regret

there’s a lot to be said for being your own best advocate. for knowing as much as you can know. for standing up for yourself. for educating yourself. for questioning.

sometimes there’s even more to be said for listening to the experts. for knowing that all the googling in the world can’t take the place of the thousands of patients this doctor has treated over 3 decades and the experience she has gained doing so. a physician that has devoted her career, if not her life, to one disease. a physician that is looked at as a resource by her colleagues across the country. it’s not that she can’t be wrong, it’s just that she’s worth listening to.

i knew when i met her that her disease was bad. it was the thinning in her hair, the skin color that was indescribably off , the splitting nails, the sunken eyes, the body that looked like it had been fighting a demon for quite some time, despite just being diagnosed. she was an avid life-long athlete, a textbook go-getter, a type A googler who would arrive with printouts and abstracts and pie charts and demands. but over and over i saw her back this doctor into a corner. with her stack of abstracts and an ever subtle whiff of litigation in the air, she would dictate what she wanted, and because it was all within the realm of reasonable, it was all done. over and over i heard this doctor say, ‘there are no right answers, but this is what i recommend’, and she would invariably do something differently, all backed up with evidence of her own.

i’m not surprised her body isn’t winning this one. it almost looked defeated from the start. but i can hear the regret in her voice, and it breaks my heart. she’s doubting choices she made, wishing she had listened more, wishing she had let herself be led.

we’ll never know how, if at all, things could have been different. and quite possibly we are witnessing the best possible outcome for her. but she is regretting sitting in the director’s chair. that is a burden all its own.
that is a cross i wish she didn’t have to bear.