SECOND OPINION

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is an amazing place. My first understanding of it was as a General Surgery Resident, when I was doing a rotation at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston (another amazing place). I was tagging along with a GI Surgical Oncologist named Doug Evans. Never, I thought, have I met a surgeon so well read, so in command of the literature…and not just the way he pushed it around a copy machine…he actually knew what to copy! Anyway, he used to always talk about the guys at Memorial, and their latest work like I would talk about the Yankees and their latest homestand – far away, and heroic.

As a Colorectal Surgery Fellow I cultivated my own command of specialist literature, and found that more and more of the studies that I was reading were coming out of MSKCC. I followed the career of another Doug, Doug Wong as he continued his groundbreaking work in ultrasound staging of rectal cancers and minimally invasive treatment of early staged rectal cancer from Minnesota to New York at, you guessed it, Memorial.

As a young attending surgeon joining a practice on Long Island, I didn’t feel any closer to MSKCC than during my years in training, until my uncle got colon cancer. Suddenly everything I had ever learned and anyone I had ever known took on immediate importance. If I couldn’t take care of him myself…where would be the best place for him to be treated? I knew the answer was Sloan Kettering. I gave him Doug Wong’s name, but they couldn’t get an appointment with him for weeks. We put our trust instead in a young surgeon named Martin Weiser. He took great care of my uncle, did a laparoscopic sigmoid colon resection, and had him home and recovering in 4 days.

Almost a year later, I ran into Dr. Weiser at a course we were both attending on Pelvic Floor Physiology. I thanked him again for taking care of my uncle. He confided that my uncle underwent one of the first laparoscopic colon cancer surgeries performed at Memorial and he had such a great outcome they put his picture and his case on the cover of the hospital’s annual report!

I have since sent many patients of my own to Sloan Kettering for second opinions, and some of my most challenging cases, like very advanced or recurrent cancers, that I thought would be best cared for at a tertiary care center with a multidisciplinary approach I have sent to Dr. Weiser.

But never would I have imagined I would be referring myself there.

For weeks I’ve been rolling this diagnosis of cervical cancer around in my gourd. Looking at the slides with the pathologist, discussing it with colleagues, family, friends, and my doctors. I’d done the research, heard the recommendations, considered my options. Who am I now to take my little early stage, microscopically invasive, and completely curable cancer to the Mecca…to Memorial.

Then again, and my friend Nance convinced me of this, how blessed am I to live so close to such a quality institution? A reputable Cancer Center where the best minds care for cancer patients every day. A place where I have sent my own patients, my own family. How could I not take advantage of such a resource? Why not?

My husband said as he met me at the 3rd floor registration area, “People must have to take a personality test to work here…” It did seem so, everyone, from the doorman to the front desk to the registrars, the aides, the nurses, so calm, so welcoming, so warm.

And there, around me, I saw people, all ages, all stages, all different types of cancer, most with help, some alone. And strangely, it made me feel…OK. It made me finally understand how very, very fortunate I am. To have my husband beside me, someone to practice being old with, my beautiful children, our loving families, my friends, a rewarding career, and this cancer…thank God they found it early!