Be careful which Dr. you choose. Find the great ones out there.

The Bigger Picture

There’s more. Before this hospital stay, Brad’s oncologist had prescribed Irinotecan, a chemotherapy drug that was not FDA-approved for his specific condition — and Brad had been stable at the time. That drug severely damaged his immune and lymphatic systems. There was no turning back after that.

What I didn’t know at the time was that this doctor had Brad sign himself off of the chemo drugs that were actually helping. Brad didn’t fully understand the implications — and we later found out that the removed treatment had been keeping his cancer from spreading. That realization was crushing.

This oncologist was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago.

For a long time, I was angry that he wouldn’t answer my questions or provide Brad’s autopsy results. But I’ve since learned that once hospice was called, he was no longer Brad’s attending physician, and therefore had no legal authority to release those records. It doesn’t undo what happened, but it does help me understand why I hit a wall when I reached out.