Addendum to the 'Alternative Patient.'

 

Addendum to 'the alternative Patient.

   Several readers expressed interest in the fate of Harley.  To help fill in the blanks I have to tell you the story of that story, which I wrote while I was on sabbatical.  I spent the first half of my sabbatical at Duke University in North Carolina.  Since we were there for six months I decided to take a creative writing class in the evenings and get away from medicine.   During that period I drafted out a number of stories of my own experiences as part of my 'homework'.  They sat in my computer awaiting scaling and polishing.

   The second part of sabbatical I spent at Ben Gurion University where I was working with an American - Israeli physician called Jeff Borkan.  We were sitting discussing some medical issues, when quite serendipitously Jeff said,  "I and a couple of colleagues are editing a book of short stories about family medicine. How about contributing a chapter? We really need a few more chapters before we can publish. An experienced guy like you must have a few interesting stories."

   I hadn't informed him about my night classes in writing at Duke and that I had several almost finished stories on my computer.

"Yes, I could do that." I answered. "I could do two if you like!"

He was delighted. "I will have to run them by my three co-editors." He added, leaving himself some leeway in case they didn't like my work! 

That's how "The Alternative Cancer Patient" and "The Next Generation" came to be published in a book called "Patients and Doctors - Life-changing Stories from Primary Care" The University of Wisconsin Press 1999.

I had been back to work a few months without having heard from Harley, when he showed up at my office one day. My nurse remembered him and let him in without an appointment. It was summer and he was dressed in a shirt, short pants with a large bushy beard, badly needing a hair cut and deeply sun tanned.

He told me he now lived in rural Northern Manitoba and was in charge of some sort of youth rehabilitation movement. He felt he was doing something really worthwhile and he loved it. He just dropped in to bring me up to date, his cancer was better and he had his diabetes under control, all in his opinion from living close to nature and having removed stress from his life. He had a doctor he liked - though he himself largely took care of his health problems. He had been to the Cancer Clinic once and they took some tests and X rays and told him to come back in six months. With that, he stood up, shook my hand and informed if he ever moved back to Saskatoon he would become my patient again.

I guess I passed the test!