What is a surgical oncologist?
Although I’ve mentioned before that I am a surgical oncologist, but I recently noticed that, in nearly five months of blogging, I’ve yet to explain exactly what that is or what it means. I’ve written about all sorts of things, ranging from alternative medicine, to the evolution-creationism conflict, to the Holocaust, to even trying my hand at reviewing music. True, I’ve discussed a fair number of anecdotes based on patient stories. Certainly those stories can give a feel for what I do in the clinical part of my duties, but they don’t really explain what my specialty is. I’ve also spoken about the difficulties of combining a research career with a clinical career, but the emphasis was usually on the research and not so much on the actual clinical work that I do. I’ve never actually talked about what my specialty is. I find that somewhat odd. It just never occurred to me. Perhaps I just assumed that everyone knows, even though I know better than that. In my experience, there is a fair am
