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| ASSEMBLY EDITION • ORLANDO, FLA |
In 1994, FP John Pfenninger, M.D., and his son bought a yellow model airplane. It never flew. After three years of allowing patients' demands, speaking engagements and professional commitments to postpone the airplane's maiden flight, Pfenninger learned his son, Matthew, had a pineal germinoma.
During the ensuing four years, Pfenninger, director of the National Procedures Institute in Midland, Mich., and clinical professor of family medicine at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, East Lansing, and his family traveled a frightening, painful and exhilarating journey. He shared his family's story about cancer during his lecture yesterday, "A Family's Journey with Cancer - The Message of the Yellow Airplane."
Along the way, they learned firsthand about medical errors. A test, critical to determine the most appropriate treatment, did not occur. Three weeks into the wrong treatment, Matthew's doctors announced they had found four metastases - one grape-sized tumor in his spine and three golf ball-sized tumors in his brain.
Pfenninger sought counsel from a pastor. The family and pastor met to pray in the hospital auditorium.
They learned this: The power of the unknown can heal. With no medical explanation, Matthew's tumors disappeared 10 days after physicians, nurses, staff workers and administrators joined the Pfenningers in prayer for Matthew's recovery.
"Miracles happen," said Pfenninger. "And they don't always happen on 34th Street."
But months later, the cancer returned, and the family learned an incomplete medical history can kill. With nothing to lose after chemotherapy failed, Matthew underwent autologous bone marrow transplants. With a disabled immune system, Matthew's body could not overcome the latent mononucleosis virus that, long dormant and forgotten and excluded from his charts, roared back. Diagnosis: postlymphoreticular transplant disorder.
The Pfenningers rushed him to the hospital for what would become a seven-month hospitalization, eight major operations, five warnings that Matthew would not survive the night and murmurings that perhaps "it was time to let him go."
They learned that acts of friendship sustain the soul through the most unbearable times. Though many colleagues and acquaintances skirted the subject, many others reached out to support Pfenninger throughout the family's ordeal.
"Do you know who came to my rescue?" Pfenninger asked. "Surgeons. Maybe other people are afraid. Maybe they don't know what to say. Maybe they don't know what to do. But it's OK to ask. You don't have to know what's going on. If your colleague is in trouble, just ask, 'How are you doing?' That let me get through one more day."
They learned that faith and hope can mean everything. Acknowledging that he couldn't explain it, Pfenninger said the effort of prayer wrought wonders. Matthew is completing his last semester for a master's degree at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Research has confirmed Matthew's experience, said Pfenninger, who pointed to reports in publications such as the Harvard Newsletter and the Cancer Journal.
"The mind is so strong," said Pfenninger. "Is it prayer? Taking part in the collective consciousness. Is that God? I don't know.
"I do know that we must use all our resources. We must use the surgery and the chemotherapy and the medication. But we also can use faith and religion" when working with patients.
And hope? Without it, said Pfenninger, patients will see no future.
"I don't know why Matthew lived," he continued. "I don't know why he's still alive. But what we have to give patients is the expectation that all things are possible. When you give them hope, you give them a future."
Pfenninger learned that family physicians are vital to ensuring that stories such as Matthew's become increasingly rare.
"You make a huge difference to people," he said. "If you can save one family from going through what my family went through, your whole career is worth it."
And above all, know what's truly important in life, he said. "Our families didn't choose medicine. We did. Don't have yellow airplanes in your past."
FP Report is
published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2003 by American Academy of Family Physicians.