Basic HTML Version
Healthcare Journal of NEW ORLEANS
I
NOV / DEC 2013
65
You always hated
taking tests.
Prepared or not, your
hands sweated when
faced with a test, and your stomach
felt shaky. Whatever you’d learned,
it flew from your head the second you
sat down.
Today, it’s the same in the hospital as it was in high school:
you hate taking tests. But what other way does your doctor have
of knowing what’s wrong with you? In the new book “One Doc-
tor”by Brendan Reilly, MD, you’ll see that moth-eatenmethods
may beat modern.
“New York doctors don’t work weekends.”
That’s what one of Brendan Reilly’s patients claimed, sur-
prised to see Reilly at her bedside on an early Saturdaymorning
at NewYork’s Presbyterian Hospital. He was there because he
believes that the doctor who “knows you best” is the one who
should assume the majority of the caregiving. That’s not the
way most medical centers work these days, but it’s the way he
prefers to practice medicine.
For Reilly, doing things the old-fashioned way is often better
than technology, when making a proper diagnosis. Machines,
he points out, canmiss the smallest of symptoms: a non-
dilated pupil, an errant reflex, a hidden blood clot, rare
bacteria that mimics something else.
“Diagnosing disease,” he says, “has
something to do with patterns.” Good
doctors – “grandmasters,”he calls them
– know how to recognize those patterns
without “wasteful, redundant, or ineffec-
tive” medical intercession. Such recog-
nition, near-intuition, and the ability to
deal with a day when “doctoring feels
like pinball” are talents he cultivates in
his residents and students.
Even so, there are times when a doc-
tor is stumped by amedical mystery that
requires rapt attention and sleuthing
skills. That’s when it’s mandatory to lis-
ten to a patient, the patients’ ailing body,
and one’s own subconscious, as well as
medical knowledge new and old. Such
mysteries may result in instinctual reac-
tion, and a cure. Other times, they might
end with the surety that it’s time to stop.
And on that, says Reilly, doctors “know about regret. But we
don’t talk about it. Ever.”
Broken up into thirds, “One Doctor” is amixed (medical) bag.
Author Brendan Reilly, MD starts his book in the wee hours
of a typical on-service day in a busy New York hospital, and
we’re treated to a whirlwind of intriguing medical cases, AHA!
moments, and solutions worthy of a Sherlockian novel. The end
of that long day, and the cases of his own parents, are where
Reilly wraps up.
I would have been more enthusiastic about this book, had
that been the sum of it.
No, instead, the middle third here is taken up by the story of
a couple that Reilly knew some 30 years ago, the care of which
still resonates in his career. That was interesting at first, but I
thought it became overly long.
And yet, I did enjoy this book, overall, and I think lovers of
medical dramas will, too. If that’s you, and you’re maybe will-
ing to skip bits that lose your interest, then “One Doctor” tests
out well.
n
Terri
Schlichenmeyer
is
the
Bookworm