Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | April 10, 2005 | | Summary | A personal experience/ A must see movie | Content
 | I recently had a chance to see the Doctor again, albeit with different eyes. The basic story line regards a cardiovascular surgeon, technically brillant but bereft of human touch. Indeed, initially, he seems somewhat proud of his aloof stance, almost trying to make it into an advantage. He relates to his patients and residents as I have seen many physicians do. Truthfully, the more awful the diagnosis, the more at arms length many physicians hold the situation. Physicians routinely mention that a patient might die, but it's rarely really true and gets mentioned as a matter of fact. When death is really a possibility, it is much harder to say that you might die. Dr McKee comes face to face with this when he becomes the patient, diagnosed with a malignant laryngeal tumor he faces the rigors of radiation treatment and when this fails surgery. He finds that the standoffish posture he had always adopted no longer worked, and the impersonal surgeon he has no longer can do all the things he needs done, both surgically and emotionally.
I had to come face to face with some of these issues when I had to have heart surgery. Truthfully, the hospitals involved did treat me with some preference, but the fears and risks were the same. I learned first hand about the reticence of surgeons to talk about a real risk of death. My surgeon left a blank consent for me to sign. I dutifully filled out the consent including risks and benefits, like a good resident. I missed the chance to look him in the eye and tell him that I trusted him with my life, all the while realizing that it would have made him uncomfortable.... it always makes me uncomfortable. See, while we all realize that what we do carries significant risks, surgeons in the US are very well trained and do very good work. We all tend to assume that things will go very well; and they so often do that we tend to forget that they might not. We become uncomfortable when we realize that just those things are what patients are focused on, just those chances that things might not go well.
Everybody needs the human touch. Even when they seem not to want it.
See the movie. There are times that it's uncomfortable, but that's how it is sometimes, isn't it? |
| Rating | | | Date | March 18, 2005 | | Summary | A movie for every doctor and nurse to see | Content
| This was a good movie for several reasons. It was entertaining and it well paced, not to fast to catch all the nuances but not poking along either. It had redeeming value with several lessons, i.e,. developing better attitudes toward patients, to spend more time with family, be more serious about the preciousness of life. I was glad to see William Hurt in a much better character than in Tuck Everlasting. He did an excellent job in transition of character. I thought it was well balanced in that the movie was not 'doctor or hospital bashing' but showing up the coldness and frivilous attitudes sometimes shown toward patients. I can appreciate this having worked in a medical center for 9 years and having been a patient for major surgery myself but in my case having several sweethearts for nurses (except for one). Some of us have also had doctor like Leslie Abbot: "Drop your pants so I can check your prostate!" June Ellis played by Elizabeth Perkins was the heart of the story. It was her character that brought about the change in a doctor's heart. Recommended for everyone but especially for health care workers. Review was of a DVD. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 06, 2005 | | Summary | A good film on the importance of being actual people | Content
| This movie was made from a book by a doctor who told his own story about becoming ill and learning about the medical profession and its dehumanizing qualities by becoming a patient. It caused quite a stir at the time and this movie was quite popular when it came out. William Hurt plays the successful, brilliant, but cold heart surgeon, Dr. Jack MacKee. He and his beautiful wife, Anne (played so well by Christine Lahti), live a materially comfortable but emotionally detached existence with their son, Nicky.
Dr. Jack has been ignoring a raspy throat and cough until he coughs up blood. Soon, he is diagnosed with a tumor on one of his vocal cords. He becomes the patient of Dr. Leslie Abbott who is even colder than him, she is talented but sees only problems to fix, the person exists to her only as something to bring her the illness to cure. The doctors in this film are largely all of the same stripe. They are supreme problem solvers who avoid any involvement with the people they are treating. The one exception, and an object of ridicule of the other doctors is Dr. Eli Blumfield (portrayed very nicely by Adam Arkin).
As a patient, the unhuman sterility of the hospital and its policies become clear to Dr. Jack as he is treated as a container for the problem the doctors are to fix. One of the things all patients do is wait, and then wait, and then wait some more. While he is thus engaged in waiting helplessly for treatment he meets another patient, June Ellis (heroically played by Elizabeth Perkins). She is dying of a grade IV glioblastoma (a type of brain tumor). One of her complaints is that they should have found her tumor sooner. At first, Dr. Jack does the "team" thing by refusing to admit that they should have and giving her false hope with a lie about a patient in a similar condition who is now a grandfather.
As an aside, one of my family members died of a grade IV glioblastoma. It doesn't matter when they diagnose the patient. The treatments they offer are all about stalling death, not preventing it. In nearly all cases, the patient will die within a year. June's lack of functional deficit and lack of a surgical scar on her scalp are all dramatic license to help keep June completely sympathetic (gruesome is not sympathetic). Her head is shaved, but radiation treatment does not leave the scalp with a neatly shaved look. The hair falls out unevenly, and the high does of radiation often leaves the skin reddened and raw from being burned. There is no reason to hold back on the radiation dose, since it was all a Hail Mary kind of treatment. I hope the treatments have gotten better since 1999 and that someday real hope can be offered those afflicted with this miserable condition. The one great lesson life offers during this time is how little is needed to find life precious. We spend so much time putting conditions on our happiness that we cheat ourselves of so much. This kind of illness takes away the ability to even have good days and eventually even good hours. Good moments become wonderful and intensely full of life. Something as simple as a chicken salad sandwich and lemon poppyseed cake with a can of Vernors can provide an exquisitely memorable moment. The movie captures this to a degree, but not as powerfully as it can happen in real life.
Anyway, June becomes the means to Dr. Jack finding his humanity and becoming a better person and doctor. It is nice that the screenplay has Dr. Jack finding his way in a very uneven and often frustrating way. The movie ends with a kind of dramatic gag that rewards the audience for following an often grim story all the way through.
Good movie, good notes for all people - including medical professionals - to take about the importance of treating those with whom we interact on a daily basis as real people rather than as an impersonal piece of business. |
| Rating | | | Date | October 19, 2004 | | Summary | One of my favorites... | Content
| This movie is loosely based on the book "Taste Of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor is the Patient" by Edward Rosenbaum, M.D. It is about a physician who although he has been providing health care for years, he knows little about the caring part. That is until he becomes the patient, a cancer patient. The story that follows is wonderfully acted by William Hurt, who is joined by an equally wonderful cast. If you have ever been the patient, or better yet, the provider, this movie is for you. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 07, 2004 | | Summary | THE MOVIE THAT KILLED M.A.S.H. | Content
| The Doctor was another of those excellent, well-made 1990-91 releases pre-empted by laser-guided bombs and missiles of the 1990 Gulf War and forced into the video occult. But that's not stopped it from a second chance via DVD where it may get well-deserved recognition and revenues for each actor and crew's excellent contributions.
The cast drove home messages that health care professionals need take a good look at "because one day you'll be sick to" ... So "physician, heal thyself" and thereby prepare to heal others all the way down to your bedside manners. The Word is eventually sent via Jack McKee and partner whose cavalier professionalism ("Get in, cut it out and couldn't care less!") is callously unsuited to genuine warmth patients need communicated to them. And then there's the insurance companies who, like them, run on "stats" and "the bottom line" to coldly determine who lives and dies on the medical production line.
You don't know what it's like until you hear those 3 words "You've got cancer"; they'll floor you -especially if you're a physician who knows the realities of catastrophic illness. So "a taste of my own medicine" (subtitle to book movie is based on) engages McKee when he's told that. I've walked hospital hallways like McKee on the way to radiation therapy and sat with the terminally ill, knowing I'd likely survive (Or would I?) and that others were terminal, and encountered my own death watch. The disingenuous reassurance McKee gave others is sheer hypocrisy and his facetious talk of golf antagonizes "the herd," whom he'd felt beneath his ivory tower profession and HIS herd of incompetents. But now, his relation with a dying patient, whom he actually befriends, turns him inward and he admits his and the profession's shortcomings - then he falls out of love with himself - all too late to save her but soon enough to save himself and his family from the same callousness engulfing all but a few.
It sends a strong message to those who profit from medicine at the deadliest expense to others whom it's supposed to save! My only complaint is that Amazon.com hasn't mailed me my DVD of it yet. How long will it take? |
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