October 13, 2008
By Louis Dilts

Getting a Second Opinion When a Loved One is Critically

My friends and family have laid in intensive care, while their families experience fear, having a feeling of hopelessness, and panic. Why don't the families take steps to get the very best care for their loved ones versus accepting the misnomer that "everything is being done" for them and go along with "I know how to treat your family member, other physicians would do the same thing"? I have never understood this in the 40 some odd years I have spent in medicine; both at the academic and corporate levels.

Over those 40 years, I have discovered one thing: ask four physicians their opinion on a particular case and you will get four different answers. That is OK, at least you have four options for treatment that you can weigh as a family. Perhaps those opinions have a common thread in their interruption, which is even better since you will know that by choosing the one with the most agreement on the method of treatment, you have a consensus and have investigated, for your loved one, the best option to explore. But, people still only have one physician and never bring other physicians into the mix.

Case in point: my dad was loosing weight, was weak, had tremendous pain in his stomach. The local physician passed it off as something "psychotic" and never came to any sound conclusion on how to treat my father..yet he continued to get weaker and weaker. Using my contacts as a senior executive in the biomedical field, I called the local university medical school and talked with the head of Gastroenterology, who we will call Joel. Joel set on my board of directors and owed me favors. I asked if I could fly my dad to the medical school for a consultation with Joel. Several days later, Joel called and said he could not find anything wrong with my father and offered no real help in finding a solution. Since I was on the staff of the Mayo Clinic's Department of Endocrine Research early on in my academic career, I decided to go to the top and contacted the Chairman of the Board of Governors and asked that he set up arrangements to have dad seen immediately. Dad bypassed the usual six month wait to be seen and was ushered to Rochester, Minnesota.

I was waiting with Dad, when a Mayo staff member came into the exam room, introduced himself, looked at his chart and said.."real simple, you have Levator Syndrome and little heat and infra-red treatments will get you back on your feet". This took maybe one-half hour and turned by father's life around. He regained weight and energy.

Granted people don't have my contacts, but they have the ability to get second opinions. If your physician is offended at your doing this, then you probably have the wrong physician.

The author is a former staff member of the Mayo Clinic where he taught resident physicians. Mr. Dilts has over 40 years experience in medicine; 30 years as a senior biomedical CEO at the corporate level.