- With Mayo Clinic oncologist
Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
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Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
"The magic of the electronic village is transforming health information. The mouse and keyboard have extended the stethoscope to the 500 million people now online." - Dr. Edward Creagan
The power of the medium inspires Dr. Edward Creagan as he searches for ways to share Mayo Clinic's vast resources with the general public.
Dr. Creagan, a Newark, N.J., native, is board certified in internal medicine, medical oncology, and hospice medicine and palliative care. He has been with Mayo Clinic since 1973 and in 1999 was president of the staff of Mayo Clinic. Dr. Creagan, a professor of medical oncology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, was honored in 1995 with the John and Roma Rouse Professor of Humanism in Medicine Award and in 1992 with the Distinguished Mayo Clinician Award, Mayo's highest recognition. He has been recognized with the American Cancer Society Professorship of Clinical Oncology.
He describes his areas of special interest as "wellness as a bio-psycho-social-spiritual-financial model" and fitness, mind-body connection, aging and burnout.
Dr. Creagan has been an associate medical editor with Mayo Clinic's Web sites and has edited publications and CD-ROMs and reviewed articles.
"We the team of (the Web site) provide reliable, easy-to-understand health and wellness information so that each of us can have productive, meaningful lives," he says.
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Stress blog
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Dec. 8, 2007
Dealing with disappointment
By Edward T. Creagan, M.D.
My colleagues and I continue to be humbled, touched, and energized by the heroes participating in our online community. These stories empower each of us to move forward, sometimes under difficult conditions.
In 1966, a relatively obscure nightclub singer from Hoboken, N.J., won a Grammy award for a song, "It Was a Very Good Year." His name: Frank Sinatra.
One sentence resonated with a powerful story shared with me by a patient and here is how the lyrics went, " ... but now the days grow short, I am in the autumn of the year."
The drift of the song is that winter follows autumn and winter is a time of darkness, sadness, and little life; however, following winter, spring and summer surely come.
Now, what does this mean to us? What is the connection? Well, here is the story.
Last spring, a wonderful couple, a "power couple," was vacationing in Arizona. They were in their early fifties; they had grabbed the brass ring of life with gusto and had all the trappings of success. After a round of golf, the woman noticed vague back discomfort. It certainly did not seem like anything worrisome. However, the pain progressed. They sought guidance and the practitioner advised a CAT scan of the back.
Much to the horror of the physician, patient and her spouse, the spine was riddled with advanced cancer. Subsequent studies clearly showed that a cancer arose from the kidney, quietly, and had spread throughout the abdominal area. Surgery was not feasible nor was radiation an option. Following multiple attempts at chemotherapy and other types of treatments, the patient died four months later.
I became close to this couple and felt a certain "connectedness." Following the death of his beloved spouse, the husband shared with me the eulogy.
The message was simple: As he looked into the eyes of the mourners sitting in the church, he knew that everyone had suffered a major loss, yet somehow they moved forward, sometimes backwards, but almost always in a forward direction of healing. He went on to say that he was energized by the strength and the support of the fellow mourners. Then, he emphasized one single point: Without a sense of community, connectedness, faith, family, and friends, it is virtually impossible to heal and move forward. So, we continue to hear the same recurrent themes.
What tactics have we used to deal with life's disappointments and unfairness and how do we move forward in face of adversity?
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