The Iyer Clinic Update
July 2024
By: Ravi R. Iyer, MD
My 25-year career as a physician has offered me an intimate view of the many faces of the human condition. But none have impacted me as deeply as those occasions when fate reversed the roles between the healer and the healed. Now and then I would be brought face to face with a patient whose calm and confident demeanor even when beset by terminal illnesses would fill me with humble submission before such a greatness of the human spirit. These individuals and every doctor who has spent more than a decade in practice has met at least a few of them, have not only taught me essential lessons about life but also brought me face-to-face with the core principles that form the basis of my vocation. I shall recount one such story as it was written in a letter of condolence to the son of the patient who will be referred to here only as Leon.
“I sit with my mind filled with a thousand incoherent words as I seek to find the tongue with which I can console you. Leon breathed his last a few hours ago in his hospital bed. The struggle his body had for the last 2 years has now subsided with the ebbing sigh of his receding breath. It is customary to speak of the departed in glowing words. To embellish the canvas of their lives with bold colors of the nostalgic brush and in doing so portray them in our storytelling as imbibed with great and saintly qualities. In the case of Leon, no such effort is needed. The simple, stark story of this man is embellishment enough.
Leon was a man with a fundamental profound defect…. Lack of Self-Preservation!! By that I mean, he was a man who lived life with an aggravatingly stubborn disregard towards acting in his self-interest….. like stopping in the middle of a high-speed freeway to remove a 4-foot piece of nail-studded wood, because somebody would get hurt!!!! ….. Know what I mean? …. Lack of Self Preservation!!!
I was his doctor and Leon would take anything I said as if it was God’s own word. It was an incredibly humbling and at the same time terrifying feeling to stand before this man and realize that he afforded every pronouncement I made the same authority as a Divine Commandment.
I once asked him, “Leon, are you never concerned that I might make a mistake or that I may not tell you the truth?” He looked back at me puzzled for a moment and then smiled and asked; “Now why would you do something like that, Doc?”…….. Lack of Self Preservation!
Leon had a weak heart. Like a vintage automobile that had too many miles on the odometer, it was not a candidate for a major overhaul like surgery and I would frequently treat him in the hospital for congestive heart failure. On one such visit, I was having a minor cold. He noticed my discomfort and offered me a Halls lozenge that he used to take for his perpetually stuffy nose. I accepted much to my glad relief. Next day when I reached his bedside, he had his wife present me with a whole bag of lozenges! This man who was struggling to breathe was ministering my little cold!!! …… Lack of Self Preservation!
Leon’s weak heart meant that he would retain fluid, and gain weight and his legs and belly would often swell up, much to his discomfort. At such times I would struggle to pull every pharmaceutical trick in the book to get his kidneys to excrete a few extra liters of urine. On one such occasion, Leon’s daughter stopped me and took me aside. “Dad is concerned that you are not eating right, Doc”, she said, “He says you have gained some weight.” ………. Lack of Self Preservation!
As Leon’s condition gradually deteriorated his periods of health between hospitalizations decreased and on his last admission I spoke to him. “Leon, do you realize that you are very sick and don’t have much time left?” I asked. He looked back at me, the twinkle in his eyes belying the gravity of his condition. “Now why do you say that, Doc?” “Because” I exploded in frustration. “Your heart can’t pump, your kidneys are not working, your lungs are filling up with fluid and you have a blood infection that I can’t get rid of.” He looked at me silently, with only the soft pant of his breathing testifying to the gravity of his health, and then said softly with a smile, “Other than that I am doing OK right Doc?”
Later, surrounded by family members I struggled to explain the inevitability of Nature and the finality of the end of the road, while simultaneously struggling with my sense of failure. Was this all that could be had at the end of two years of fighting? Was I right in promising Leon two years ago that I could fix his heart? Did I give him false hope? Have I let him down? Was this the only reward for all this toil and suffering? I had no right answers.
On the evening before his last day, he was surrounded by his sons, daughters, and grandchildren and he lay there luxuriating in their attention, like a triumphant emperor surrounded by loving courtiers. Later after they left, we talked about his life in rural America, and he told me his story about bringing up a family successfully through the Great Depression and World War II. Then at one point he stopped and looked directly at me and said, “They are all good kids, and I gave them only exactly what each one needed”.
I looked back at him, and he met my gaze with a look that included me in his family and had the calm self-assured glance of a man who knew the full truth about himself, about his time on this planet, and about the pride, privilege, and perils of parenthood.
“Yes Leon”, I replied “You gave them just what they needed.”
Then in a flash understanding dawned upon me. By accepting my promise of health two years ago and believing in me, Leon had given me, a young doctor, exactly what I needed. …. that this time and this struggle was truly what was needed for the learning of lessons such as these.…. The learning by a young doctor of the purity of effort fueled by a noble purpose that serves as the bed upon which rests the naked honesty of trust. ... and the lesson of the immense humanity that is possible in man when he….….. Lacks Self Preservation!
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TEDx U Street Salon, Speaker auditions were held on June 29, 2024 in Washington, DC.
TED assembles some of the finest speakers in the world to illuminate bold, brilliant, and transformative ideas and insights that can change the world. On June 29th, Dr. Iyer auditioned at TEDx U Street Salon in Washington DC in efforts to be selected as the next People's Choice TEDx Speaker!
Thank you to those who attended in person/or followed us online. Special thank you to those who voted to see Dr. Iyer on the TEDx stage at U Street Salon in Washington, D.C.
On July 1st, 2024 I received an email from the selection committee of TEDx Gary Indiana State University NW informing me that I had been selected as the next TEDx speaker for their event on Oct 5th, 2024 and if I accepted I would be giving the first TED talk of my life this fall.
And so, began my road to the Red Dot. What is TED and why is it a big deal? TED stands for Theater-Entertainment-Design and was started in the 1970’s by a visionary journalist, Christopher Anderson who wanted to create a forum for the showcasing and transmission of transformative ideas. He called TED a place for the exchange of “Ideas Worth Sharing”. TED has now grown into an idea platform of immense proportions with a viewership of over 3 billion views per year. If you consider that there are only about 3500 TED talks available for viewing, you will understand that this means that the average TED talk is viewed just shy of 900,000 times per year. This single statistic alone makes coming on the TED platform the single greatest opportunity to take your message out to the whole world. If you add the facts that a) Every TED talk is among the best learning and idea content available in today's culture and; b) TED speakers are among the world's best speakers, then it follows that stepping onto a TED stage anywhere in the world immediately achieves four goals.
- Establishes you as one of the world's best communicators
- Establishes your credibility in delivering your content at the highest level
- Establishes your content as an Idea Worth Sharing
- Establishes the widest possible audience for your idea ever available
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