She had used the same type of language herself. “I very quickly went into multisystem organ failure and essentially became one of my own patients in a matter of hours,” Awdish says.Īwdish knew the doctor’s words weren’t coming from a place of malice. She was seven months pregnant.Īwdish’s entire blood volume wound up in her abdomen, causing what’s known in trauma as the "triad of death.” Her blood was too acidic and too cold to clot. She had been out to dinner with her best friend when an undiagnosed benign tumor in her liver ruptured. Rana Awdish, MD, a critical care physician at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, knew the doctor was talking about her. “She’s circling the drain,” the doctor said. Here are their stories, the lessons they learned, and the ways in which their time in the hospital changed the way they treat patients. To see firsthand that the white coat - while coveted and respected - does not make one exempt from illness.ĪAMCNews spoke to several doctors willing to share their own experiences as patients. Klitzman is just one medical professional who has gotten a glimpse of what it is to be on the other side. Today, he teaches psychiatry at Columbia University and wrote a book called When Doctors Become Patients, which weaves together intimate interviews with physicians who have fallen ill. It was that self-care that allowed Klitzman to have some semblance of normalcy. He took time for himself - he sat in Central Park doing nothing for hours on end. He went to psychotherapy, his temple, and for the first time, a Buddhist service. “I had not appreciated what my patients undergo when they have grief and depressive symptoms.” He could finally understand the barriers his own patients faced.
“I had not appreciated what my patients undergo when they have grief and depressive symptoms.”Īfter three months of not eating, not sleeping, and generally ceasing to function, Klitzman overcame the stigma and accepted his depression. “I had no idea it would be so different than what I thought it was,” Klitzman says. He was suffering from crippling grief, which until then he had only witnessed as an outsider. “We see patients with somatic symptoms and we think, ‘They’re just not psychologically minded.’”īut Klitzman was wrong.
He must have some kind of flu, he thought.Īfter all, Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, would know depression and grief if he saw it. He didn’t want to listen to music or watch television. He and his family never heard from her again. Klitzman’s 38-year-old sister was on the 103rd floor. It was right after two planes flew into the twin towers in New York City. Robert Klitzman, MD, was 43 when his body gave out on him.
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