form, regardless of the reality that for a although my blood test levels have been such that I necessary a transfusion. But one particular of the main motives why I felt in excellent form was that I truly feel secure and secure in the care of Bergman and his team.
Is there anything more crucial for a cancer patient than a conviction that 1 is being informed the reality and can believe the phrases that a single hears?
I genuinely don’t know what that would be.
• Translated from the Swedish by Laurie Thompson
Henning Mankell: A negative night just before my cancer test final results
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