A Dose Of His Own Medicine

One of my favorite movies is The Doctor, starring William Hurt as a cold and callous surgeon who becomes a cancer patient in his own hospital. He finds it an eye opening experience, and when he returns to his practice following treatment he’s a far more caring and compassionate physician. He even requires his surgical residents-in-training to spend a week as in-patients in their own teaching hospital, eating hospital food and undergoing a battery of tests they will routinely be ordering for their patients.


The vast majority of cancer docs I’ve encountered at The Hotel Melanoma are kind and empathetic folks who seem to have a clue about what their patients are undergoing. Nevertheless, there’s been a time or two when I would have liked to say to a doc “why don’t YOU try that before telling your next patient what it’s like!” Do you ever feel the same?

I’ll sign off with The Hotel Melanoma twist on Eric Clapton’s “Before You Accuse Me”…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57v1I4TobfU&feature=fvsr

Before you infuse me, take a dose for yourself
Before you infuse me, have a round for yourself
You say I'll be giving my drug spree another spinnin’
You've been ‘scribing drug spree for someone else

I called my doctuh 'bout three or four times in row
I called my doctuh 'bout three or four times in row
Well that doctuh said "Son"
"Don't call my cell phone no more"

Before you infuse me, take a dose for yourself
Before you infuse me, have a round for yourself
You say I'll be giving my drug spree another spinnin’
You've been ‘scribing drug spree for someone else

Take your own M.D., try my drugs one more time
Take your own M.D., try my drugs one more time
If drips don't go down and cure you
I want excused next time

Before you infuse me, take a dose for yourself
Before you infuse me, have a round for yourself
You say I'll be giving my drug spree another spinnin’
You've been ‘scribing drug spree for someone else