Grief Connects Us by Joseph D. Stern

Author:Joseph D. Stern
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Central Recovery Press, LLC
Published: 2021-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

SEAN FISCHER

About ten months after Victoria’s death, I flew back to California to visit Pat and my nephews. Sean Fischer, my sister’s hematologist-oncologist at Saint John’s Medical Center, graciously agreed to meet with me.

I was eager to talk with Dr. Fischer and learn how it had been for him to care for Victoria. I wondered if he had found communication with her a challenge, what his relationship with her had been like, and how he managed the grief of losing a patient. Many doctors would refuse to meet with a deceased patient’s family members. They would choose to avoid a potentially angry confrontation with grieving family, especially if there was the perception of wrong, in which case they would be afraid to do so (or would have been advised by their attorney not to meet). Often, they might wish to avoid violating the patient’s confidentiality and refuse on that basis. Indeed, I had approached both Drs. Fischer and O’Donnell, but gave up trying to reach Dr. O’Donnell after many unanswered phone calls and emails explaining the nature of my request. I had always had a closer connection with Dr. Fischer than with Dr. O’Donnell, and he immediately understood what I was trying to accomplish with this book.

When I reread the transcript of my conversation with Sean, I discovered that I had spoken far more in this interview than in any of the others. Ostensibly, I had gone to his office to do research for this book but, in reality, the meeting became an experience of comfort and an expression of grief. None of the other interviews were with people who had known my sister. Sean had known her personally; indeed, he had discussed with her exactly the matters that I had hoped to broach, but could not: her perception of her mortality, the reality that her treatment was failing, and the imminence of her death.

Sean had known her from the outset, from before her diagnosis, and knew the day he had received the phone call from the pathologist telling him the bleak cytogenetic test results of her leukemia that she was unlikely to survive this illness. I wanted to understand how he had conveyed those results, how he had managed the tension that I had found so excruciating. I knew that he cared about Victoria—that much had been clear from earlier conversations.

This was the first, and only time, we met, although we had spoken many times before on the telephone and exchanged multiple text messages. I discovered that Sean and I both come from the DC area. He grew up in the Maryland suburbs and attended the University of Maryland, then went to Georgetown University, where he did a hematology-oncology fellowship. He got married, had kids, and moved to Los Angeles in 2005. For the past ten years, he has been in a general hematology-oncology practice with a primary focus on hematologic cancers. He also treats solid tumors, like lung cancer. Sean and his partners help cover each other’s practices. He has been focused on bone marrow disease since he came out of training.

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