Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509290106
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: F-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY SIDNEY BARRITT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Elliot Gilbert, the author's husband, developed prostate cancer at age 60. He was otherwise healthy and expected to come through the proposed surgery without difficulty. A second opinion confirmed the first, and the surgery was performed at a well-known university medical center by a competent, experienced surgeon.
Gilbert, chairman of the English Department at that university, died in the recovery room.
Those are the basic details. What happened to the author's husband remains a mystery to her. No mystery are her grief and shock. From her perspective, the physician's explanation was terribly inadequate and she eventually brought suit on the grounds of medical malpractice. From that suit came a financial settlement, the terms of which she is forbidden to reveal. But clearly the suit brought no settlement for her pain and anguish. To assuage the latter, she turned to her own skills as a writer and thus this book.
To be sure, she knows her subject - her late husband - perfectly well. She reads the medical and legal literature on malpractice and learns them nearly as well. She grapples with the uneasy relationship a client finds with a malpractice attorney and expresses the ambivalence that the situation creates. The attorney wins a settlement without trial, and she is compensated in that wholly inadequate way that money can compensate for such a loss.
The book is very troubling because the topic is so troubling. Sandra Gilbert has given clear voice to those feelings. Something went badly wrong, but only one part of the story appears here and the rest remains hidden by legal decree and the relative protection of hospital mortality reviews. My guess from the limited information is that insufficient attention in the recovery room rather than a problem with the technical aspects of the surgery led to this catastrophe.
That is speculation. Was there malpractice? Perhaps. But the human interaction between physician and family was poorly, even ineptly done. Malpractice? No, but it left the family understandably angry and asking difficult questions that might have no answer under any circumstance.
Would that an author with a mediator's skills could bring out the two sides of the story in parallel and eventually forge some links of understanding.
There might be no need for lawyers and some better sense of closure for both sides. As it is, Gilbert remains very angry, and she excoriates the physicians. Her grief is eloquent and the thought occurs that it may be therapeutic for her. A contending thought occurs with equal vigor: that, aggrieved as she may be, forgiving those who have sinned against her may bring more peace than stoking her anger.
Sidney Barritt is a Roanoke physician.
by CNB