Altruism’s death kneel

My father & grandfather were both physicians. During a morning of the summer of 1978, we were all sitting about the fire pit that's nested upon a granite bluff that juts out into a small lake in the boreal forest of the Haliburton Highlands. A Group of Seven view worthy of an oil-on-canvas work of art , perhaps? The reminiscent conversation touched on hunting, fishing, the homestead farm, Pierre Elliot Trudeau versus Joe Clarke and science, all of which I enjoyed in silence. Eventually Dad brought me into the discussion by asking "What do you want to be when you grow up boy?"

 "A doctor like the two of you." I replied.  From that nidus,  the two raconteurs began to fondly swap tales about their days at medical school, both attending Queen's University in the Limestone City;

Grandpa in the early phase of the roaring 20's and Dad in the Golden Age of the late 50's.

After the stories dried up, Grandpa turned to me and said "If you become a doctor know this, when patients comes to you, advance their health to the best of your ability without hesitation or fail, and free of all distractions. Do so with all of your skill and energy and your career and life will be rich and full."  Throughout this lesson, my father nodded in agreement having heard the same tale in his teenage years from the same orator no doubt. Grandpa died two years later but once I got into med school in 1985, Dad reminded me of that lesson on a regular basis until it was part of my core.   

Some three decades later about the supper hour of October 22, 2018. I'm sitting at Dad's bedside enjoying a gin and tonic with him, his last seeing that he's to get his MAID (Medical Assist In Dying) the following morning having lost both his joie de vivre and use of his legs compliments from the cachetic phase of end-stage COPD.

About half-way into our libation my father asked

"Do you remember your Grandpa's last summer here?"

"Sure", I replied, "Music leadership camp at Lake Couchiching, Junior Rangers at Kirkland Lake,  and the cottage on Redpine."

"Do you remember Grandpa's lesson about being a doctor ?"

I nodded yes, then replied, ‘It had to do with looking after the best interest of the patient that sits in front of you no matter what.’

Dad became very quiet, a sure sign that he was choosing his words wisely. In a tremulous and sad voice "Son, I watched you faithfully practice that lesson throughout your career and it destroyed you."

No mentor of physicians should ever have to face that reality on their death bed.

I put down my drink, offered my hand to hold his and said "If it weren't for that lesson my patients would needlessly suffer and my career would have been ordinary and empty.' I thanked him for reinforcing Grandpa's precious gift to me.  We went onto to finish our drinks, Mom fed Dad his Last Supper, an oxymoron of sorts given his atheist beliefs, and then I projected an iMovie on the ceiling above his bed, a tribute to his life. The next day he was euthanized in peace. surrounded by his loving family and the dog.

Fifteen months and four days after my father's death, I am standing in front of the Discipline panel of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario on the receiving end of a reprimand. With me are my sister Martha, a hospitalist in Colorado and my older brother William.  In my jacket pocket is a small packet of my Dad's cremains and my Grandfather’s degree. I am told by the Chair of the Discipline panel, a person, who is in total ignorance of the facts by design, tells me that I am  a disgrace to the medical profession. At that moment, the flame of altruism that burned brightly in my family's past was finally snuffed out, a sad state that I still grieve for

John