I Took Care of Yours, You Take Care of Mine

November 29, 2002

This morning I walked off into the guest bedroom of my parent's house and placed a call.

"Is Dr. Richard home?"

"No," his wife answered, "How can I help you."

"My name is NSR, and you may remember the name. I was the Financial Advisor for Mrs. R, your husband's mother. I need to ask him for some advice. My mother needs to see a doctor, and quickly. She just got a biopsy report of an aggressive lymphoma that appears to have gone from stage 2 to stage 4 in the two weeks since she had the test done."

"It was just a little nothing of a bump on her skin, but now she has another. The Dr. she was referred to is so busy that she can't be seen for 3 weeks."

She asked me, "Who's the doctor?"

When I answered, she said, "Oh, that's my husband's partner. He is on call at the hospital, let me talk to him, I'll call your mother back."

On the way home Mrs NSR and I discussed some of the medical findings that we had found on the web. We had not discussed all of them with my mother, but at least she took some comfort in the fact that my wife was able to sit down and spend a couple of hours discussing treatment and options and such.

I guess being the resident Physician's Assistant comes in handy sometimes, but in this case, being good to someone's mother may have counted for more.

After the 5 hour trip home we called to check in and were greeted with "Good news, My appointment is for 11:30 on Monday morning.

At least there was one small ray of light in the middle of a very dark couple of days.