A Real “Country” Doctor : November 8-9, 2009
November 8, 2009
The Scenic Journey towards Iron Mountain
It was Sunday 8 November and I was a year older. At 7 am Amy from Northstar Hospice picked me up from the AmericInn. It was good to meet Amy after talking to her on the phone. The morning was bright and sunny as Amy drove me back to the spot where Dee and Chuck had picked me up the day before.
Amy dropped me off and we arranged for her to pick me up the following morning to take me to the hospital to meet the hospice staff and talk to a local newspaper. Amy drove off and I began the 25 mile walk into
The border between
The road was hilly, passing between pines and birch trees. I had just set off again from the park when a car pulled over and the guy inside started talking to me about the walk. It turned out he had cycled across the U.S. He lived in
The pines gave way to maples and other deciduous trees around Crystal Falls. Twenty-one years ago I had been here when the leaves of the trees were red and yellow. Now they were bare of leaves, as winter was only a month and a half away.
Not far outside
There were two large hills between
A Surprise Encounter
With night falling the temperature began to drop, from the forties into the thirties. I put on my coat and had just set off when Dr. Han, Northstar Hospice’s medical director, climbed out of a car on the right side of the road. He had decided to walk with me into
I was amazed that Dr. Han had taken the time to come walk with me and impressed that he had showed up as it was getting dark. Sensibly he had a flashlight and he turned this on as we walked.
The night before he had said little over dinner: mostly because other people were monopolizing the conversation. It was good to have the chance to talk to him alone. As we walked his phone rang a couple of times. He gave instructions over the phone on how patients should be treated. He did this as we walked along the roadside in the dark, with cars going by. He was the perfect country doctor. Incredible.
Dr. Han summed up the way he had to work: ‘Up here, with long distances between the hospital and patients and limited resources, it’s not like medicine in the big cities. Here you’re often flying by the seat of your pants!’
As we walked we talked about politics and got on to hospice care. Again Dr. Han’s attitude was pragmatic: ‘”ou do what you can do, to make people’s lives better.”
The talk with Dr. Han was good. It brought home the realities of medical treatment. He talked of how the new generation of doctors was sometimes not prepared to try certain procedures, possibly because of lack of knowledge or the danger of liability. Health care was rarely perfect, but better than the alternative of doing nothing. There was also the issue of knowing when to stop treatments that were going nowhere. I explained to Dr. Han about the walk, saying that the walk was not about the walking, it was a way to meet people and be open to what was along the way. He liked that idea.
It was good to be walking and talking with Dr. Han. He knew a short cut into
Over dinner Dr. Han was still answering phone calls to give advice on the treatment of patients. He was truly incredible. With dinner done he walked me from the hospital over to the AmericInn. As he left me there we shook hands, I asked him his first name:
“Bob,” came his reply.
‘It was good to meet you.’ Although we had only spent two hours together it had been good to get to know Dr. Han.
November 9, 2009
Things Begin to Fall into Place
Amy picked me up at 8:30 from the AmericInn and drove me the short distance to the hospital. There I talked to hospice staff, showing my presentation and gave an interview to a local reporter.
Dee and Tina dropped me back at the AmericInn and waved me off. What was good now, in this part of Michigan, was that there were mile markers on the road. As I walked, I could see the miles disappearing every 20 minutes or so.
A woman called Joett, from the Ojibwe Tribal Council, stopped to talk to me on the road. Amy had contacted Joett and the Tribal Council had arranged for me to stay in the hotel connected to Lac Vieux Desert Casino, near Watersmeet.
The plan was that Amy would drive out and meet me on the road at around 5pm. Amy would drive me to the hotel at the casino. The Tribal Police would then drop me back at the point that Amy picked me up from. The following day the Chief of Police in Marenisco, Bruce, would pick me up and give me a place to stay in Marenisco. After that Kathy of the Regional Hospice in Ironwood would make arrangements all the way up to Duluth. I breathed a sigh of relief that everything was falling into place, mostly thanks to Amy of Northstar Hospice.
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