Get To Know Dr. Mark L. Meyer

My grandfather, Dr. Herman Parris, dreamed of becoming a conductor and immersing himself in the world of music. He studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, but his beginnings were far from easy—born in Russia, his family fled pogroms and persecution, arriving in poverty. Though music was his passion, his mother urged him toward medicine. When he sought guidance from one of his professors at the Institute, he was advised to pursue medicine for a stable livelihood—reassured that he could still remain connected to music. He went on to establish an illustrious career as a generalist as well as an ENT surgeon. But life is unpredictable. He had his first heart attack at age 60, and a series of them in the years that followed. His progressive debilitation forced his retirement, which did have a silver lining: it allowed him to resume his music. He composed and conducted, and his vast collection of original works is catalogued and stored in the Philadelphia Public Library.

My other grandfather (my grandmother married another doctor after Herman succumbed to his heart disease), Dr. Jack Task, told me a story from his time as a physician. He had a patient who was dying, and there wasn’t much that could be done. My grandfather asked him, “Is there anything I can do for you?”. The man replied that what he really wanted was a pastrami sandwich. So the snooty teenager in me said, “I assume you didn’t do that. You were his doctor, not his waiter.” Without missing a beat, he said that in fact he had absolutely gone down the street to a deli and picked up the sandwich. As I sat there incredulously, he said that his primary role was to make people feel better.  He said the smile on his dying patient’s face was as gratifying as anything he had encountered in his career in medicine. I have done the same for my patients over the years, and you know, he was right.

My father, Dr. Arthur Meyer, grew up loved but also poor. His own father had to leave school after the ninth grade in order to support his family. My father loved sports, and despite his relatively short physical stature, he was an ace at basketball, only giving it up when he felt that it was interfering with his academics. He went on to college, the first generation to have done so in his family, and ultimately to medical school. He was a brilliant and gifted physician, and many people in my practice have heard about him, and benefitted from his compassionate expertise indirectly through me. He taught me that being a doctor is a privilege, and not one to take lightly. Right before I was off to Yale to begin my career in medicine, I thought it would be a good idea to go to the hospital and see what it was all about (remember, medicine was chosen for me so I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it). 

My father decided to start in the deep end, and took me to the ICU. As an oncologist, he was surrounded with joy and anguish, and very ill patients. We walked into a room of a patient who was hooked up to tubes and IVs. I started to get very lightheaded and had to go to the waiting room, where a visitor gave me a paper bag to breathe into. (My father was so engrossed in his work that he had no idea I had even left.) When I came back, he was saying to the patient, “Jeez Charlie—didn’t I tell you not to keep bleeding? What’s the matter with you”, and gave him a soft slap on the leg. On our drive home, I asked my father if that wasn’t a bit disrespectful and callous for a man sick enough to be in the ICU. He said, “Mark, what was Charlie doing when I was yelling at him?” I said, “Come to think of it, he was laughing.” My father said, “I’m not the undertaker. He’s already sick, and in the ICU, with cancer. I’m there to make people feel better. A great physician can write the orders, examine the patient, and make a patient laugh, all at the same time.” This is a lesson I have deployed through my entire medical career- compassionate irreverence. And in the process, I have learned about people’s lives, their families, and what drives them. And a bond of trust is created, and this is what distinguishes the true physician from a generic “health care provider.”