Welcome Sophia Lynn Saginaw!

Sharon Saginaw, PA-C and her husband Rich welcomed Sophia Lynn Saginaw on April 2, 2008. Sophia joins big brother Ryan, who turned two years old on April 10.

25th Anniversary of a Life-changing Event

In the spring before I entered medical school in 1982, I had an experience that had a profound affect on me as a doctor. I was finishing college in New Haven, CT and felt a sharp pain under my left ribcage radiating to my shoulder. While lying down, I saw a large asymmetrical fullness in my upper belly. A noticeable bulge in my left abdomen extended deep into my pelvis. The right side was flat. Every breath I took gave me a crampy pain in my left shoulder.

I had been the picture of health, an active twenty-five-year-old with nothing to fear. I had been accepted to medical school and was trying to bone up on premed subjects during an otherwise idle last semester.

When I went to the emergency room, I was referred to the college health service. I was told that I might have cancer. My spleen was enlarged causing pain and irritation on my diaphragm. The usual causes of an enlarged spleen are cancers of the blood and bone marrow. I read up on my condition and was expecting the worst. I was hoping for one of the more manageable blood diseases and started to imagine taking a semester off before medical school to undergo chemotherapy.

The anticipation was excruciating, worse by far than the pain in my shoulder. I couldn't get an appointment with a doctor for several weeks. I had a friend whose father is a doctor in New York City. He had me see a renowned hematologist (specialist in blood disorders) named Dr. Edward Amorosi, who admitted me to the New York University Hospital with a diagnosis of probable blood cancer.

Eventually I had a CT scan. This device was relatively new at the time. I met Dr. Alec Megibow, who was CT specialist at NYU. While I was still on the CT table, he came into the room smiling and told me that the mass was in my spleen and was almost certainly benign because a large tumor had the consistency of water.

I had an operation to remove my huge water-filled spleen by a surgeon whose reputation is still known today, even though he died many years ago (coincidentally of a blood cancer). Dr. John Ranson (the author of the Ranson criteria for pancreatitis) did my splenectomy. I still cherish the intraoperative photographs he had taken.

So, what did I learn?

1) Pain is a terrible enemy. Shoulder pain can be due to an enlarged spleen or "referred" from some problem within the abdomen.

2) Uncertainty and anxiety increase the terrible stress of waiting. Waiting for tests, appointments, and procedures should be reduced to a minimum for all patients.

3) Special attention from providers is important. Medical people are wonderful (with a few exceptions). They deserve a great deal of respect for the work they do.

4) A midline incision hurts, but gets better with time.

5) A nasogastric tube is awful.

6) You can live a normal full life without a spleen.

7) After a stressful health situation like this, you wonder whether you will ever be the same. I know now, 25 years later, that the answer is no, you will never be the same. But like most memories, this one has faded and rarely penetrates my consciousness.