Miscellaneous
Dr. Vainio, am I going to die? Yes. And there's nothing you can do? No. I'm afraid to die. Should I be? I don't know, Agnes. I don't know. In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet. His essays on life, work, medicine, and spirit are published on Indianz.com and you can read the transcript of this story below. By Arne Vainio, M.D News From Indian Country March 2011 Agnes came into my life on a Monday morning as I was finishing a weekend of call. My pager informed me my blocked schedule had been overridden as I had an extremely complicated, new patient with cancer who needed to be admitted to the hospital. She was in a wheelchair and there was a social worker with her. She had over a hundred pages of medical records. She had been hospitalized in Nevada for vaginal bleeding and had been diagnosed with cancer of the cervix in the past few months