“The light within” the true story of very special doctor-patient relationship

Dr. Lois Ramondetta was finally asleep on a hospital cot after 15 hours on duty—and many hours to go on her shift—when the call came in. The gynecologic oncologist, who was on staff at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, pulled herself together and made her way to the room of ovarian cancer patient Deborah (Deb) Rose Sills. Sills was angrily refusing a pre-surgery laxative drink. “I haven’t eaten in two weeks,” Deb argued. “There’s nothing to clean out!” Lois told Deb she wouldn’t be able to have her surgery unless she took the laxative.

An unforgettable friendship
That tense encounter was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship between Ramondetta, then 36, married and the mother of a year-old daughter, and Deb, 49 at the time, wife, mother of two, and a professor of comparative religion. Over the next eight years, from 1998 to 2006 when Deb died, doctor and patient forged an unforgettable friendship: They shopped together, ate together, traveled together, and talked about everything ... their children, husbands, life, cancer, and death.

After collaborating on a medical paper entitled “Religion and Spirituality in the ‘Art of Dying,’?” the women decided that they had enough to say on the subject to write a book. In the book, The Light Within (HarperCollins, 2008), Lois describes Deb’s energy, beauty, style, and love for life; Deb writes that Lois is “fast-talking, beautiful, funny, and smart.” Here are excerpts from their remarkable story.

Deborah’s words:
How did Dr. Lois and I go from being a patient and physician at odds with each other one night to two women who were interested in what the other had to say? Dr. Lois would wake me up before 6:00 am…. After the medical questions … the real conversations would begin….

She had studied both biology and religion in college … and seemed sure of a connection between healing the body and healing the spirit. Her visits had a kind of intimate character to them … I wanted to know everything about her. Who she was, where she lived, and how she had come to choose this daunting profession.

Lois’ words:
“My doctor should know who I am,” Deb told me more than once, and I will never forget the power of that statement. My doctor should know who I am.

My relationship with Deb taught me that I should always fight for closeness. I do not expect to have equally intense relationships with all of my patients, but it is critical for me to get to know them as individuals….

Every conversation was a chance to grow and to redefine myself, not only as a doctor, but also as a human being….

As Deb noted, “Cancer brings the threat of chaos into the patient’s world, raises the specter of suffering, and death….”

If a patient could not talk openly about these things with his or her doctor, to whom could she turn? I felt that these conversations needed to be central to our relationships with our patients, because in the end, that human connection was all that remained.