Cancer Stories: The Art Of Oncology

Listen to ASCO’s Journal of Clinical Oncology poem, "Mandatum” by Dr. David Harris, who is an Associate Staff in the Department of Palliative and Supportive Care and Program Director for the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. The poem is followed by an interview with Harris and host Dr. Lidia Schapira. Dr Harris share how his team honors a patient's spirit TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Mandatum, by David Harris, MD   Where does the soul reside in the darkness of the body?   Does it flicker along the highways of nerves up the spine up the neck to the globe of the skull   or does it pulse, a lightening bug in the vast caverns of our bellies?   The foot was his answer his left, to be precise.   The cancer mushrooming from his heel a small price for a soul.   We told him he had a choice: We would take the foot or this sarcoma would take all of him.   But when he chose, we did not understand.   We told him a hundred times in a hundred ways.   We told him he did not understand could not unders