Don't Fist Bump Me. My Mom Is Dying.

Don’t Fist Bump Me. My Mom Is Dying.

Maggie Conner

Throughout medical school, I have watched many physicians deliver poor prognoses to patients. Some do it very tactfully, with grace and compassion. Some stumble through it, making an awful situation even more unpleasant. The worst I have witnessed was not when I was watching, but receiving—when an oncologist told my mother she had terminal cancer.

My mom was a lovely, healthy 58 year old who had no medical problems and did Zumba regularly. One evening, she had chest pain and shortness of breath. A CT scan in the emergency room came back with shocking results. She had multiple blood clots in her lungs and a four-inch tumor on the tail of her pancreas, in addition to the numerous (i.e., too many to count) smaller tumors in her liver.

This prompted a slew of tests, but her doctors continued to reassure us that we wouldn’t have any definitive news about her prognosis until the results of her tumor biopsy came back.

After a week of painful anticipation and imagining the worst, we we recalled into the office to discuss the results.

My mother was the youngest patient in the dingy oncology waiting room by at least twenty years. Bland elevator music played in the background. I caught a whiff of the distinct smell of vomit. I realized the trashcan next tome was the culprit and quietly transferred it to the other side of the room. We waited in this purgatory for what seemed like hours.

Finally, we were taken to a room. More waiting. My mother perched on the exam table, the paper under her crinkling every so often when she shifted. I examined the wall of obscenely brightly colored pamphlets advertising cancer drugs.

A nurse walked in. “What have you been told?” she asked. “Nothing!” we almost yelled, our tone clipped with frustration. She pulled up my mother’s chart on the computer and clicked around for what felt like an eternity. She turned to us, avoiding eye contact, her voice flat.

“It says here that you have Stage 4 Exocrine Pancreatic cancer.”

We slumped deep into our seats. I stared at the scuffed linoleum floor, tears blurring my eyes, wondering how this could possibly be our reality. I pulled out my phone and googled “exocrine pancreatic cancer” just to triplecheck what this meant. I had extensively researched the difference between exocrine and endocrine pancreatic cancer in the days prior, so I already knew exocrine was a death sentence. But I was so confused upon actually hearing the words out loud. Google confirmed that this was, in fact, the worst news we could get.

“What does this mean?” my father asked. The woman was already walking toward the door. “The doctor will explain,” she said as she slipped out.

Another period of waiting. My mom looked so small and pale. My heart ached for her. I brushed my tears away periodically. The clock on the wall ticked. I remember thinking to myself, “If hell exists, this must be what it’s like.”

None of us spoke until the oncologist entered fifteen minutes later. “Hello!” He greeted us with a jarring cheerfulness. Could he not read the room? Didn’t he know our world was on fire?

My father stood to shake his hand. “I don’t shake hands, I fist bump!” the doctor chirped. My dad, still in shock from the biopsy results, awkwardly patted his fist. The man then had the audacity to fist bump my mother. I felt nauseous.

He uttered a quick, insincere apology for my mother’s diagnosis.

“How long does she have to live? Should we do chemotherapy?” I asked. The oncologist held up his hands as if these were outrageous questions. “Woah hold on now, I don’t even have her scans, we don’t know if the cancer is in her lungs or not.”

I stared at him in disbelief. I had spent hours on the phone coordinating the transfer of my mom’s medical records and scans so that we would have all the information for this appointment. I confirmed their receipt multiple times.

Anger boiled up from the pit of my stomach into my chest. “The scans are in her chart and the radiologist didn’t see any pulmonary metastases!” My mother had come to this appointment just to receive the news she was dying, and this man hadn’t even bothered to read her chart?

He scrolled through my mother’s scans and turned back to us. “Yes, there are no metastases in her lungs.” He then went on to tell us that without treatment, my mom would live only six to eight months. If we decided on treatment, it could “maybe” add a few months. He told us he was sorry about my mom’s diagnosis and wished us luck as he stood up and walked out of the room.

Where was he going? He had spent all of seven minutes with us. The door closed behind him, and the nurse entered and began her wrap-up spiel. I realized the oncologist did not intend to come back.

My rage erupted. “Please tell him to come back here!” The nurse stopped, widened her eyes, and nodded.

The oncologist skulked back into the room. We asked about treatment regimens and the pros and cons of chemotherapy. With every question, he huffed slightly, as if it were a monumental waste of his time to be here discussing this with us. I finally extracted all the information I could from him, and the visit was over.

We shuffled out of the clinic in a daze. In the elevator, my mom began to cry. My father pulled her into his arms. I looked away, wanting desperately for this to all be a mistake.

Years later, I still get unwelcome flashbacks of the oncologist’s behavior. My family needed his undivided time and attention to understand my mother’s diagnosis, rather than a few minutes of desensitized treatment. We needed to be cared for. We needed empathy. We did not need a fist bump.

-Maggie Conner is a fourth-year medical student in the UNC School of Medicine from Columbus, NC.-