My Experience with Patch Adams

Ashly and Patch Clowing For a Photo 

My Experience with Patch Adams: We Miss Opportunities Only because We Choose Not to Create Them

By: Ashley Mayer

I am only one person and like most students in the medical field I chose this path because I want to make a difference in the lives of so many.  I am passionate about the human existence and I question what more I can do as a service to everyone around me.  So I begin my four year journey of class, clinic, and studying, all of which seem to run together; grasping the basics of the human existence, trying to wrap my head around the fundamentals of how our bodies create energy through biochemistry, and understanding concepts of why and how pathologies inhibit our ability to function.  I am confused most often; so many courses, so many exams, so little time.

I find I am still hungry to learn more.  I envision my future as a physician, dreaming of what it will be like to see the smile on a child’s face as they leave my office, so I push on.   Life is spent memorizing the flow of physical assessment, untangling the knots of differential diagnosis, and often I am worried I’ll leave something out while visiting with a patient, or worse yet the scolding from a supervisor. 

Less time is spent in class now, most often you can find me in the clinic.  Thick patients’ charts don’t seem as scary as they once were.  Reading labs and coming up with treatment plans are actually fun.  I look at it as an opportunity to use my creative side.  Engaging in conversation with patients is the highlight of my day.  Supervisors aren’t as scary as they used to be, and I find I have a lot to offer my friends, colleagues, and patients.  

Time seems to fly and before I know it, three years have gone by.  No longer am I worried about knowing too little, and I have no fear of my abilities, but what I have come to recognize is that I have only one year before I start over, one year before I must spread my own wings and fly.  Who is going to help me then?  Where will I practice?  How will I get my feet off the ground?  I understand pathology in textbooks, but what do I do when it comes walking into my office?  There are no supervisors to correct me if I make a mistake?

As a child we all have heroes, the ones we look up to the most and the ones that give us the courage to move forward in life.  Sometimes they are superheroes like Batman or Luke Skywalker, sometimes they are athletes like Michal Jordan or David Beckham.  My hero was my father.  It was his unconditional love and praise of my accomplishments that allowed me to grow up and become whatever it was that I chose.  I didn’t choose to be a super hero or an athlete, though it would have been kind of nice to fly on my own, not having to pay USAir or United.  In any event, I remember being at my mother’s house one night in college.  It was movie night.  She popped in the movie Patch Adams.  I left her house in awe, never had I thought medicine could be so fun; so many smiles and so many opportunities to make a difference through laughter.

So, as these questions were racing through my mind when thinking about my future in medicine, I remembered that evening and that movie.  Patch Adams didn’t even know it, but I considered him a hero.  It was his unconditional love of people, his kind heart and gentle hand given to those who needed him most.  So being the determined woman I am, I sought him out.  It was a writing contest.  Medical professionals from around the United States were to answer several questions for the opportunity to spend five days at his Gesundheit Institute.  The big question: 

“If Peter piped a pickled-pepper, what is the most likely medical condition that he has, and how would you treat it?”  Several other questions asked were about community, passions, my dream clinical practice, and activism, all of which required my professional side, but this question- it required my child side.  So, I went back to being about 13 years old, and voila:  

“Peter’s pathology is a pipe dream; his fantastic plan and vain hope to preserve (as in a pickle is a preserved cucumber) humanity, while having the fiery, hot tempered (hence pepper) desire, passion, and motivation for change.

Treatment for Peter’s pathology is for him to make his pipe dream a reality, muster every emotion necessary to pursue his passion, and to infect as many people as he can, so that his disease spreads like wild fire throughout his community; all of humanity.”

And so my essay was chosen, and I was off to Hillsboro, WV to ask Patch these most important burning questions.  It was a cold winter’s night, and I was in the mountains, driving through the twisting and winding snow covered roads, when I came upon the Institute.  Climbing out of my car, I was greeted by a beautiful woman with long gray hair and dressed in many layers of multiple tie-dyed colors. Mama Maggie was her name.  And in front of me, I saw the largest keyhole I have ever seen. It was the Gesundheit Institute.  

My time there was about making friendships, dressing in costume and clown noses, finding my child inside.  Only when I connected with the child inside me, was I able to begin answering my own questions, not having to ask for Patch’s advice.  This was through laugh and play and cry.  

After getting past his most hilarious ensemble of an outfit; wearing a fork dangling from his ear, balloon pants bright orange, Patch gave some great advice: 

Spend quality time with your patients, understand their struggle, meet them where they are in the moment, and be there for them even when insurance companies say otherwise.  When seven minutes are up, add another hour.  Medicine truly is about treating the patient, prescribing them a life of hope and happiness and laughter.  Educate your patients that their diagnosis is only a tool to help them accomplish a greater understanding of what they may be experiencing.  Their diagnosis is not meant to hinder their ability to relate to society in any way.  

Whatever happened to using adjectives to describe people?  Maybe a patient has had a bad month or a bad year, they have been pissed off, tired, worn out.  Must we diagnose them as depressed?  Don’t they have a right to feel without repercussions of being labeled with depression or anxiety?  Someone else who is shy and timid, must we diagnose them with social anxiety?  What about the diagnosis of bi-polar disorder?  If you have 10 friends and you interact with them in 10 different ways, isn’t that called poly-polar?  We are labeling patients left and right so we may cover their costs by insurance companies, and these patients walk away with a feeling of failure, a fear of not being normal.  Many people who walk into the office are lonely and only want/need someone to talk to.  Must we give them only seven minutes of our time, label them with a psychiatric ICD-9, and push them on their merry way?  Is this what we call practicing medicine?  Medicine is “healing,” and how are we healing pain if we are masking painful symptoms with pharmaceuticals, only for these symptoms to come up again, as a heart condition next time, which may have been a side effect of the first medication we prescribed.  We never got to the root cause, which may have been an hour of our time listening to our patient’s pain and his/her need for someone to listen, followed by a long hug and a great big smile!

Practice your interviewing skills by riding up and down elevators all day, asking questions to those who share your space.  Pick random phone numbers out the phone book and call people you don’t know, just to say hi and practice more people skills.  Talk to as many people as you can, hear their stories, share their emotion.

Have faith, love, and humor, wonder about everything around you and be curious, relax in nature, have hope and passion in your community, imagine what peace and service can look like in the eyes of your patients, seek wisdom and a sense of yourself as a friend, colleague and loved one.  Practice being a good listener; hear what your patients have to say before placing a diagnosis upon them.  Be creative, have faith, and live your life as a service to others.

I left so truly touched and inspired and I began to think for myself, what is it that I desire to share with others?  I have chosen a path to specialize in working with those with Autism.  I wake in the morning so overjoyed with the opportunity of helping even one child.  Patch Adams lives his beliefs, just as I live mine.  I am no longer fearful of my future.  Why live in fear when we can live in laughter and smiles, and joy?  

My afterthoughts:

In this day and age, we hear terms like Naturopathic, Allopathic, Chiropractic, Osteopathic, Green, Complementary, and Alternative, just to name a few and not even speaking of the enormous amount of specializations out there.  These are all adjectives to describe one word:  “Medicine.”  Medicine is the art and science of healing.  If this is the definition of medicine, and this encompasses all that I am working toward, why must I have another title that precedes this?  Society places these titles upon us to separate us from reaching a common goal, coming together to heal those in need.  Remember your foundation that you’ve built yourself upon, close your ears to societal views, have your own visions of your future in medicine, and then create it, cultivate it, make it your own.  Invest in a toolbox of knowledge.  We miss opportunities only because we choose not to create them.  

Changing the World

When I was a young man I wanted to change the world. I found out it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found that I couldn't change my nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change my town, and as an older man, I tried to change my family. That did not work either. Now as an old man, I began to realize the only thing I had the power to change was myself.

Suddenly I realized that if long ago I had only changed myself I could have made an impact on my family. My family could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation, and I could have indeed changed the world.

                                            ~Author Unknown