ARTISTRY

ARTISTRY

Artistry is a term we ascribe to those who practice the visual, plastic and performing arts. Rarely do we affix the term to those who practice their professions in such a way as to elevate its performance  in a way that we would call  artistic.

So it is a pretty straight forward affair to listen to a performance of Vladimir Horowitz performing Vivaldi, as I had the privilege of doing when I was in college, and be transported to realms of imaginings that I had never before experienced. And then last year, upon hearing Kaki King, guitarist extraordinaire, play her acoustic electric guitar as no one else does, sounding as if there were four hands playing on a single instrument and making that one sound like three different instruments.

We delight in the artist whose artistry creates in us and for others, other worldly experiences.  And in so doing we learn new things,  experience new ways of seeing the world and touch the divine through the vision of other peoples’ transcendent spirituality.

But I rarely get to experience the more mundane form of artistry that I forget to appreciate when I see it yet it is so necessary to my understanding of basic and important life and death decisions. Today I saw the artistry of a consummate professional, a physician at work today. It was without flash, without ostentation. Pretty matter-of -fact. But brilliant in its simplicity and clarity.

I sat in the office of the oncologist with my friend worrying if he would receive the same curt and staccatoed diagnosis and prognosis that he had received from his original examining physician.  But we were pleasantly surprised to be first introduced to a new nurse practitioner who was very thorough in her presentation of the disease process of lymphomas, the natural histories of the disease and how one goes about treating these lymphatic cancers. 

Next, and  without fanfare, the oncologist entered and quietly explained why he thought that the traditional treatment outlined by the previous physician might not be the treatment of choice in this case. There was the matter of age, my friend being younger than the age at which this condition typically presents and therefore he could withstand more aggressive therapy; and this kind of therapy thus applied had shown the promise about which we physicians only whisper but are chary about speaking  aloud for fear of invoking the ire and wrath of the gods when we talk about cures.

The physician was a gentleman of the old school of medicine. Methodical, soft spoken, and patient. Most of all he was unruffled as even I wasn’t when my friend misunderstood the meaning of the term remission, which he had mistaken to mean to be getting worse instead of the disease remaining quiescent.

But most of all, what the physician did was to present my friend’s state of affairs in a plain spoken clear and optimistic manner. He presented a treatment option that from my personal investigations were only experimental alternatives as I understood from my literature searches. And what his original physician had offered was a course of treatment that had outcomes that had survival rates of three to five years at best.

This treatment had gone from experimental to routine in the three years that my sources were written and the data showed that the survival rates had not been determined yet since there had been so few deaths. They were looking at this regimen as a possible cure, (spoken most softly but with much enthusiastic hope).

This was not an experience that I was ever expecting when I walked into that office this afternoon.

But most important, was that this information was delivered, not with clarions, nor with a puffed chest or encomiums written on plaques on the wall, but with a gentle explanation backed by knowledge of the experience of years of doing this work and the success that he has had. He quietly exuded confidence to the point of artistry that I previously mentioned. I was surely impressed. And glad that I had suggested that my friend go for this second opinion.

But almost more than that here was such a sanguine outcome was the sheer pleasure to observe a consummate artist at work, and to see it from a practitioner of my trade.

“Now that’s how it’s supposed to be done” I said to myself, with some satisfaction. It was almost as if this doctor was standing as a symbol for all of the accomplished physicians out there against the image of physicians as  penurious Scrooges  who appear to dominate the imaginations  of so many people.

“That’s how it should be done”.

And I left the office smiling.

© res 11/2/11