The Tribune

By DR KENNETH D KEMP

FIVE years ago, I sat down to write the first edition of a newspaper column that I wasn’t entirely sure anyone would read.

I wanted to write about medicine, but not in the traditional sense. There were already countless articles explaining diseases, medications, and medical breakthroughs. What interested me more were the people behind those diagnoses. The mother sitting beside a hospital bed. The cancer survivor learning to live with uncertainty. The patient who had lost almost everything but somehow still found a reason to smile. As a physician, I had spent years listening to those stories.

I just never imagined I would spend half a decade writing them.

Last week marked the fifth anniversary of The KDK Report and, looking back over 131 columns, I’m struck by something I probably didn't fully appreciate when this journey began. The KDK Report may carry my name, but its most important stories were never really mine. They belonged to people who trusted me with pieces of their lives, and then, remarkably, trusted all of us with them.

Over the past five years, I have written about my patients and their experience with cancer, heart attacks and strokes. Obesity, diabetes and homelessness. Drunk driving, drug addiction and AIDS. Rape, suicide and murder. Plane crashes and shark attacks. Abortion and school violence. My stories have been about people who lost limbs but never lost hope. And I’ve written about people confronting death and others fighting desperately for another day of life.

The circumstances could hardly be more different, but the longer I have written this column, the more convinced I have become that beneath those differences lies something remarkably similar. We are all human beings trying to make our way through this strange, beautiful, and sometimes brutally unfair experience called life. We love. We worry. We make mistakes. We get sick. We lose people we thought would always be there. We hurt one another, and sometimes complete strangers reach out and save one another. We make plans for a future that may or may not come, and, somehow, when tomorrow does come filled with challenges we never expected, we get up and try again. Some people thrive. Others barely stay afloat. And some, overwhelmed by circumstances that we may never completely understand, drown.

Perhaps that’s why these stories have affected me, and you, the readers, so deeply. Regardless of wealth, race, age, religion, or circumstance, eventually life humbles all of us. Illness is a democratizer. No one escapes grief and no amount of money can purchase another yesterday or guarantee a tomorrow. Beneath the titles, possessions and carefully constructed versions of ourselves we present to the world, we are far more alike than we sometimes care to admit.

Some stories have reminded me of that more than others.

There was Mya, a young woman slowly losing her hearing who, on her wedding day, couldn't understand the priest. Her husband quietly mouthed the words of their vows so she could follow along. And knowing that one day her daughter’s laughter might disappear into complete silence, she cherished the sound of her voice while she still could.

I wrote about Whitney, who, during Hurricane Dorian, fought through chest-high water on Grand Bahama as neighbors and strangers locked elbows to keep one another from being swept away. Injured, frightened, and unable to swim, she eventually made it to a church where hundreds of people, black and white, young and old, sat together in darkness and prayed.

Then there was Dawn, whose life changed in a split second when a drunk driver struck her vehicle. Three of her children died that night. Dawn survived and today uses their names and their story to warn others about drinking and driving, hoping another mother might be spared the pain she will carry forever.

Most recently there was Malcolm, the bone-fishing guide from Exuma who survived a plane crash as a teenager that killed everyone else onboard and tore away his right arm. More than four decades later, I asked what he wanted people reading his story to remember. He didn't hesitate. “Never give up.”

Different people. Different circumstances. Different years. Yet somehow, the lessons keep finding their way back to the same place. Medicine teaches doctors to identify what is broken and determine whether we can fix it. We examine laboratory values, X-rays, and scans. We diagnose disease and prescribe treatment. But patients have taught me that some of the most consequential parts of their lives cannot be measured by any machine.

There’s no blood test for courage. No X-ray can demonstrate the depth of a mother’s love. No MRI can quantify grief. And no medical textbook can adequately explain why someone, having endured enough suffering for several lifetimes, can still wake up the next morning and find something for which to be grateful. Those lessons have changed me.

When I began writing this column, I believed its purpose was to give patients a platform to share their experiences so someone reading might recognize a piece of themselves and perhaps walk through life a little differently.

Five years later, I realize that I was one of those people too.

My patients have made me more conscious of how quickly life can change. They have made me appreciate my family more and reminded me to say I love you while the person I love can still hear it. Most importantly, they have reinforced something medicine occasionally allows us to forget: before there is a patient, there is a person.

Sometimes these pages have advocated for change. Other times they have explored medicine, public health or difficult issues facing our country. But the motivation has remained the same: people. The belief that someone’s suffering should mean something. That surviving something gives us an opportunity to help the next person survive it too. And that telling the truth about our lives, the triumphs, failures, and heartbreaks, can itself become an act of service.

That’s why I remain profoundly grateful to every person who has allowed me into the most intimate chapters of their lives. Some cried. Some laughed. And some simply hoped that if one person read what happened to them and made a different decision, sought medical attention earlier, hugged their child tighter, called an aging parent or found enough courage to keep going another day, then reliving their pain had been worthwhile.

To the editors and staff of The Tribune who gave this column a home, specifically Eileen Carron, Eugene Duffy and David Leigh I say thank you.

To my personal editor and friend, Diane Phillips, the absolute best in the business, I say thank you.

To everyone who has stopped me in the grocery store, sent a message, shared my column or simply took a few minutes to read, I say thank you.

But above all, to the patients and families who entrusted me with their stories, thank you for allowing me to carry them. Five years ago, I thought I was giving you a platform. I now understand that you were giving me an education.

After 131 stories, perhaps the greatest lesson is also the easiest to understand. Our lives may look remarkably different from the outside, but eventually all of us will know love and loss, fear and hope, sickness and healing. There will be moments when each of us needs someone to hold our hand, lock elbows with us against a storm or remind us, when life becomes almost unbearable, that there may still be a reason to smile. Because we’re all human. We’re all going through this experience of life. And we’re all simply trying to endure it as best we can.

For five years, you have allowed me to tell those stories. And that’s what I’ll continue to do.

This is The KDK Report.