Dr. Califano

July 14, 2006 - I was feeling pretty down from my meeting with Dr. Davidson and I wondered if it even made sense to visit anyone else. My friend Eden, who has been a Godsend, BTW, works at Hopkins and she said something which made a lot of sense. She told me that the reason the visit with Dr. Davidson went so poorly was so I would be compelled to see someone else, in this case Dr. Joseph Califano, because he was meant to do my surgery. It's God's will, I just needed to be able to recognize it.

The night before my appointment, I stayed with my friend Keith who lives fairly close to Johns Hopkins. I didn't want to have to drive all the way up there from Virginia that morning because anyone who knows Washington DC traffic knows that it's some of the worst traffic on the planet. I arrived early for my 8:45am appt. and waited only a few minutes before being called into Dr. Califano's office. Eden was nice enough to meet me there since she works in the same building and wait with me until I was called.

My initial reaction upon seeing Dr. Califano was that he was much younger than I expected. In fact, I don't mind telling you that he looked more like a soap opera doctor than a Harvard Medical School grad. I immediately thanked him for seeing me on such short notice and he quite honestly responded that I should thank his scheduler because she talked him into it. I'll have to remember to do that.

Dr. Califano's exam was shorter than those of the other doctors I had seen. He did reach down my throat to the spot on my tongue that was thought to be the primary tumor site and pressed on it pretty hard. He said it felt hard like a tumor and upon further examination commented that he was able to make it bleed which was a telltale sign that this was the spot we were looking for. This was encouraging.

Right away, I knew this visit was going to be very different than my last. Dr. Califano was energetic, enthusiastic and very positive. The ironic thing is he didn't really tell me anything different than the last doctor I saw, but the delivery was much better. I asked him what his thoughts were on my prognosis and he replied "very good." He told me that if I were to look on the Internet which he was sure I had already done, the statistics I would find for stage 4 disease of this type are morbid and not at all encouraging. However, he reminded me that these take into account the entire universe of people with stage 4 disease, most of which have one or more "co-morbidity" factors such as smoking, drinking, or other health problems that contribute to their poor prognosis. He was able to quote some more encouraging statistics for people like me who are otherwise very healthy which I appreciated. He also said that more than likely the cause of this was viral in nature which would further improve my prognosis. I asked him very bluntly if this was beatable and he replied with a very enthusiatic "Sure, of course it is" with a "don't be silly" tilt to his head.

The meeting didn't last that long but I knew as I was leaving that I needed Dr. Califano on my team. Unfortunately, Sharon, the woman who does his scheduling, doesn't work on Fridays so I didn't know how long it would take to get on his surgical schedule. I would have to call her the following Monday to schedule something. This was going to be tricky because I had already scheduled surgery with Dr. Gurian for the following Tuesday, 7/18. I told myself that if I could get on Dr. Califano's schedule within two weeks of the surgery I already had scheduled, I would cancel with Dr. Gurian but I would be doing that with only one day's notice.