A Country Doctor Writes:

First published in 2012.

A mezuzah (Hebrew: מְזוּזָה‎ “doorpost”; plural: מְזוּזוֹת mezuzot) is a piece of parchment (often contained in a decorative case) inscribed with specified Hebrew verses from the Torah.

ט וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל-מְזֻזוֹת בֵּיתֶךָ, וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ. {ס} 9 And thou shalt write them upon the door-posts of thy house, and upon thy gates. {S}
                                        Deuteronomy 6:9

It’s almost 4:30 and I have three more patients to see before my Christmas mini-vacation can begin. Snow and sleet are beginning to fall outside. Our lab tech, who leaves between 3 and 3:30, just called from home to warn the rest of us that she had seen nine moose on Route 1, probably attracted by the road salt.

“Three encounters in thirty minutes”, I think to myself, “and neither of them completely straightforward”. I used to shudder when healthcare administrators called medical office visits “encounters” , but the more I have thought about it, the truer the word rings to me. Two people meet briefly and try their best to communicate in spite of sometimes very different viewpoints and agendas. I remember the phrase “Marriage Encounter” from my first visit to this country in the early 1970’s – an event where couples learn to see each other with new eyes and communicate more effectively.

I have three fellow human beings to interact with and offer some sort of healing to in three very brief visits. Three times I pause at the doorway before entering my exam room, the space temporarily occupied by someone who has come for my assessment or advice. Three times I summarize to myself what I know before clearing my mind and opening myself up to what I may not know or understand with my intellect alone. Three times I quietly invoke the source of my calling.

4:35 – In Room 1 sits Bill Boland, the fellow who always sasses me for my habit of knocking on the exam room door before I enter. He had been in with pneumonia and his x-ray came back suspicious for a tumor. The purpose of today’s follow-up visit is to make sure he is feeling better and to tell Bill he will need more testing. I raise my hand in an automatic door knocking gesture, but catch myself and instead touch the doorframe briefly and take a slow breath before entering the exam room, ready to deliver the disturbing news.

4: 50 – In Room 2 sits Wally Parker, here to talk about his blood sugars. His wife is in the hospital with a lower GI bleed, and her colonoscopy showed an ulcerated tumor that is almost certainly malignant. “Why is he here tonight instead of at Mary’s bedside?” I ask myself as my hand reaches for the doorframe. At the same time I try to clear my mind of my own clutter and my guesses why he has chosen to keep this appointment under these circumstances.

5 o’clock – The child in Room 3 is an 11-month-old with a fever. He belongs to the pediatric group in town, but probably the slick roads and the late hour are the reasons he is here. A new patient, and a sick child at that, requires me to be unhurried and receptive. I must be aware of how well we connect, so neither this child’s young mother nor I miss something important in our encounter. In this case, the child has an ear infection and the mother is a registered nurse with an older child at home who has recurrent ear infections.

At 5:15 I wish Autumn and the new receptionist a Merry Christmas before I leave through the back door.

Route 1 is covered with snow and the large flakes coming right at me make it impossible to see with high beams. I drive slowly with only my low beams, and don’t see a single moose.

Our house is all lit up for Christmas. In one of the sunroom windows shines the metal star-shaped lamp that hung in my bedroom window when I was a child. I remember coming home from school in the dark, looking up at my star on the third floor of our Swedish apartment building, even closer to the Arctic Circle than where I live now.

I can see my wife in the kitchen window, but she can’t see me in the darkness outside. I quickly stomp the snow off my boots on the wooden steps outside the door. My hand touches the doorframe for balance, physical and spiritual, and as a brief gesture of love and blessing:

I am home. It is Christmas.

Andrea Smythe needed something for her depression, but she was leery of medications. Her counselor had recommended trying an antidepressant, and I agreed.

Andrea told me nobody in her family ever took an antidepressant, and none of her friends ever did.

By the time I had dutifully explained about initial nausea, the risk for suicidal ideation and the possibility of inducing a manic episode in undiagnosed bipolar patients, Andrea was squirming in her chair. I didn’t even get to the risk of weight gain and sexual dysfunction before she told me she’d rather do something “natural”.

“Who wouldn’t, after that introduction”, I thought to myself. So we talked about St John’s Wort and other nonprescription alternatives, all less studied but without foreboding government-mandated warnings.

This is the age of informed consent. Anything you don’t say about possible adverse effects can be used against you. That’s why most lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers fail – after all, they warned smokers about the dangers of using their product.

Even when patients agree to take the medication suggested by their physician, the negative expectations can be a hindrance to the beneficial action of the medication – a real nocebo effect. This is the opposite of the placebo effect that some people tend to dismiss as imaginary. Ancient physicians, the fathers of modern medicine and cutting-edge neuro-immunologists all tell us the human body’s ability to heal is helped or hindered by the patient’s state of mind. In many psychiatric diseases this is axiomatic.

I, for one, always look to align my treatment plan with any potentially available placebo force, for lack of a better word.

“Did you ever know anyone who took an antidepressant?” I usually ask. If the answer is yes, I ask which one and how it worked. If the other person is a family member, I not only have a chance for insight into my patient’s positive or negative expectations but also into their genetic predisposition for response or non-response to certain medications.

If the patient believes one medication is more likely to work than another, I would have to feel very strongly about any other medication I might want to suggest in order to pass up all the positive expectations – call it placebo effect if you want – that the patient just offered to the therapeutic situation.

This is where all the practitioners of non-allopathic medicine have several advantages in today’s health care climate; they are not required to warn patients about rare side effects of their treatment, and they are sometimes more able to listen to their patients’ beliefs and preferences without worrying about what insurance companies, managed care organizations or treatment guidelines tell them to do.

The other day I saw a dramatic example of the nocebo effect; Rachel Ruel had been plagued by horrendous attacks of abdominal pain for several years until I started her on a very low dose of metoclopramide, taken only as needed during these attacks. The medication controlled all her dysmotility symptoms and she was finally able to live a normal life. This was long before the 2009 “black box warning” issued by the Food and Drug Administration about the risk for tardive dyskinesia. We talked about the risk for this rare facial movement disorder and Rachel always felt the relief she got from the medication was so significant that she was willing to take the small risk of side effects.

When I last saw Rachel, she had a tooth infection and secondary jaw pain. She had been sure this was the beginning of tardive dyskinesia, so she had not taken metoclopramide at the beginning of her latest attack two days earlier. She was still miserable with abdominal pain. Her unrelated jaw symptoms had escalated her fear of developing tardive dyskinesia, and I was in no position to talk her out of that fear. I had nothing to offer her, except a referral to a university gastroenterologist.

She left my office still fearful and in pain, but she made the least frightening choice she could make in that moment. I am still wondering if I could have handled our visit differently.

Many doctors’ offices have little signs discouraging the use of cell phones. Personally, I find them useful more often than annoying or disruptive.

The other day I saw Mrs. Jonah for a sinus infection. She had lost her private insurance and ended up on Medicaid, the insurance for low-income Americans. When her insurance changed, we had to change several of her medications, because Medicaid didn’t cover what she used to take. Mrs. Jonah told me that one of her new medications wasn’t working for her and the step care on the Medicaid website was confusing. I pulled out my cell phone – not a smart phone for this country doctor, but a waterproof one suitable for working around our little farm.

I know our state’s Medicaid office doesn’t keep you on hold forever, and the people who answer the phone actually have the answers to your questions. Within a couple of minutes I had e-prescribed a new medication to her pharmacy along with an antibiotic for her sinusitis and Mrs. Jonah left the office with a smile and the words “you make things happen”.

I also pulled out my cell phone when Mrs. Gordon’s blood pressure was higher than I had ever seen it and she seemed confused about how many blood pressure medications she was actually taking. The pharmacy told me she hadn’t picked up her lisinopril since February.

Bud Swensen told me his little red pills made him itch, so he stopped taking them. I couldn’t figure out which medication he was referring to. He called his wife on his cell phone and we settled the issue right then and there.

Frank Garr always gives me a hard time if I happen to be running late. That is what happened when I last saw him. He said he was running out of his sleeping pills. According to my records, he should have had a refill left. I called his pharmacy to verify this. He looked demonstratively at his watch and said “I’m deducting this from our fifteen minutes”.

“I’m making this call for you”, I replied.

“Fair enough”, he said.

Norm Parsons was having a terrible time with his rapid atrial fibrillation. His cardiologist in the state capital had really wanted him on a beta blocker because of his mild heart failure. Norm had tried them before and had to stop because of side effects. He was beet red, huffing and puffing, and said “this is exactly what happened last time I tried metoprolol”.

A quick cell phone call to his cardiologist gave me permission to switch Norm to diltiazem, even though it theoretically is less ideal for rapid atrial fibrillation with heart failure. Norm’s e-prescrition for the new medication, my office note and the cardiologist’s documentation of the medication change happened quickly and in real-time.

One thing I don’t do with my cell phone is take incoming calls. I have my phone on “vibrate” and check for missed calls or messages between patient visits. But for straightening things out with pharmacists and colleagues, I wouldn’t want to be without my cell phone.