Frank: The ringing hospital phone startled me. As a Resident Physician 60 years ago, I spent many nights in the hospital lounge and on this night, I had just fallen asleep when a nurse, needing help with an agitated, distraught, and tearful patient, called for advice. After listening to the situation, I went to the patient’s bedside to see if I could help.
Earlier that day we had operated on this intelligent and eloquent middle-aged woman to remove a suspicious tumor of the ovary, which had been discovered during a routine gynecological exam several weeks earlier. What we found surprised us all.
The tumor was malignant and had spread to many areas of her abdomen, including the liver. We did what we could by removing as much of the cancer as possible. Each of us around the operating table that morning knew our patient would develop serious medical problems following surgery and more than likely die in a relatively short time and there was little we could do to change that…