The Mouths of Gift Horses

Like many physicians, over the years I've received gifts from patients now and then. These sometimes have been occasioned by forces other than gratitude. When I was first in practice, I innocently inquired of a Mormon mother whether her faith permitted me to immunize her children. She gave me a copy of The Book of Mormon because she wanted me to comprehend clearly that, as she put it in her inscription, "Mormons immunize their children unless they don't." Point taken. Another early patient gave me a wheel of cheese. To this day I don't understand why -- but it was delicious.

There's frequently a deep subtext in the doctor-patient relationship, often expressed as a fault line where the tectonic plates of lay and medical culture collide.* This week three different families gave me a gift. Each illuminates a different part of how physicians, patients, and families struggle together over complex decisions at the end of life.

The first was a gift card for a local restaurant. The accompanying note by a grieving son thanked me for my patience in dealing with his mother and his siblings. The five children wrangled over every decision -- should we bring Mom home? should we find a nursing home? who'll take what shift caring for her? -- and it seemed that every day required a new negotiation and a new building of consensus. Sometimes I explained the same point to three different siblings in the same day, each explanation taking many minutes. It was a month before she was ready to leave the hospital and, as it turned out, go home for a short while before her relatively sudden death. As I thought about the gift, it occurred to me that the real message was: "We're sorry."

The second gift came from the wild-eyed, suspicious daughter described in my earlier post, "Code Status." This one was a necktie with a famous designer's label. The daughter told me, "I'm a deeply spiritual person, and I sense you are, too. I've had this tie for many years, just waiting for the right person to give it to. Now I have faith that you are that person." Being put on a pedestal always gives me vertigo. I thought perhaps this gift might mean "We have ultimate faith in you" or, worse yet, "You can do no wrong." I wondered out loud if I was permitted to accept such an expensive gift. (I am salaried by my hospital system.) The daughter replied, "Don't worry about it. I bought it in China, and it's a counterfeit." We'd just concluded working out an elaborate care plan for her mother that would include hospice enrollment a couple of days later. Naturally, the plan completely unraveled over the weekend when I was off call. So perhaps the message of this gift was: "Gotcha."

The last gift came from the daughter of an elderly woman I'll call Molly and who will be described in a forthcoming post called "Hugs and Kisses." As Molly finally lay dying peacefully and free of pain, consistent with her expressed desires but achieved only after a long struggle with her inner demons and with the system, her daughter asked me to choose an item from a collection of photographs she'd done. They were all beautiful nature scenes taken in the western United States. My selection was a sunset, the light shimmering on the ocean and framed by the dark silhouette of an evergreen tree. It seemed appropriate for the moment. We said our good-byes, and once again I learned that sometimes a gift means simply: "Thank you."

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*The clash between medical and lay cultures is expertly described in Hippocrates' Shadow: Secrets from the House of Medicine, by David H. Newman, M.D. This remarkable book should be required reading for every health professional, and for every person who's ever consulted a health professional.