I have noticed that patients and physicians have totally different perceptions of some office visits.
My stress level is highest when I evaluate newly diagnosed cancer patients. I process a lot of new information and provide teaching as efficiently as possible. The patient, too, experiences the stress of new diagnoses, unknown treatments, and the possibility of death.
I had always felt that a follow-up office examination is a completely different matter. I approach long-term survivor office visits as routine and pleasant. Most patients are doing well. Some have put decades between their cancer treatment and themselves.
A cancer survivor last summer set me straight. She wept as I talked to her. “All through cancer treatment, I was suffering side effects,” she said. “The effort was enormous, but I felt I was doing something. The day I finished treatment, I had no further assignments. There was nothing that I could actively do to fight the cancer. I felt as thought I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I expected to hear bad news at each follow-up visit. I still do.”
Survivors tell me that even routine yearly office visits can cause anxiety and sleep loss for days or weeks before each appointment. Some have fought depression.
One patient’s sudden burst of tears gave me a glimpse into the stress that cancer and its treatment induce.
Talking was therapeutic for both of us.
