Introduction:
More Pages Off the Doctor's Pad
by Harold C. Klein, M.D.
In 1994, before the publication of Dr. Klein's first book, Pages off the
Doctor's Pad, he had begun to write its sequel.
There were stories still left to tell, thoughts still left to share,
values that he honored and needed to transmit. Intent on having it all
recorded in print was what propelled him
to complete his "Pages" during the terminal weeks of his life. Pecking away at
the computer at odd hours became his most consuming distraction and his most potent
pain medication.
To insure the fruition of his final project, he asked for my promise to
edit, polish and publish his work posthumously. Fulfilling that promise has
become my therapy, my Holy Grail, my
mission of love -- a difficult solo effort after so many years of operating as a team.
In my surrogate role, I have separated the book into two
parts because of the disparity
in the length of its chapters. Part One is a compilation of relatively brief
episodes dealing with the
vagaries and verities of the belly dancer, the little tailor and the big business mogul,
the successful
doctor and the doctors who lost their way. Part Two is more of a novelette, a powerful
narrative
covering decades of its protagonists' lives, as incredible as they are intriguing. Be
it vignette or saga, every chapter is a true story: only the identities of
its characters are disguised.
To perpetuate my husband's ideas and ideals, I borrow his words to introduce
More Pages off the Doctor's Pad.
"I chose the practice of internal medicine because it encompasses more
than tagging
names to symptoms, applying the proper poultice or prescribing the proper pill;
because it doesn't
particularize any one area or organ; because it is alert to the patient as
a human entity within an
ailing body, but apart from its properties.
"In consonance with that charge, as a committed internist, I have tried
to be sensitive to
the fears, foibles, frailties and fantasies that are silently buried beneath
the physical complaints, so
voluble in their cries for help.
"It has always fascinated me how -- just as patients disrobe into examining gowns
without hesitation -- so do they shed their facades, and hang them on the hooks
with their clothes. Be it their respect for medical knowledge and expertise,
or the mystique that
has always seemed to deify the profession, people do bare themselves to their doctors.
And in this communication there are family histories -- some relevant to their aches
and pains, some not. Some trickle out as confidences and some gush as confessions,
but almost all illumine the patient's
concerns so clearly that it may only take an understanding ear and a guiding
hand to reassure and lead the troubled or the ill back to health."
Dr. Klein was an internist who knew his patients inside and out. And they,
in turn, felt a close bond with him. So many, in person and by letter,
have expressed the depth of their loss in his death.
They've told me that -- aside from their appreciation of his honest and devoted
medical attentions -- there always were his little considerations that were so comforting:
his returning phone calls promptly, calling them when he thought they needed that
extra boost of reassurance, being at the hospital to hold their hand before they
were carted to surgery.
When they came for an office appointment, they weren't whisked directly into an
examining room to undress and wait -- with the usually inaccurate sop -- "The Doctor
will be with you shortly." Instead, they would be ushered into the doctor's more private
quarters to unburden their concerns, or just to chat.
"Dr. Klein was sensitive enough," one patient said, "to realize how anxiety
is eased when a patient can talk face-to-face and fully clothed, rather than
prone and half nude, looking up from a cold, hard slab of a table."
For the time and understanding he so lavishly dispensed, Dr. Klein
found his reward in the satisfaction and happiness of having made humanity the
priority of his fifty-six years in medical practice.
Sir William Osler, in Aequanimitas and Other Addresses,
states: "Amid all the changes and chances of twenty-five centuries, the medical
profession has never lacked men who have lived up to the Greek Ideals."
Harold C. Klein M.D. surely should be counted one of them.
Miriam Klein
Chapter 1.
About the Author.
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