Trust and medicine
For many years after we moved from Brooklyn to Carmel, Garrett Vink, MD was our doctor. He was also the school doctor, a member of the Rotary Club, someone you would meet on Main Street, at Wilcox Pharmacy or the IGA.
He made house calls. I can clearly remember him being at our house at 2:30 a.m. to see my Dad who had heart trouble or on another occasion to treat my grandmother who had congestive heart failure.
My Mom would make tea and he would sit for a minute or two after his ministrations to whomever was ill, drink the tea, eat a cookie or two and chat.
His office was in his house, a large rangy Victorian that was on the left side of Rt. 52 going south into the village.
Office hours were generally from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. if he wasn’t out on a call. There were no such things as appointments. You arrived and waited your turn. His nurse was his wife Betty. Everyone knew everyone.
It wasn’t unusual to get a congratulatory card when you did something special in school, when you graduated. If he wasn’t otherwise occupied, he might be at Saturday football games or Friday night basketball.
Dr. Vink celebrated once a year with an enormous Strawberry Festival in his yard to which everyone was invited and most showed up.
With Dr. Vink, you felt known, felt safe, cared for. There was a trust that may have been the secret medicine that made you well.
Trust is that part of medicine that is as much art as it is science.
On Jan. 28, 2019 another great practitioner of the art of medicine retired.
I remember our first meeting. It was the “getting to know you” appointment.
I had just finished six months of treatment for breast cancer during which my long time family doctor retired. I needed a new doctor, or, as the kind of doctor I was looking for is now called, a primary care provider.
I wasn’t young any more. I had looked into the eye of the beast and survived, but becoming a patient of a new doctor was daunting.
Dr. Robert T. Friedman came highly recommended.
Who isn’t a bit nervous about meeting a new doctor? I certainly was.
There is an intimacy, sometimes more than you have with your closest friends and family, that the physician-patient relationship demands. You cannot lie to you doctor either by omission or commission if you want good results. No dissembling, no coverups are allowed. It is a powerful relationship if it is to work on your behalf.
He was, as he always was, prompt. We chatted and he asked me, “What is your greatest concern today?”
Being the hypochondriac that I tend to be with a list of problems as long as my arm, I was relieved that I only had to mention one.
I looked him straight in the eye and told him that I was concerned about my hair not growing back. I had finished chemotherapy in November and it was now March. I was still bald.
He replied, “Your hair will grow back.”
He then bent over, pointed to the top of his head and said, “This won’t.”
It was perfect. Here was a physician who shared his humanity with me, who acknowledged both of our frailties.
I had my new doctor.
And for 14 years, I have had the good fortune to be the recipient of both the art and science of medicine practiced by a physician who comes the closest to that kind of doctor who sees his patients as individuals within a community, a culture, a lifestyle and not as a carrier of an illness.
When he moved his office from Fayetteville to Chittenango, I followed, willing to make that long drive because I knew that I would receive the best care.
No, there were no Strawberry Festivals and I didn’t meet Dr. Robert T. Friedman on Main Street in Marcellus, but the kind of medicine he practiced incorporated the idea that his patients were more than the sum of their parts, that illness affects and is affected by the everyday acts of living.
This past year has been a challenge for me, trying to regain something of normalcy after a rather problematic outcome from hip replacement surgery. It has been slow going and sometimes very difficult for me particularly with mobility. After a very difficult visit still using a walker last April, he told me that he could come to me.
He made a house call. Yes, a house call. Put that up on the chalk board for emphasis.
If I harken back to that first appointment, I also remember noting that he wore polished wing tip shoes.
Now, there are tells that I use to evaluate people. Shoes are one of them. I remember thinking that this doctor cares about details.
I was right.
So, to my former but not forgotten primary care provider, Robert T. Friedman MD. Thank you.
I and I am sure that your many devoted patients wish you a joyous retirement, chasing grandchildren, reading books and working on your summer camp and whatever else unfolds.
My hair, by the way, did grow back. But like everything else…less.
