![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As a physician, I was truly focused on trying to provide the best medical care possible. What surprised me the most about being a critically ill patient was how much what I needed as a patient was different than what as a physician I would have thought I needed. What about being a patient surprised you? Later, in the intensive care unit, she overheard her case being discussed by the surgical resident during morning rounds. Helpless, lying on a gurney in the hospital's labor and delivery area that first night, Awdish willed the medical staff to see her as a person rather than an interesting case of what she termed "Abdominal Pain and Fetal Demise." But their medical training to remain clinically detached worked against her. She required several surgeries and months of rehabilitation to learn to walk and speak again. She had a stroke and, over the days and weeks to come, suffered multiple organ failures. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and the baby did not survive. On that night nearly a decade ago, a benign tumor in Awdish's liver burst, causing a cascade of medical catastrophes that almost killed her. Soon she was lying in the back seat of the car racing to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where Awdish was completing a fellowship in critical care. Rana Awdish was having dinner with a friend. The searing abdominal pain came on suddenly while Dr. ![]() A doctor's nearly fatal medical event opened her eyes to communication lapses, uncoordinated care and at times a total lack of empathy in the health care system. ![]()
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