Talking With Doctors

Talking with Doctorsspeaks so tellingly to the perils and promise of modern medicine that it will move readers to renewed reflection about just what it is we want, and can reasonably expect, from our doctors. Without any warning, in September 1999, David Newman was told he had a rare and life-threatening tumor in the base of his skull. At the time, he had three young children and was a psychotherapist in New York with patients of his own. In the compressed space of five weeks, he consulted with leading physicians and surgeons at four major medical centers. The doctors offered drastically differing opinions; several pronounced the tumor inoperable and voiced skepticism about the effectiveness of any nonsurgical treatment. Newman was advised to get his affairs in order. Talking with Doctorsis the story of Newman's efforts, at a time of great stress and even impending death, to wend his way through the dense thicket of medical consultations in search of a physician and a treatment that offered the possibility of survival. It is the story, especially, of the harrowing process of assessing conflicting "expert" opinions and, in so doing, of making sense of the priorities, personalities, and vulnerabilities of different doctors. Embedded within this larger story is Newman's description of his work as a psychotherapist during this time, as he and his patients together confronted the reality of his life-threatening illness and the possibility of his death. To the daunting task of evaluating the doctors, Newman brought the training, sensibility, and sensitivities of a psychotherapist. All too often, he found, the leading specialists to whom he was sent were strangers in the consulting room-and strangers who became stranger still, both cognitively and emotionally, when ambiguous findings pushed them to the outer limits of their training and experience. Newman writes poignantly of his sense of powerlessness and desperation, of the painstaking means by which he ascertained what could be known about his tumor, and of the fortuitous events that finally led him to life-saving help. Talking with Doctorsis a compelling, absorbing, unsettling story that touches a collective raw nerve about the experience of doctors and medical care when life-threatening illness leads us to subspecialists at major medical centers. and it is a dramatic rendering of major changes in the doctor-patient relationship that have occurred over the past three decades. Probing the nature of medical authority and the grounds of a trusting doctor-patient relationship, Newman illuminates with grace and power what it now means for a patient to participate in life-and-death medical decisions.Newman, David is the author of 'Talking With Doctors ' with ISBN 9780881634464 and ISBN 0881634468.