I’m so sorry. I forgot.

You were such an enigma of symptoms that I got caught up in working you up, and then when it took me so long to get all of the different consult teams involved, it almost became a comedy of errors when I came to see you in the morning. “Sorry, Radiology thinks we need to get this one test, Surgeon X thinks that it’s too small to biopsy, Team Y doesn’t think it’s anything serious.” I was so excited when I got the right people to see you, the right consult, the right tests. Things came together. I got the tissue and sent it off to pathology and was excited when finally, after weeks of uncertainty, I had the diagnosis.

Melanoma. Finally, I could call in that last consult to hematology/oncology and start you on the right treatments. Until I realized. Metastatic melanoma. Stage IV. There were no treatments that could cure you. You, young and healthy, you are going to die and I can’t do anything to change that.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you that you are going to die. I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you that there isn’t a cure. I know that I failed you as your doctor by being less than honest, by leaving that task to the cancer doctors. I couldn’t do it, because I had already sat in the team room and cried and there was no way that I could maintain composure if I had been the one to say the words. I’m sorry, because suddenly this was personal and all I can think of is the two little kids you’ll leave behind and the fact that with your limited days, you had to spend too many of them in the hospital, waiting for us to do the detective work and I had been so flippant and rushed in my morning assessment that I forgot that we are human and frail. Maybe that’s the hardest part of all.