Dr. Greg 's Story

Comments: Doctor’s Day has gained a whole new appreciation from me as I’ve transitioned from physician to patient over the past week. I’ve been told by many physicians under my own care how terrible it is to become a patient and I’ve always assumed they were referring to the physical sickness they were facing. I now understand that being a patient is accompanied by feelings just as difficult to manage as the injury or illness; fear, confusion, and uncertainty. And I also understand now how a physician can wield great authority over those feelings even if it is unintentional.
I can explain it no better than Dr. Sacks who wrote of his own experience becoming a patient in A Leg to Stand On: “What I could not do for myself in a hundred years, precisely because I was entangled in my own patienthood and could not stand outside it, what seemed to me insuperably difficult, he could cut across at a single stroke, with the scalpel of detachment, insight, and authority”. I thank Dr. Kennedy for that and am grateful for him.