-Hard conversations are going on every day
between doctors and patients.
Will they be safe when they come to the hospital?
On the other hand, death is an equal-opportunity visitor.
You're just as dead if you die of cancer as you do
if you die from COVID,
so we really have to balance meeting
the healthcare needs of the community
based on the resources, the prevalence,
and the environment that we're in here locally.
-We've been fortunate here, and we haven't seen the patient
surge that other parts of the country have seen.
And so we at UC Davis Health
have decided to continue to do essential operations,
which would be injury, quality of life, cancer operations,
and we have been doing those for the last several months,
and Linda certainly has a cancer,
and so that's something that you don't want to postpone.
-I am the perfect storm to have lung cancer
diagnosed at the same time
there's this raging illness that attacks the lungs.
Last fall, I, for the first time in my life, had a kidney stone.
However, in my case, it turned out to be fortunate,
because when they were scanning to find the kidney stone,
it just caught the very bottom of my lung,
where they detected this unknown dark spot.
It was caught early,
so I want to get it out as soon as possible,
and, for that, I'm going in tomorrow.
-Someone has to postpone a cancer surgery,
there's always the chance that that tumor's gonna get larger.
There's a chance that it could metastasize,
and so it's important,
especially for us as thoracic surgeons,
to get these cancers out when they're at an early stage,
when the chance of cure is the highest.
It's scary enough to have an operation,
let alone to have it in the midst of a pandemic.
So that factors into the decision-making.
I think, for the most part,
patients have been very understanding.
Now we have preoperative testing for all of our patients,
and that's good for two reasons.
One is, if the patient tests positive for, you know,
COVID-19,
I would delay the operation because there have been reports
that those patients have a harder time
recovering from surgery.
And then, if a patient tests negative,
it's gonna put your whole healthcare team
at ease in terms of exposure,
so there's a lot of benefit there.
-One of the hardest parts about this that I'm being brave about
is that nobody will be able to come in and see me.
I would be lying if I didn't say it was really scary.
And what they're doing is taking out an entire lobe.
Rather than just taking the cancer and surrounding tissue,
they're taking out the entire front-right-bottom lobe.
My doctor says that, after the surgery,
it will take four to six weeks to be healed.
I will be in the hospital three or four days,
so that has to take awhile to heal,
and I will certainly want to stay healthy as I heal.
-[speaking indistinctly] -That is really [indistinct]
-Do the hand sanitizer, too.
-My hero!
-Hey! -[laughs]
-How are you? -I am so good.
I am so good. -Looking good.
You ready to go? -Thank you.
I am more than ready to go.
And if I'd had to put it off, who know what would've happened?
-Hard to say. -Could be different.
But we don't have to find that out.
-We don't have to know. We don't want to know.
-No, we don't.
This is the lucky thing, that I'm one of the people
that gets to have surgery for a major problem
which would get worse if they didn't take care of it now.
-How do you feel right now being discharged?
-Excited! It's great.
And not only discharged, but then I got
the "free from cancer" message this morning,
so I have no more treatments, which is great.
-While COVID is very important and we care about
that tremendously,
we also care about the rest of their medical needs,
and we don't want people to put their own health
at risk unnecessarily,
and that all of our hospitals, particularly in this region,
are prepared to take care of patients.
Because at the end of the day,
that is truly the hospital mission.
And I am hopeful that this experience, you know,
might help move the conversation
in our country away from medical care
as a profit center and more medical care
as an important need for all patients.