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	The Light Within: The Extraordinary Friendship of a Doctor and Patient Brought Together by Cancer By: Ramondetta, Lois M.; Sills, Deborah Published By: HarperCollins ePub for Digital Editions Price: $18.99 PDF for Digital Editions Price: $18.99 Mobipocket Reader Price: $18.99 Microsoft Reader Price: $18.99 PDF for Digital EditionsePub for Digital EditionsMobipocket ReaderMicrosoft Reader	EBOOK OPTIONS ADD TO CART ADD TO WISHLIST TELL A FRIEND RECEIVE ALERTS
	The luminous true story of a friendship that shed the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship and became less a confrontation with death than a celebration of the joys of life When young gynecologic oncology fellow Lois Ramondetta was first summoned to the room of a new patient, neither she nor the forty-nine-year-old professor of religion she encountered named Deborah Sills thought they had much in common. They certainly had no idea that they were about to embark on a transcendent odyssey that would become a soul-deep friendship. Now their heartfelt story, The Light Within, follows these two women through a decade of friendship and "big lives"—husbands, children, friends, and careers—ultimately crossing the country and traveling to foreign lands, where they spoke and wrote together about the intersection of doctors, patients, and spirituality. Both women searched together and openly for answers with honesty and intimacy until Deborah passed away in the spring of 2006.

Excerpt

Chapter One

I first met Deborah Rose Sills late one December evening in 1998. I was a fellow at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, Texas, pursuing a career in gynecologic oncology, and she was a patient—a forty-nine-year-old woman with ovarian cancer.

I'd been on duty since 5:30 that morning, and at about ten o'clock—almost fifteen hours later—I finally made it back to my second home, a cramped hospital call room I shared with the rest of the trainees in my department. I'd reviewed my "To Do" list, collapsed onto the room's tiny bed, and drifted off to sleep, but I was roused a short time later by the insistent buzzing of my pager. I reached for the phone, none too happy, and dialed the nurses' station.

"It's Dr. Ramondetta," I said. "What's up?"

"The patient in room 710 won't drink her GoLYTELY," the nurse said.

I found this pretty irritating. I'm a New Jersey girl, only recently transplanted to Texas, and definitely am not as laid back as the natives. I didn't appreciate being robbed of sleep by a patient who seemed to have no regard for authority. To compound matters, she was my chairman's patient, and the political component only upset me further.

When I walked into her room, my arms crossed to show my displeasure, I met a woman who greeted me with equal obstinacy: Her hands were on her hips, and she stared at me, ready to do battle.

"So," I said, looking into her lively, defiant eyes. "I hear you won't drink your laxative."

"That's right," she replied, not blinking.

Deb's husband, Giles Gunn, a gentle-looking but slightly intimidating figure, was standing beside her. He seemed curious about the direction in which our stubbornness would take us, but I knew that this late-night summons could have only one possible ending: My chairman's patient was going to be prepared for surgery, whether she liked it or not.

"That's going to be a problem," I said, trying to keep my voice level and patient. "You have a small bowel obstruction that requires surgical intervention, and you are due in the operating room tomorrow morning. If you don't drink your GoLYTELY, there's not going to be any surgery."

"I haven't eaten anything in two weeks," she said. "I'm already empty."

"I know that's what you think, but we need to clean you out completely," I said. "Otherwise, there's a risk of spillage and infection."

"There's nothing to spill," she said, getting angry. "I've been throwing up for weeks."

"Deb," Giles said gently. "There's no reason to get upset."

She didn't answer. She just stared at me, waiting for my next move.

"Look," I said. "I can pour the stuff over ginger ale or put it on ice—it might taste a little better that way—but that's about all I can do. If you don't drink it, there won't be any surgery."

She looked at Giles, then back at me. She was still angry, but she knew she was fighting a losing battle. "Okay," she said. "I'll try."

"Thank you," I said. "That's all I ask."

The next morning she was taken to the operating room as planned. Since I was the physician at the bottom of the medical team hierarchy, it was my job to make the first incision, and I used a scalpel to open her abdominal cavity—all the way from her umbilicus to her pubic bone. I was relieved to see no visible cancer, the usual cause of bowel blockage in these cases, but her small intestine was matted with adhesions. The surgery was long and tedious—lasting over six hours in total. The team went from stricture to stricture, releasing each adhesion by sliding the scalpel along the outside of the bowel, as if scaling a fish. At each point of release, we advanced a few centimeters, until at long last we reached the end of the small intestine. With the job done, and with all of us feeling that it had been a success, Deb was sewn up and wheeled into the recovery room.

The following morning, as I did every morning, I made the rounds of all the patients on the gynecologic service. I usually started at 5:30 A.M., waking the patients, collecting vital data, and hurried to get done by six. I quickly learned that Deb needed to be left for last on morning rounds, otherwise I wouldn't have time to see the rest of the patients.

I will never forget how she looked in the morning. If she was awake, she would yawn and stretch her arms wide, as if trying to embrace the day, and she always greeted me with great vigor: "Good morning, Dr. Lois!" If she was asleep, I'd wake her with a gentle touch, and she'd open her eyes and smile broadly, waking with a loud "Hello!"

"How are you feeling?" I'd ask.

"I feel great!" she'd say, so full of energy she seemed lit from within.

Truthfully, it was hard for me to imagine anyone in her position feeling great. She had intravenous tubes in her arms, a nasogastric tube in her nose, and another tube protruding through the skin of her abdomen. The latter two were hooked to suction canisters on the wall. Despite it all, she was beaming.

"How can you feel great?" I asked, smiling. Her joy was contagious.

"Well, I've been told I have no cancer," she said. "And there's the possibility of eating again."

At that point, I knew very little about Deborah Rose Sills. I knew she was a professor of religion from Santa Barbara, California; that she was married and had two kids; and that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer the previous year. What I did not know then is that she and I were about to embark on one of the most remarkable relationships of my life.

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