Word: frimmer
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Just as the title doctor becomes part of a physician's name, so the role becomes part of his identity. Advanced esophageal cancer, diagnosed three years ago, forced oncologist Dan Frimmer to retire at age 58. The cancer doctor had become a cancer patient, but 25 years of medical practice prevented him from viewing himself as anything but a healer. "Of what value am I to people now?" he asked himself after his first round of chemotherapy and radiation, then answered his own question: "I could advise people from a different point of view--from the other side...
...Frimmer's medical expertise enabled him to translate his personal experience as a terminally ill patient into advice to doctors. He began lecturing health professionals at hospitals near his suburban home outside New York City. "There has to be more time given to patients," he said. "Doctors should have a knowledge of how difficult the tests are for patients. They should understand what it feels like to do a CAT scan and have diarrhea in the middle of the test." Most important: "Let patients do the talking. Learn to listen. Doctors give answers without listening to the questions...
...listened to him because he was a physician. We doctors somehow feel that the 'M.D.' protects us. It hit us that doctors die too," says Dr. Lauren Shaiova, who treated Frimmer for pain and arranged to have him speak at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. Frimmer was his own best end-of-life student. He filled out an advance directive, updated his will, organized his finances, assigned power of attorney, sold off some of his photographic equipment--and allowed his wife Debbie to do something he'd previously resisted: "I don't like animals, but when...