Martin hangs around with us in the security community, but he's actually a doctor. He works (sometimes) for a company that makes medical software, which is, I assume, why he started hanging out with us. I should also mention that he doesn't just hang out with us: he makes good contributions. He has written a book, "Rethinking the Electronic Healthcare Record," and it should be required reading for anyone who is involved is systems development or even just basic programming. He is talking, specifically, about medical records management, but he goes to the heart of determining the real requirements for a system, and how just throwing together some functions that are directed towards your goal, but don't really target the heart of it, can be worse than useless. An awful lot of systems make that mistake, and would benefit tremendously from taking his approach.
Early during Gloria's hospital time, a sub-group of us (and Martin is part of that group) were discussing some of the details of what she was going through and the minimal information that I was getting from the hospital. Martin wasn't party to that discussion, but he contacted me privately, and offered to help explain any of the medical issues that I didn't understand, which was kind of him (and yet one more example of my security colleagues offering more useful help than an awful lot of my supposedly closer friends). I had, by this time, mentioned pleural effusion, and Martin told me to keep bugging them about the cytology on the fluid.
(I've just checked my email archive for accuracy, and I'm shortening this somewhat, but I don't think I'm doing a disservice to the discussion. Also, it reminded me that this was a month ago. So much has happened, it just seems a blur, and yet maybe only a few days ago ...)
It took a while for the cytology to come back, but I kept bugging them about it, so, when it did come back, they told me right away, and pretty baldly, that there were cancerous cells, adenosarcoma. Now, to lots of people, The Big C is still considered a death sentence. But, even though my sister and Gloria's brother had died of it, both Gloria's Mum and Dad had survived cancer, my aunt was a cancer survivor, and Gloria herself had survived the non-Hodgkins lymphoma. So, death wasn't my first thought when they said cancer, although I knew if it came back, particularly in a different place, it wasn't great. Martin hadn't said adenosarcoma, in his message to me, but he had thought it. (Pretty good diagnosis and prognosis skills, from 7,000 miles away.) And, when I reported this to him, his immediate response was to ask if they were planning palliative care.
I knew what that meant.
And it would be almost a week before the hospital would allow themselves to use that word. After all, they don't want to tell someone that their loved one is doomed to die, until they have exhausted all the other possibilities.
The details of Gloria's death, and the exact timing, were a bit more complicated. (The oncology report, when it did come in, implied that, if Gloria had either been treated or gone home, her remaining time would have been filled with pain and discomfort.) But Martin had been right the first time, and so I had to take seriously the second implication. So Martin, from 7,000 miles away, was my first advance warning, and gave me more time to prepare for Gloria's death.
He's really good at what he does.
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