Behind the Curtain

I am a GP, and a patient too. One of those doctors who have had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain of our profession and experience the ‘other side’. Cancer came to me in my 40s and created scars, depleted my hormones and took me through chemotherapy and radiation. I returned to work exhausted, with no hair, battling brain fog and flushes.

For a long time I struggled with managing myself and my patients. It felt so hard to listen and show empathy to people who essentially had minor issues compared to myself. I struggled to empathise with the elderly who had lived for 80 years without going through anything like I had just experienced. I struggled to want to help women with menopausal symptoms using HRT when I myself could never use it. I struggled to take the innumerable small complaints of general practice seriously. I struggled to feel I had any right to give people health advice, when I had lived a healthy lifestyle and still developed cancer.

Time has helped all of this, and now I realise what a gift I have for helping my patients with cancer. For truly understanding, not dismissing or minimising, for having walked their path myself. They in turn have helped me heal. I no longer dread the return of my own disease when I see the bravery of my patients with stage 4. Cancer has taught me the utmost importance of human connection in medicine, and I can see it now as a positive, not a tragedy.