2023-12-31 05:05:14
The doctor has been fighting the disease for a little over two years, claiming to have found a balance between his profession and his personal life.
Dr. William Ramírez, Obstetrician Gynecologist Subspecialist in Maternal-Fetal Medicine and Multiple Myeloma Survivor. Photo: Medicine and Public Health Magazine.
In September 2021, the Dr. William Ramíreza distinguished obstetrician-gynecologist specialized in maternal-fetal medicine, received an unexpected diagnosis that would change the course of his life: multiple myeloma.
“It is a unique moment in one’s life, it is a situation where your mind becomes clouded, from the clinical aspect as a professional of a subspecialty and you fall at that point, there is a lot of mix of feelings, thoughts, many ideas come,” express.
The health professional experienced a significant change in his life and perspective upon receiving the diagnosis following conducting studies due to back discomfort. During this period, he reflected on his achievements, pending activities, the people around him and how the situation might affect them.
Time to rethink your life
At this time, his professional practice was reaching its peak, with the services and achievements in the hospitals where he worked experiencing notable growth and development. On a personal level, his daughters were entering adulthood, and he was in a new stage of his marital life with his current wife.
“All those things came together within my thoughts and my feelings and provoked a series of responses in me that basically what they did was readjust me and start looking for solutions and alternatives,” he added.
Challenges you had to face
The specialist highlighted the most significant challenges he faced as a health professional when having to adapt his lifestyle, especially due to the treatment he was going to receive: chemotherapy. Dealing with immune compromise and spinal injuries that might limit his mobility in the future posed a considerable challenge. Adjusting all these considerations for both the short and long term proved to be a complex task.
“For me, an advantage that I had is that I work in a hospital group that we are all like a big family and I had the support of many colleagues who helped me treat my condition and helped me continue caring for my patients, since I belong to a group where we trained with three other gynecologists and right now there are ten of us, where the care of our patients was modified a little due to my condition,” he recalled.
As a health professional you tend to neglect your well-being
Dr. Ramírez reflected on the tendency of healthcare professionals to sometimes neglect their own health, an observation that extends not only to cancer patients, but also to many colleagues in various areas. He stressed the importance of balancing daily life, learning to manage stress and seeking professional support, whether through counselling, psychologists or others who provided help.
“I am still in treatment, in chemotherapy, trying to finish the initial process, thank God the bone marrow transplant was a success and the maintenance I have is for the next 6 to 8 months, seeing that the next studies and biopsies are negative how they have turned out so far. The day is sometimes overwhelming, when I am with a lot of patients, when I have to take a trip, this is exhausting, but physically, but I feel that I have reached a point of balance,” he said.
Learned lessons
“The most important lesson is that when you are in health care and you see different things, different diagnoses, you try to have empathy for patients, have that ability to put yourself in that patient’s shoes, you can try to understand, but not until the doctor becomes a patient. We cannot lose focus, we must retrospect what we have done,” he concluded.
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