-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email This article originally appeared on Undark. T here exists something in medicine called the “doorknob phenomenon.” It’s when a doctor, just about to leave the company of a patient (with a doorknob possibly in grasp), finally hears them divulge what has been weighing most heavily on their mind.
Recently, a form of this phenomenon happened to me. In the midst of a busy outpatient clinic, I was handed a chart. Attached to it was a referral note that read, “lymphadenopathy NYD,” which meant swollen lymph nodes that were “not yet diagnosed.
” My patient was a middle-aged man, and quiet. I gleaned from talking with him that he lived an uneventful life. Pea-shaped lumps dotted his neck and armpits, and as I rolled them between my fingers I flipped through my mental checklist of potential diagnoses: the effect of medications, infectious exposures, the spread of possible cancer.
I wasn’t yet sure of what caused them, I told him. I tried to be reassuring. Related Here's why "concierge medicine" is coming for your family practice But as the exam went on, I noticed a change in his expression.
Starting to explain the tests I would order, I saw that his feet began to shift, and he tugged nervously at his sleeves. “I get the sense something else is bothering you,” I said. His eyes then glossed over, and he began to cry.
In moments like these, I stumble. As a physician, my focus is roped tightly around a very narrow notion of healing:.
