If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.
–Rumi

Yesterday I saw a patient—an 80 year old woman with metastatic cancer involving her bones.  She had near complete replacement of her twelfth thoracic vertebra by tumor, and also significant destruction of her fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae, demonstrated by PET-CT scan and bone scan.

She had so much pain in her legs that it was difficult to walk.  In attempting to ascertain whether her pain was coming from her thoracic or her lumbar spine, I asked her a series of questions.  The only answers I got were that she had slipped while getting into the bathtub a few weeks ago and that her pain was in her left ankle and her right thigh, both of which had been x-rayed and were normal.

Questioning her about her bowel and bladder function was also unrevealing—sure, she had problems with both, but that was because of the radiation she received in 2009.  It would seem as though her cancer was causing her no pain at all, yet that was why her medical oncologist had asked for a stat referral.  After 30 minutes of discussing her bathtub mishap, her daughter had had enough.  She nudged her mother and said, “Mom, you KNOW that is not why we are here.”

My eighty seven year old father has been similarly reluctant to attribute his recent symptoms to his failing aortic valve.  Despite being told last summer that he had aortic stenosis, he asserted to his cardiologist that he had no chest pain, only a little shortness of breath with exertion.  He was able to walk downhill the eight tenths of a mile to his tennis club, but walking back up had become more difficult.  In December, he was still playing doubles tennis despite the fact that he had squeezing chest pressure which occurred with exercise, and was relieved by rest.

His cardiologist believed him—that his symptoms were pulmonary rather than cardiac.  The pulmonary doctor from Denver was summoned, and the lung consultation was exhaustive.  The conclusion was that my father had nothing wrong with his lungs.  My father, who by the way is a physician himself, could not admit that his symptoms were classic angina pectoris, and were worsening to the point where he was having them with minimal exertion. For the last two months he has insisted to every doctor who has interviewed him, “I have no chest PAIN, only a little squeezing pressure when I exercise.”  The result has been undiagnosed congestive heart failure which would have killed him, if he had not contracted an upper respiratory infection which landed him in the hospital and led to the real diagnosis.

I admire the stoics, the non-complainers.  I am not one of them.  When I have an ache or a pain, the entire world knows about it.  But there should be a limit to stoicism and that limit should be where the patient who is in denial is doing himself harm.  On Monday, my patient will undergo a CT simulation for radiation treatment of her thoracic and lumbar vertebrae before she suffers from a spinal cord compression and paralysis from her cancer.  On Tuesday my father will have his aortic valve replaced.  May they both emerge from their ordeals physically and mentally intact.  And may their doctors, including myself, learn to diagnose and treat these patients before they do themselves irreversible damage.

Miranda Fielding is a radiation oncologist who blogs at The Crab Diaries.