A Doctor's Life Changing Transformation

A Doctor's Life Changing Transformation

Briana Zimmermaker

Galen College

English 1

             A vast majority of people who get hospitalized are treated poorly and have a very unpleasant experience due to a lack of sympathy and healthcare professionalism within the workplace. When you get diagnosed with cancer, it is the worst. A lot of healthcare professionals such as doctors may be considered arrogant and unsympathetic such as Dr. Jack MacKee in the movie The Doctor, but when he unexpectedly is diagnosed with throat cancer and spends time as a patient, his outlook on things change drastically and he slowly starts to open his eyes. 

           Jack Mackee is a very successful and rich heart surgeon that is all about his job. Yet, the   one main thing he lacks is sympathy and compassion for all of his patients. Dr. Jack Mackee is known to his staff as a very cold-hearted and arrogant doctor. He constantly made very ignorant jokes in reference to his patients and felt that it is better to be emotionally detached from them. His motto is “it is better to cut straight and care less”. But when Jack starts to cough up blood and decides he should seek help, his life takes an unexpected turn. He gets checked out by the new female physician in the hospital (Dr. Leslie Abbott), who he found to be professional but not so friendly. She diagnoses him with throat cancer and he is told that there is an 80% chance it can be cured with radiation therapy and if that fails he may need to undergo surgery. In that case, it is impossible to predict how his vocal cords would respond and he could ultimately loose the power of speech. It was devastating news, which he received with disbelief.  Dr. Jack Mackee soon comes to realization what it is like to be a patient instead of a doctor. While undergoing treatment, Jack experienced what it was truly like to be a patient. He didn’t want to share a room with anyone, he would make a scene if he felt that he was filling out too much paperwork, and he generally started to feel that no one cared about him. He did not like how his own hospital treated him. Even though he was a well respected surgeon, he was not a first priority. Jack thought he should be taken care of first but didn't take into consideration that there were the other patients suffering from cancer as well. He soon realized he was just considered a patient, nothing more. His doctor, Dr. Abbott, treated him the exact same way he was treating patients, with no compassion. Jack started to have a completely different outlook on things, including life itself.

           During Jack's career he never made any time for his family. He would constantly be focused on work and make his wife and son a second priority. In a scene from the movie, Jack was standing in the living room when his son rushed in, Ann told him to say hello to his father but his son automatically went to pick up the phone. This specific scene shows how he never gets to see his father. Jack was not as family oriented as he should have been. When he was diagnosed with cancer he pushed his wife, Ann, away more and more. He never allowed her to come with him to appointments or tests and he did not want her support what so ever. While attending appointments, he meets another patient, June, who is suffering from advanced brain cancer. They start to meet up daily while receiving their treatments. Jack went to June for comfort while dealing with his cancer and treatment because he felt that she could relate to him. But soon enough Jack finds out that June is dying. He learns that that her cancer could have been caught if she had been properly diagnosed. Jack sincerely connects with June and really starts to understand the meaning of caring for his patients. Along the way, June also helps Jack realize that he needs to include his wife and his son in this journey to get better and that he needs his family more than anything. She teaches Jack that life is worth living even with the problems he still has to overcome. Even though his wife may have developed some awkward or jealous feelings towards the relationship that he and June had, it was for his own good. Dr. Jack Mackee really starts to open his eyes and see the big picture.