Talking Death

When Pedro Faust Tzul Menchu, a 45-year-old man with colon cancer, told his oncologist he couldn’t move his leg, a medical alarm bell went off. He’d received chemotherapy a week before, so his other symptoms of vomiting and jaundice weren’t entirely surprising. But the lack of movement in his legs could have been a sign of a spinal-cord compression—when an infection or tumor strangles the nerves running up and down the spine—and potential cord compressions are always treated as an emergency. Pedro was sent straight from the oncology clinic to the hospital, where he was assigned to me as a patient. As Pedro’s hospitalist, the doctor in charge of orchestrating his care, my main job was to figure out if his spinal cord was at risk.

Read the full story at The Atlantic.