Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon Edward Benzel … recognized that my father’s questions came from fear. So he took the time to answer them, even the annoying ones. Along the way, he probed my father, too. He said that it sounded like he was more worried about what the operation might do to him than what the tumor would. 

Benzel had a way of looking at people that let them know he was really looking at them. He was several inches taller than my parents, but he made sure to sit at eye level. He turned his seat away from the computer and planted himself directly in front of them. He did not twitch or fidget or even react when my father talked. He had that Midwesterner’s habit of waiting a beat after people have spoken before speaking himself, in order to see if they are really done. He had small, dark eyes set behind wire-rim glasses and a mouth hidden by the thick gray bristle of a Van Dyke beard. The only thing to hint at what he was thinking was the wrinkle of his glossy dome of a forehead. Eventually, he steered the conversation back to the central issue. The tumor was worrisome, but he now understood something about my father’s concerns. He believed my father had time to wait and see how quickly his symptoms changed. He could hold off surgery until he felt he needed it. My father decided to go with Benzel and his counsel. 

Did he prefer Benzel simply because he’d portrayed a better, at least slightly less alarming picture of what might happen with the tumor? Maybe. It happens. Patients tend to be optimists, even if that makes them prefer doctors who are more likely to be wrong. … Nonetheless, Benzel had made the effort to understand what my father cared about most, and to my father that counted for a lot. Even before the visit was halfway over, he had decided Benzel was the one he would trust. 

 

Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, is a surgeon, writer and public health leader. His father was treated for a spinal cord tumor at Cleveland Clinic by Edward Benzel, MD. This excerpt is from Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. Copyright © 2014 by Atul Gawande. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved. 

Edward Benzel, wearing a gray suit, red striped tie, and wire framed glasses. He is looking off in the distance in conversation with someone off camera.

Photo: Neil Lantzy