A Tribute to Victor Barbalata, MD — A Palliative Medicine Story

Jan 23, 2016

I was a six year-old child. My grandfather was dying. The year was 1966. It was back when they actually took a loved-one home to die peacefully. I had some very nice memories of my grandfather. We once crossed pee lines once and I was happy to announce to all of the company what we had accomplished. My mother covered my mouth and dragged me off to some corner of the room while my grandmother had words with my grandfather. I even remember his use of some cool Yiddish words like ‘bupkis’.

The distinct memory of being snuck up to his hospital room in some New York City hospital to see him still haunts me today. Compared to my prior memory of him, he had lost a considerable amount of weight; a skeleton of sorts and I remember being startled by his appearance. He was equally startled to see me and barely was able to get the name Scotty out of his cottony mouth.

There was nothing left to do to help him. An exploratory laparotomy had revealed some sort of connective tissue disease cancer (later to be determined as Lymphoma once I was in medical school). The only thing to do apparently was to let him die. And so he was taken to the beach bungalow that my grandparents had rented in East Atlantic Beach, New York for the summer.

There were many visits. He remained mostly bed ridden. My cousin assisted most of the summer to help my grandmother out with his care. But there was one Saturday morning, my father took me on a ride to pick-up Dr. Victor Barbarlata. My parents’ physician had agreed to see my grandfather to see if he could help him be more comfortable. Dr. Barbalata travelled about an hour from New York City on a subway train to a final stop in Kew Gardens, Queens, where we picked him up in our Blue Buick. I remember him coming from the subway station towards the car holding his doctor bag.

We drove another hour to the bungalow in East Atlantic Beach where he examined my grandfather and gave him some sort of an injection. He took a swim in the ocean and we returned him back to the subway station so he could return home. I don’t remember any money exchanging hands. I remember a lot of thank yous and hand shaking.

My total experience with the hospice philosophy of care during my medical training including medical school, a four-year residency, and a two-year fellowship was zero. Twenty-six years after the death of my grandfather I admitted my first patient to a hospice program in Tucson. With my large geriatric popualtion, it quickly became clear that palliative care in the form of hospice is often the only sensible choice for a patient. Now we have groups of professionals who tend to the dying patient.

I often wonder what influence Dr. Barbarlata would later have on my attitude towards hospice. I admire that I witnessed the event of a physician spending four hours in travel to give a patient a “comforting” injection that probably only lasted a couple of hours. What relief he gave to my father and grandmother was volumes; what relief did my grandfather have of seeing my parent’s physician show up to see him?

Many lessons were learned. Witness to my first hospice experience without ever realizing it. And so this short tale is a tribute to Dr. Victor Barbalata and all the physicians who go beyond the usual.