County, Member & Specialty News

Life, death & the in-between

It all started with a chest x-ray. Before the chest x-ray, I’d harbored some vague notions of invincibility. My mother and father-in-law both died young, which should have been enough to dissipate any illusions. Despite this, I was living my dream life in those days. I had married Daphne, my childhood sweetheart, and we were the parents of two beautiful children. I was in training to be a gastroenterologist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Things just seemed right. But Daphne had developed a persistent cough, so I ordered a chest x-ray for her as a precaution. That examination revealed another reality: A cancerous mass the size of a bowling ball filling her chest, encasing her aorta, and crushing her trachea. To make matters worse, I looked at the films myself, even before the radiologist. Daphne stood right behind me while I struggled to describe what I was seeing. I’ll be honest: When I first saw the tumor, I thought Daphne was going to die. And I could not tell her that. We held hands in silence that day on the way home, the terrible gravity of our new reality hanging unspoken between us. When the tears came at last, they came in a torrent so intense that we had to pull over to the edge of Highway 15-501. “The kids won’t remember me,” Daphne said. That blunt statement crushed me. The eventual diagnosis was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, advanced but eminently treatable. After six months of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy we had our lives back. A few years later, at age 42, Daphne was found to have breast cancer – a consequence of radiation therapy she had received for the lymphoma. But she had a bilateral mastectomy and survived that, too. I’m 58 years old now. Daphne and I have now lived long enough to see our children marry. We even have a granddaughter. As a physician, I have intimate experience with people at the extremes of their lives. Having witnessed both the beginning of life and the end of it, I have come to realize that there is the potential for profound beauty in what lies in between. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought me a fresh perspective. We’ve all had to contend with the “new normal” of social distancing, mask-wearing, and the very real potential risk of

Mark Murphy, M.D.

contracting COVID ourselves. I’ve had colleagues, friends, coworkers and relatives become infected with it. I’ve watched several COVID patients die, alone and isolated from their families. Our society has hit the pause button on many of the things that define the milestones in our lives, from weddings to funerals and everything in between. Today’s world has become a cavalcade of the strange, from riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes to comets, dust storms and plagues of locusts – creating a pervasive aura of impending apocalypse. But life goes on – adulterated, but persistent. And despite the stress of the pandemic, we should all take a moment or two to reflect upon what this all means. First of all, we are not immortal. At some point, we are all going to die. And that makes every second of our lives precious, every memory vital, and every experience something worth cherishing.

Second, we should all try to make a difference in the world – not for ourselves, but for others.

The late John Lewis once said, “If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.” Our lives should not be driven by selfishness, or by the base needs of material acquisition, but by the desire to do the right thing, driven by courage of our convictions.

Finally, we should all learn to appreciate the fundamental

power of love. Love is the most powerful of human emotions – and yet we all too frequently squander it, failing to appreciate how truly important it is until the people we love are gone forever. Recently, Daphne developed yet another dry cough. She didn’t feel ill, and she had no fever, but the cough persisted for weeks. Last week, Daphne got another chest x-ray. It was all clear. You see, age has its negatives: Our waistlines expand, our skin wrinkles, and our hair turns gray. But with age also comes wisdom – and with wisdom comes the ability to count your blessings while you have them. That’s the intrinsic beauty of the in-between. Count me among the blessed. You should count yourselves, as well. Dr. Murphy is a Savannah gastroenterologist, a longtime MAG member, and a former president of the Georgia Medical Society.

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