Recently I found myself sitting in my car in the parking lot of my clinic, unable to will myself to open the door.

I didn’t want to head into the clinic that morning. Instead, I was filled with despair; overwhelmed with the events of the world.

How can I do it? I thought. How can I walk in there and summon the energy to see my patients?

An even worse thought: Why should …

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My patient was sitting in a wheelchair. He was in his mid-forties, and before the cancer, had held a physically demanding job that he loved.  Now, the cancer in his spine had ended not only his ability to work, but any ability to use his legs.

His wife was devoted to him in a way that seemed as natural and understated and unobtrusive as breathing.

In order for me to examine him, she …

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The day after I told Nell she had seven metastases to her brain, she sent me flowers.

She was my patient; I was her oncologist. I had met her one year prior, when she was well into her cancer journey, stage IV breast cancer at diagnosis. I took over from her current oncologist, who was moving. At our first visit together, she grilled me without mercy. Her questions were insightful, and …

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The return from a vacation weighed on me physically.  This had been a true vacation — an entire week away from clinic and spent with my family.  I even managed to unplug to the point of only checking email on my phone twice per day — really!

The tension that years ago took up permanent residence in my shoulders had faded away without my noticing, so that when I awoke to …

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There is a shortage of rural physicians in the U.S.  My specialty, medical oncology, is but one of many specialties where the shortage is especially glaring. In oncology, I think there is perhaps a fear of practicing outside the walls of a large tertiary center and leaving behind the established framework and boundaries between the doctor and patient. I know it was a …

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