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In more than 40 years as a colorectal surgeon at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, Phil Gordon placed many patients on chemotherapy protocols. He considered the side effects and explained them. But now, in hindsight, he says that he didn’t do a good enough job.

“Now” is in the aftermath of a diagnosis of metastatic cancer of the pancreas he received in November 2016. In the blink of an eye, life changed. Doctor became patient. In a poignant and elegantly written article that has received considerable media attention since its publication in the current issue of the medical journal Diseases of the Colon & Rectum, Gordon, 75, documents his experience as a patient — and issues a clarion call to colleagues about the importance of empathy.

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In placing people on chemotherapy protocols, “I spoke to the patient but, in retrospect, I did not do a very good job,” he writes in Chemotherapy: A Senior Surgeon’s Personal Challenge. “This was not because I had no compassion for the patient, because I did. This was not because I was rushing off to the next patient, because I wasn’t. This was not because I was uncomfortable with the disease, because I wasn’t.