Gosses and the Dalmatian Puppy: A Memory that Halts the Pain

Nov 28, 2023

Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology essay, “Gosses and the Dalmatian Puppy” by Dr. Zvi Symon, Senior Consultant at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel. The essay is followed by an interview with Symon and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Symon reflects on an ancient Jewish tradition while seeking to palliate a dying patient.

TRANSCRIPT

Narrator: Gosses and the Dalmatian Puppy, by Zvi Symon, MD 

A few months ago, I was paged to see a newly diagnosed patient in the hospital with a malignant trachea-esophageal fistula to consider palliative radiotherapy. Despite the 60-minute delay that had already accumulated in my clinic, I hurried past the folks in my waiting room as they scowled their dismay, and promised to return quickly.

 My new consult was a 70-year-old man who had lost 30 kg over the past few months. He was a heavy smoker with chronic bronchitis and a squamous cell carcinoma of the upper esophagus gnawing into the cartilage of the upper airway. The surgeons ruled out any hope for surgical remediation. The gastroenterologist attempted to insert a stent but could not get past the tumor’s stricture, so radiation therapy became the last option.

On the edge of the bed near the hospital room’s window sat Vladimir, a ghost of a man, coughing intermittently with a constant drool of saliva dripping into a stainless steel bowl that he held in his lap. I introduced myself, but he hardly acknowledged my presence, consumed by his own discomfort. I turned to his pleasant, gray-haired wife sitting in the blue armchair next to his bed. Before proceeding, I asked her what he knew about his condition, and she referred the question to him in Russian. Vladimir closed his eyes, sighed heavily and said softly: “I don’t feel well and… cannot eat.” His wife watched me as a sad smile played on her lips, and she struggled not to cry. I paused for a moment, remembering my full outpatient waiting room, but wanting to give his story justice. I turned to Vladimir’s wife.

“Tell me a bit about Vladimir, what did he do before he became ill?” I drew up a chair and sat closer and she sighed. “He worked as a builder. When the family emigrated to live here in Israel, his mother died soon after. He became deeply depressed and took to the bottle, spending most of the day sitting on the porch, drinking vodka, and chain smoking. A few years ago, I bought him a cute clumsy

Dalmatian puppy who adored him, romping around happily, licking his hands, and jumping all over him. He developed a special relationship with the dog, stopped drinking and took the dog each day for a long walk—well, perhaps the dog took him for a walk.” A smile flickered across her face briefly. “Unfortunately, the dog died a few months ago and he sank back into a depression, stopped eating, and has lost weight.” I was touched and saw the tears in her eyes flowing freely. “Do you have any family, perhaps children you would like to call to perhaps join us for the discussion?” I asked.

“We have two grown-up sons. One is currently ill with COVID and cannot come, and the other son also suffers from major depression: He has a hysterical paralysis and does not leave the house. I work as a cashier in the supermarket and am the only breadwinner for my sick son and husband.” I wondered if she had any idea of his prognosis and started a discussion regarding treatment options. Vladmir’s wife told me that she had heard that radiation therapy could help.

And while I would have loved to have played the role of knight in shining armor, saving him from the ravages of his cancer with radiotherapy, the reality is that the intervention is controversial in the treatment of trachea-esophageal fistula.

Should I raise the possibility of not doing the treatment? How would it be received? What could I offer in lieu? Was this an opportunity for a being and not doing discussion, one that talks about dignity and love and communication, about having the chance to say goodbye forever and even to confess and bless and confide? Patients and family are so often focused on the battle against the disease; they are loath to any suggestion of not doing, despite the minimal odds for a helpful treatment. 

I saw Vladimir’s wife struggle to control her tears. She seemed so vulnerable and carried so much on her shoulders. I wondered if a hospice discussion, at that moment, would add to her huge burden. There was also a part of me that also debated, selfishly, if I should launch into a lengthy end-of life discussion with the angry waiting patients outside my clinic door? So often, we turn to our treatment armamentarium to avoid these deeply painful and complex discussions surrounding the end of life, particularly with patients we barely know.

I breathed deeply, calmed myself and decided to keep it simple and avoid the dilemma. I gently explained that I could not guarantee good results, but radiation therapy may improve his pain and perhaps allow him to eat and drink. It was the answer she was looking for, though I grimaced as I wondered if it was the answer I should have provided. She seemed relieved and encouraged Vladimir to sign consent. Vladimir arrived at the computed tomography (CT) simulation suite sitting bent forward on the stretcher, drooling into the bowl between his legs. The radiation therapists, already running behind schedule, looked at each other, as if wondering if this was another futile heroic effort. 

“I know what you are thinking,” I said to them. “But perhaps we can help. Let me tell you something about Vladimir, he had a Dalmatian puppy he loved, who took him out of his home for a walk every day after years of deep depression.” Vladimir was contorted in pain, and the attempt to transfer him from the stretcher to the CT couch seemed impossible. All eyes turned to me with a perhaps this is too much look. Suddenly, Ilan, a young Russian-speaking radiation technologist who had recently joined the department, had an idea. “Vladimir, rest a few minutes. You know, I too have a Dalmatian, let me show you a picture.”

The deep lines on Vladimir’s face faded into a broad smile as he took Ilan’s cellphone to see the picture of the dog. From the look on his face, he seemed to be transported far from the simulation suite, and I imagined him romping with his Dalmatian puppy in a sun-swept meadow with gurgling streams and lush green grass and watched as Ilan then slid him effortlessly onto the couch of the scanner.

The scan was completed, Vladimir returned to the ward, and I retreated to my workroom to complete the contouring of the structures for the radiotherapy plan. It was a nasty 12-cm mass involving the full circumference of the upper esophagus and eroded into the trachea, almost obstructing the left lung. The dosimetrist calculated a conformal treatment plan, and as I approved it, I uttered a little prayer that this would make him more comfortable. Suddenly, Ilan rushed in, hair tousled, pale and agitated, and eyes red. We were too late. On returning to the inpatient ward, Vladimir experienced a massive aspiration and died less than half an hour after we had scanned him. Ilan was terribly upset. As a young therapist, this was perhaps his first patient who died so quickly and unexpectedly.

I tried to comfort him. “I know it hurts, but nothing we could have done would have changed what happened. Did you see his face after you mentioned his puppy and showed him the photo of yours? We did our best for him.”

After Ilan left my room, I reflected on the day’s events. Was Vladimir what the rabbis refer to as a “Gosses?”2 (Gosses is a Hebrew word meaning a moribund patient). And if that was the case, was I wrong to even transport him from his room? When death is imminent in hours or days, Jewish religious law defines a state of Gosses in which it is forbidden to touch or move a moribund patient in case this could hasten death. The guttural rattle of a dying patient, unable to clear secretions, indicating death within hours or days, reminded the rabbis of the sound of bubbling when stirring the food in the cauldron. This onomatopoeia, in addition to a didactive narrative identifying the significance of performing an action which potentially changes the natural course of events, resulted in the analogy that moving a terminally ill patient which may hasten death is like stirring the food in the cauldron which may hasten the cooking on Sabbath, hence the term Gosses. The ancient rabbinic sages from the beginning of the first millenium drew an additional analogy between touching a Gosses and touching a dripping candle at the end of its wick which may hasten quenching of the light. Another aspect of the law of Gosses forbids performing any act which may prolong suffering and delay a merciful death. Thus, moving a patient to receive a futile treatment would also be forbidden under law of Gosses. 

2000 years later, the notion that we should neither delay nor accelerate death was front of mind formeas I reflected on my treatment of Vladimir. I wondered if the ancient rabbis incorporated into their moral discussion the difficulty of stopping the roller coaster of trying to do more and more to help the patient. How about when the treatment itself fell into a gray area of effectiveness? What advice would they have given a physician with competing demands on his time and a waiting room full of outpatients who demanded his attention?

In retrospect, the painful journey of Vladimir down to the simulator may have hastened his massive aspiration and would have been best avoided. In that sense, the Gosses may have

been violated. But it also allowed him and Ilan to meet and share wonderful memories of a Dalmatian puppy which made him smile and forget his pain, even for a few precious moments.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Hello and welcome to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, which features essays and personal reflections from authors exploring their experience in the field of oncology. I'm your host, Dr. Lidia Schapira, Associate Editor for Art of Oncology and a professor of medicine at Stanford University. Today, we are joined by Dr. Zvi Symon, until recently Chair of Radiation Oncology and currently Senior Consultant in the Department and Director of the National School of Radiotherapy at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and Clinical professor of Oncology at Tel Aviv University Medical School. In this episode, we will be discussing his Art of Oncology article, “Gosses and the Dalmatian Puppy.” Our guest disclosures will be linked in the transcript. 

Zvi, welcome to our podcast and thank you for joining us.

Dr. Zvi Symon: Thank you, Lidia. I'm very happy to be here.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: To start, I'd like to ask authors to tell us what they're reading or perhaps what they've enjoyed reading and would like to recommend to fellow listeners.

Dr. Zvi Symon: Okay, so it's been a bit of a stressful time reading, but I may mention some books I've read in the last few months. I've been reading memoirs. One that I particularly found very touching was Paul Kalanithi's, When Breath Becomes Air. As a physician who had cancer himself and his struggle with his transition from being a consultant neurosurgeon to being a terminal lung cancer patient, I think it's an amazing and beautifully written and touching book. 

Dr. Lidia Schapira: It’s a beautiful book. It's evocative and fresh. And you're absolutely right - we're completely in sympathy with and empathic with his amazing desire to live life till the last moment, right? It's just beautiful. 

Dr. Zvi Symon: It’s really beautiful. And I think that memoirs is a very powerful genre for me. And another book that I enjoyed very much is Jan Morris' Conundrum, which is a story of a person who made a transition from male to female over 10 years. She was actually a member of the British team that climbed Everest and a journalist in The Times. It's a beautiful book describing what she actually felt inside and how she went through the medical process as well, of her sex change. And it's also beautiful.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Thank you for that. I haven't read it, but I will add it to my lovely list here.  

Tell me a little bit about writing and what that means for you. Are you somebody who has been writing throughout your career, or was this a story that sort of popped for you, that just needed to be told? 

Dr. Zvi Symon: Right. I think it goes back to when I was a high school student where my Math teacher told my parents, "Your son shouldn't do medicine. He should study English literature." My parents were devastated by that statement because my father was a physician and my mother's family were all physicians, and they were very angry at the time. And I was kind of a writer in high school, and then I kind of left it through my medical career. And now, as I have sort of finished my stint as the chair of the department and I have a bit more time on my hands, I've sort of tried my hand at getting back to writing. I needed to read a lot in order to do that. So I was reading genres. I think maybe some of the initial versions of this piece were written sort of more as a memoir, rather than an article for the Art of Oncology. And I think you guys helped me a lot. 

Dr. Lidia Schapira: I'm so glad to hear that we helped. Sometimes editors aren't particularly helpful in the views of authors, but I'm glad you feel differently.  

So let's talk a little bit about the creative process and sort of bringing in all of these themes that you did here. And back to your prior comment that this is in the memoir genre. You have a very interesting philosophical discussion of what a Gosses is and sort of the ethical moral conflict when a patient is extremely vulnerable, instead of recognizing when perhaps all that you need to do, or perhaps what you need to do is to be present instead of trying to fix or intervene. And I loved how you made us all really suffer with you, as you're debating this internally. Can you talk a little bit about that part of the story?

Dr. Zvi Symon: Yes, I think just to put it into context, in my training in internal medicine, I worked in a hospital where hospice care was part of the rotation in internal medicine. I spent three months in the hospice, and at night, when we were on call, we were in charge of the ICU and the hospice. So you would be called to treat a patient in pulmonary edema and with CPAP, or intubate him or an acute MI, and then you would be called to a dying patient in the hospice. And the transition was initially very difficult for me. I actually felt my feet would not carry me to the hospice, and I didn't want to go there, and I had to kind of force myself. But after some time, I realized that it's actually much easier to treat pulmonary edema  to than be able to sit and listen and talk to a dying patient. But the fulfillment that I began to feel when I overcame that kind of fear of going to speak to a dying patient, the fulfillment was far greater than getting somebody out of pulmonary edema. And that's kind of stayed with me to this very day. 

So although radiation oncology is a kind of something you have to do, and you sort of radiate, when I'm called to patients like this, and I do have time, then I kind of sit down with a patient and discuss the options and try to give other options because very often it's a kind of turf in the house of God. Somebody doesn't want to have that conversation with a patient, and they're kind of turfing the patient in a house of God sense to have some radiation. And I'm not sure that radiation in such cases– So this is something that I'm confronting quite often in my daily practice, and it becomes more and more complex culturally because when one is confronted with families who also want to be very active and are dreading having to live with the idea that maybe there's something they could have done that they never did, and they're putting a lot of pressure, then it's a very tough situation. So I'm very sensitive to these situations. 

I've often had end-of-life discussions with patients like that, sometimes against the wish of families that are close by. And the patient would say- well, they'd say to me, 'No, don't talk to him." And the patient said, "No, I want you to go away. Because I think this is the first time someone's listening to me, and I want to hear what he has to say." I feel very passionately about these–

Dr. Lidia Schapira: I have so many comments that we would need hours to discuss. But, of course, the first comment I wanted to make is that some of the most humane oncological specialists I know are radiation oncologists, so I don't see you guys as just treaters and physicists wearing scrubs. I see you as incredibly compassionate members of the cancer team.  

And that brings to mind a lot of the current discussion about palliative radiation, this idea that we can just throw some rads at people because there's nothing to lose and maybe there'll be some improvement in function. So can you talk a little bit about that? I mean, here you are in a very busy clinic falling behind. You've got to walk through a waiting room of people who are sort of looking at you saying, “How can you be walking out when we had an appointment with you half an hour ago?” And you go and find Vladimir, who's despondent and can't have a conversation with you. And I'm pretty sure that you must have been going through this internal conflict even before you met your patient about what to do. Tell us a little bit more about the emotional impact for you.

Dr. Zvi Symon: Yeah. With great trepidation, I actually go up to the department to speak to a patient like this. I think the electronic medical record, for all the problems with that, it allows us to kind of really quickly glimpse and get a true picture of what the situation is. So I had seen the imaging and I'd seen the size of this really very nasty tumor. And I sort of remembered the literature that it's a relative contraindication and it actually may make things worse. But I was getting calls from the department and the medical oncologist who consulted that I must see this patient, and they want that patient to get treated today. So with a kind of a heavy heart, I go up the stairs. I breathe deeply on the way to calm myself and take the staircase up to the 6th floor and walk very slowly up the stairs, trying to go through my mind, what am I going to do, and kind of enter the ward. And then I am confronted by this person who is terribly suffering, very terribly. And he doesn't actually want to look at me at all. His eyes can't meet and he looks kind of, his eyes are very dull. And I see his wife watching me and watching him and turn to her. They are immigrants to the country. And there's also a cultural issue and language problems and difficult socio– 

Dr. Lidia Schapira: If this were fiction, you could not have made it harder. I mean, when I remember reading the manuscript thinking, this poor immigrant, he's depressed, his son is depressed, the other son has COVID, his wife is weeping and says she's the one who's tried to make ends meet. You have all of these barriers in addition to this internal clock that you have somewhere else to be. Can't begin to imagine the pressure. So how did you get through that?

Dr. Zvi Symon: Yeah, I think my mind was kind of ticking over and I think that sometimes we make very practical choices. And I knew that if I sat for too long and I fired a warning shot and said, “Well, this may not help and this may not do it,” but I think that culturally I had the feeling that it was the wrong thing to do and that there was an expectation and the expectation had been created by the team, and it's very difficult to turn down that expectation. And I also felt that she was so frail and that she had really no support and maybe if one of her kids would have come within half an hour, I would have said, “Well, I'll come back after my clinic in the afternoon and let's have a chat with your son.” But the situation was such that I thought, “Well, you just have to be practical and you have to get back to your clinic.” It's a hard feeling that we make value decisions just because it's more comfortable for us. We want to finish our clinic and also go –

Dr. Lidia Schapira: No question about that. Yes, and I think the reader will feel for you, as I did when I read it. I mean, I could immediately sort of imagine all these things playing out. So you follow your intuition, you assess it, you say, “Okay. We'll give it a try,” right? And then you have your team to deal with and your lovely radiation therapist, the technologist who gets personally involved. And then you introduce the idea that perhaps connecting with something in Vladimir's recent past that brings him joy. Can this image of this puppy romping through the fields, is something that can maybe help you all? Like the glue, the emotional glue that keeps you together. Talk a little bit about that part, about how you tried to bring this element out in the story, to give another dimension for the reader, a view not only as the physician giving Vladimir care, but also leading your team.

Dr. Zvi Symon: So I think that an open question to a patient about their– “Just tell me a little bit about yourself,” is an invitation for a person to tell you about the things that they care most about, about the people they love most, that the things were of the most importance in their lives. And I think that kind of human connection, if we can kind of latch onto that and harness that to improve the way we communicate with the patient and the way we get the rest of the team to communicate with the patient, I think that can be very powerful. I mean, I myself love dogs, and I was like, really, my Border Collie just died a few months ago, and we buried her after 12 years, and she was a wonderful animal and part of the family. And in the two minutes that I had to listen to- that's what she told me about, she told me about the dog. And when I tried to motivate the team to add him as an urgent sim and he wasn't cooperating, then it just occurred to me to tell them about it.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: It worked. It was amazing.

Dr. Zvi Symon: And it worked. Yeah.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: It was a beautiful story. I too, am a lover of dogs. I have a wonderful puppy now, and he brings tremendous joy. But your message is so full of compassion and humanity. It's basically back to Dame Cicely Saunders' idea that you want to know who the person is that you're treating and you want to know what matters to them. And so here you caught this moment of connection with the family and with the patient and with your young radiation therapist who needed to feel that he was actually helping this person. So it's a beautiful story. I want to just give you a chance to finish the interview by telling us something perhaps that you want the readers or the listeners to take away from your piece.

Dr. Zvi Symon: Well, I think that the situation of, I think as physicians, we don't really ever know when the patient precisely is going to die. And the whole idea, I think, of a Gosses and my thoughts about the Gosses were, because it's sort of defined within Jewish religious law, someone that is going to die within 72 hours. Now, it's very difficult to define. We don't know that. We never do know that. But I think that that sensitivity to the comfort of a suffering patient and offering a treatment that may be futile or that is highly likely to be futile and that may be involved in an enormous amount of discomfort, I think that we have to be able to sit down with these patients and with their families and discuss other options as just very good sedation and not necessarily, I think, doing, but rather just being there, as you mentioned, for the patient.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: It's a beautiful thought, and I think we all agree with you. And I think what made this story so poignant is that here you are, that time is compressed and you're introduced to the family as somebody who potentially could help fix something or provide something. So it's very difficult to step back, as you say, and do the deep work of sitting and talking and counseling and accompanying. But I think your humanity comes through and your desire to help comes through beautifully in the story. And I really thank you for bringing this concept to our attention. I think that it may be an old idea, but one that is still very relevant. And thank you for sending your work to JCO.

Dr. Zvi Symon: Thank you very much.

Dr. Lidia Schapira: Until next time, thank you for listening to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. Don't forget to give us a rating or review and be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can find all of the ASCO shows at asco.org/podcast. 

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.  

Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

Show Notes

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Guest Bio: 

Dr. Zvi Symon is a Senior Consultant in the Department and Director of the National School of Radiotherapy at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel and Clinical professor of Oncology at Tel Aviv University Medical School.