A Country Doctor Writes:

Theresa arrived in a cloud of noise and commotion.

She had called after four o’clock the day before, but I hadn’t noticed the new message in my electronic inbox before I left the clinic.

Her almost brand new alprazolam bottle and her pain pills were missing, and Theresa was reeling. As she walked down the hall to the exam room, I heard her explain to Autumn how she had been to Walmart and a couple of other stores, slinging her big handbag over her shoulder, opening it to pull out her wallet, stuff receipts and her reading glasses away and fumble for her asthma inhaler.

In my exam room she repeated her story and demonstrated how she had held the bag open, pulled things out of it and then put them back in, and then realizing that her two pill bottles were missing. She proceeded to also show me how she rummaged around for the pill bottles and even emptied the large, brown bag with its purple lining.

In a loud voice and with oversized gestures, she replayed every conversation she had had about her missing pill bottles with store clerks, her girlfriend and her pharmacist in the last thirty six hours.

I sighed. Theresa had a small amount of pain pills on hand, which she could safely go without, but she was one of those patients who had seemed stable and truly helped by her long-term alprazolam. This was endorsed for selected patients at the psychopharmacology courses I had attended in Boston many years ago, but it has now fallen out of fashion.

“Well, Theresa, you know these controlled substance agreements you’ve had to sign always say that lost or stolen medications will not be replaced”, I said.

“But this has never happened to me before.” Her voice was as shaky as her large, bony hands. “I’ve been on alprazolam for years, what happens if I stop it suddenly? I took my last pill last night, one I had saved in my nightstand.”

“You’re right. Stopping alprazolam suddenly can actually be risky”, I agreed. “Here’s what I can do: I can give you half your usual dose, in weekly refills that you will have to pay for yourself, and I’ll see you back every Wednesday until your next regular prescription is due. Then we can assess how you’re doing.”

“Okay.”

I entered the new dose in the computer and clicked with my trackball on the “print” button. I doubted that Theresa was trying to scam me with diversion or addiction, but rules were rules. Obviously, I didn’t want risk withdrawal seizures.

Later that night I thought about Theresa again. I couldn’t completely ignore a slight shade of doubt. Was she becoming addicted or irresponsible with her medication? A mental black hole lay open but I resisted falling into it.

The next day, I heard Theresa’s resonant voice again, talking with Autumn somewhere down the hall. A short while later, Autumn appeared at my door. In her hand she held three pill bottles.

“Remember Theresa’s missing pill bottles?”

Without waiting for my answer, she continued:

“Well she was just here with that big handbag of hers. She lost her cell phone last night, so she emptied out her whole bag again and found a five inch hole in the lining. There, between the lining and the outer shell, was her cell phone, her two pill bottles and one of her spare pairs of reading glasses!”

The black hole was real, I thought, not in my mind, but in that big handbag of hers.

“I don’t know why Dr Brown took my license away”, the 92-year old man said. He was visibly shaking with anger. “I’ve been driving since I was a young boy, and I could find my way to California without a map”.

My associate, Dr. Wilford Brown, had sent in a State Driver Profile a few months ago, and made reference to an attached letter by a family member, which in his words would be “very damning, if true”. Apparently, the Department of Motor Vehicles had thought so too, as the elderly man explained their action through clenched jaws.

“I called them up, and they said that if you wrote to them, they would give me my license back”.

“They did, huh…” I said, while mousing and clicking my way back and forth in the documents section of the electronic medical record in search of the damning letter. I could not find it.

“How could Dr. Brown say that I’m not a good driver? What does he know about that?” The man raised his trembling hand and pointed in the general direction of Dr. Brown’s office.

“He says I have memory problems. My memory is excellent. I remember everything!”

I looked at his problem list, where “Dementia” was the first diagnosis.

“Maybe someone contacted the DMV about your driving”, I said cautiously, thinking I wouldn’t want to cause conflict or mistrust in the family by revealing everything I knew about the letter. “Maybe someone didn’t like the way you drive”, I tried, wondering if perhaps the missing letter might have been inaccurate or exaggerated.

I looked at his birth date on the computer screen and did a quick search in my memory bank about old cars.

They were still making Model T Fords when he was a little boy. Maybe he even learned to drive in one. I pictured traffic around here in those days, and my mind suddenly switched to the tourist traffic on Route One every summer weekend.

“My memory is excellent”, Mr. Gordon said again.

“Well, it’s not just memory, it’s eyesight, hearing, reaction time, judgement and reflexes”, I started.

“I am a very careful driver”, he interrupted. “When I come to an intersection, I stop, even if the light is green, and I look both ways before I go”.

As in a movie flashback, I saw him as a young boy, sitting next to his father, honking a rubber and brass horn and proudly maneuvering a Model T on an empty country road, surrounded only by cow pastures and potato fields.

“Well, Mr. Gordon”, I began. I knew what I had to do.

Earnest Tipp was very overdue for his blood pressure follow-up. Almost a year and a half overdue, as a matter of fact. The last few times I had refilled his medications, I had added “needs follow up” to the signum on his scripts.

The other day I finally saw him in my schedule. I thought about him all morning. A tall, muscular 90-year old widower with an appetite for golf and fine food, he always exuded contentment and gratitude over his good health.

After Autumn had checked him in, I looked at his vital signs screen. His weight was stable and his blood pressure was still well controlled.

“He’ll tell you why he didn’t come back sooner”, she said. “And he’s pretty smug about it, because you had joked with him about staying away from doctors!”

I remembered. Somehow, the topic of health screenings and medicalizing common ailments had come up and I had jokingly, as I often do, said “and stay away from doctors“.

As I entered the exam room, Earnest told the story of how he had taken my advise seriously and stayed away from all doctors, including me.

It didn’t take long to establish that Earnest seemed to be in good health, and, at age 90, how you seem to be is generally all that matters. No screening tests are indicated at that age, even whether and how to treat many diseases and risk factors for disease is usually controversial in that age group.

I remember the nephrologist I send my toughest hypertension patients to sometimes points out how little we actually know about treating people over 80 years old. That is even more true when it comes to 90-year-olds.

The other thing I remembered about my previous visit with Earnest was how he had told me he was about to have lunch with his prom date from seventy years ago. I asked him if he was still seeing her.

“Yes, we see each other almost every week”, he smiled.

I renewed his prescriptions and asked him to come back in a year. “Keep your good diet, play lots of golf this summer, enjoy your prom date…”

“And stay away from doctors”, he interrupted.

“Yes, by all means”, I answered. He stood up and offered a firm handshake. I have nothing to teach this man, I thought to myself.

I see some odd things in my clinic. One recent diagnostic dilemma was a man in his late fifties with shortness of breath.

He had been born with a Ventricular Septal Defect and had undergone surgery for this in his infancy. During his lifetime, he had seldom gone to doctors, and always thought he was in fairly good health, maybe just of a weak constitution. A smoker since age 13, he had a morning cough and got a little winded running up and down the basement stairs or shoveling snow in the winter.

A while ago he came to see me because he felt he was getting more short of breath over the winter. On exam, his vital signs were normal and his oxygen saturation was 97%. He had a systolic heart murmur and his breath sounds were diminished in his entire left lung. I didn’t see any swelling of his legs and his neck veins were not distended when he laid down flat on my exam table. His EKG was normal.

I ordered a chest X-ray and some basic blood work. His X-ray report said his left lung looked normal but his mediastinum was shifted a little to the left. His heart was not enlarged. Routine labs were normal.

The day he came in to follow up on his testing he looked ashen. He had suddenly become much more short of breath the day before, just brushing snow off his car. He had had some vague chest pressure that lasted ten or fifteen minutes.

His physical exam and repeat EKG were essentially unchanged; perhaps he had even weaker breath sounds in his left lung. This time his oxygen saturation was only 90%.

I ordered a chest CT with contrast for later the same day and also put in for a chemical stress test and an echocardiogram.

A few hours later, one of the radiologists called me. The man’s IV had infiltrated and most of the contrast ended up in the subcutaneous tissues of his right arm. His Pulmonary Embolism protocol CT scan would have to be postponed.

“Ok, have him stop by the office on his way home”, I said.

I gave him samples of one of the new anticoagulant medications that just got approved for initial treatment of blood clots in the lung and gave him a lot of detailed instructions.

Over the next two weeks, I received a normal stress test and an echocardiogram report that said something about decreased flow across the pulmonic valve. I wasn’t sure what to make of that in the context of my working diagnosis of one or multiple pulmonary emboli, and called radiology to please get the chest CT rescheduled.

Finally, this Monday, he had his CT scan done. The chief if radiology called me immediately after the study.

“Your Mr. Faulkner, he doesn’t have a PE, but he has agenesis of his left pulmonary artery.”

I sat back in my chair. I’d never heard of this condition. All his life, I thought, his underdeveloped left lung has been without functioning blood supply, and that’s why his mediastinum was shifted to the left and his breath sounds were so diminished. Finally, all this caught up with him, and he ended up in my clinic one day.

I did an Internet search for pulmonary artery agenesis. It is extremely rare, and usually diagnosed earlier in life. Some cases are diagnosed after an incidental abnormal routine chest X-ray. Symptoms are shortness of breath and productive cough or recurrent respiratory infections, all common concerns among middle aged smokers in this part of the country during the winter months.

I saw him back to explain what I had found, stopped his blood thinner and told him I wanted him to see a cardiologist at Cityside Hospital. He wasn’t so sure he wanted to travel that far, but said he’d think about it.

As a rural frontline primary care doc, you just never know what’s going to walk through your door.