Patient-Doctor Discussion #3

A patient recounts years of interacting with the medical field.

What is The Clinical Excellence Podcast?

The Clinical Excellent Podcast, sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence is a biweekly podcast hosted by Drs. Adam Cifu and Matthew Sorrentino. The podcast has three formats: discussions between doctors and patients, discussions with authors of research pertinent to improving clinical care and the doctor-patient relationship and discussions with physicians about challenges in the doctor-patient relationship or in the life of a physician.

[00:00:00] Dr. Cifu: On today's episode of The Clinical Excellence Podcast, we have Mr. Arthur Taylor and his doctor, Marshall Chin.

[00:00:11] Mr. Taylor: Integration had just come about, schools were just converting, classes were just getting mixed, medical... They had segregated waiting rooms for doctors. They had what they called colored waiting rooms and white waiting rooms.

[00:00:30] Dr. Cifu: We're back with another episode of The Clinical Excellence Podcast, sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute. On this podcast, we speak to patients and doctors about all aspects of excellence in clinical medicine. I'm Adam Cifu, and today we have a conversation with one of our patients. I'm joined by Mr. Arthur Taylor and Dr. Marshall Chin. Thanks to you both so much for joining me today.

[00:00:51] Mr. Taylor: You're welcome.

[00:00:52] Dr. Chin: Thanks for inviting us.

[00:00:53] Mr. Taylor: Yeah.

[00:00:55] Dr. Cifu: Since we're focusing on Mr. Taylor, I'm going to give the briefest of introductions possible to my colleague, Marshall Chin. Dr. Chin is the Richard Parrillo Family Distinguished Service Professor of Healthcare Ethics at the University of Chicago. He is also a senior faculty scholar in the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence. I've known Marshall since I arrived here, whatever, 25-26 years ago. Mr. Taylor, you're on stage for us today. Before I ask you questions about your time sort of here as a patient and your relationship with Dr. Chin, can you just tell me a little bit of your story? Where are you from originally?

[00:01:32] Mr. Taylor: Well, my name is Arthur Taylor Jr. and I was born April 22nd, 1931 in Chicago. I was born in St. Luke's Hospital, and I've lived here most of my life. Let's see, I went through high school here, or half went through high school. I left high school in my second year, after my second year, and went in the military. I volunteered, went in the US Army in 1947, I was 15.

[00:02:04] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:02:05] Mr. Taylor: And, um, I convinced my parents if they would sign for me to go in, saying I was 17, that I would be able to acquire this G.I. Bill of Rights which they had at that date and time. So they did. I went into the Army Air Corps, which was stationed in San Antonio.

And, um, after a short stint in the Air Corps, they made it the Air Force, and I decided I didn't like the Air Force, so I requested to be transferred to the Airborne, that was a way of leaving the Air Corps.

[00:02:47] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:02:48] Mr. Taylor: So I went to the 82nd Airborne Division, the 555th Airborne Infantry Regiment, that was the all-black paratroopers at that time in the 80... They were not in the 82nd at that time, but we later became a part of the 82nd Airborne Division, became a paratrooper, and did three years. I was, um, my MOS was a surgical technician and I jumped with many sticks.

[00:03:15] Dr. Cifu: Wow.

[00:03:16] Mr. Taylor: And that was one of the things. I enjoyed my army days.

[00:03:19] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:03:20] Mr. Taylor: After discharge, I came back to Chicago and, uh, entered the University of Illinois at Navy Pier. And then, in the summer, got a job with the CTA, Chicago Transit Authority. I put my age up again and went to 77th Street Depot where I got broke in on conductor, motorman, one-man cars, and buses. So I did that until, uh, 1952. And then I left Chicago and went out to Seattle and tried to make a lot of money on a Boeing aircraft. That didn't work out, so I came back and went on the Chicago Police Department.

[00:04:05] Dr. Cifu: Got it. Got it. Are you now telling the truth about your age, or are you still...?

[00:04:10] Mr. Taylor: I didn't have to change my age, really. I got caught with the CTA.

[00:04:15] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:04:15] Mr. Taylor: Uh, they needed a birth certificate. I had a diploma already...

[00:04:21] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:04:21] Mr. Taylor: ...because I had taken my GED but anyway, when the superintendent sent me down, he said, "You have to produce it for your insurance purposes. You have to have a birth certificate or something." So I go down and I gave him my real birth certificate and my army discharge. He looked at both, he said, "You were a paratrooper? You, you've been lying for the last three years?" He said, "Well just shut your mouth, and go on back to the depot." Because you had to be 21 to have chauffeur's license, I was just 19. So he didn't say nothing, so that went on.

[00:05:01] Dr. Cifu: I love it, I love it.

[00:05:02] Mr. Taylor: So, that part is over, and I went on to the police department and I did 10 years with them.

[00:05:07] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:05:08] Mr. Taylor: I enjoyed that. I was in the district in the... I worked the district, second district, 29th and Prairie. That was from 16th Street to 39th from the lake to Dan Ryan. Then I went to the Detective Bureau of Robbery Detail and spent some time there, a couple of years there. And then left, and the reason that I left is because when I went to a reunion down in Fort Benning, Georgia, I ran into one of my NCOs who was in service with me. We had been to Korea. And, uh, our outfit got his outfit out of some difficulties. So he asked me, uh, what was I doing? I said, "I'm with CPD." He said, "How much you making?" I said, "9,500." He said, "How would you like to start at 17, 000?" I said, "And who are you crapping with?" "No," he said, "this is legit." He gave me his card. His daddy was the vice president of General Motors, so I went over to General Motors in La Grange.

[00:06:18] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:06:19] Mr. Taylor: They just told me, "Hey, sign here," and so for the next 30-something years I was with General Motors.

[00:06:24] Dr. Cifu: Wow.

[00:06:25] Mr. Taylor: I went up the ranks.

[00:06:27] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:06:27] Mr. Taylor: And I got to be a superintendent of Danville plant.

[00:06:32] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:06:32] Mr. Taylor: And retired.

[00:06:33] Dr. Cifu: Got it. So you retired from General Motors?

[00:06:35] Mr. Taylor: I retired from General Motors.

[00:06:37] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:06:37] Mr. Taylor: I retired in '96.

[00:06:39] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:06:40] Mr. Taylor: Then I came back to Chicago. I had hooked up with the University of Chicago. Dr. Chin came along about 2000.

[00:06:48] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:06:48] Mr. Taylor: Somewhere in that period he became my doctor. We immediately hooked up.

[00:06:54] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:06:54] Mr. Taylor: And one of the reasons is he looked at me and looked at my sheet and said, "Well, what can I do for you?" I told him, "Well, listen, I don't want you to make me 40, but I want to know, can you make me the best 80?"

[00:07:07] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:07:08] Mr. Taylor: He said, "I can do that." So we hooked up from that point. We've never had a problem. It was straight up and, uh, have had a great relationship with my doctor. My wife, she is also his patient.

[00:07:22] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:07:22] Mr. Taylor: And we referred many, many patients to him because of his excellent care, sensitivity to his patients, and their needs.

[00:07:33] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:07:33] Mr. Taylor: And, uh,...

[00:07:35] Dr. Cifu: So let me ask you, you're amazing because as I write down questions as you talk, you then go on and answer the question that I was going to ask you but obviously, I mean, you've had lots of doctors over the years, I'm sure. Um, it sounds like you and Dr. Chin sort of hit it off real quickly. What was it about him that, you know, put you at ease and made you comfortable and made you want to stick with him, I guess?

[00:08:02] Mr. Taylor: Well, he was very honest about it because, hey, at the time, uh, I was a senior citizen.

[00:08:08] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:08:09] Mr. Taylor: I recognized I was a senior citizen. And so he asked me, he said, "How do you classify yourself? Excellent? Good? Fair? What's your condition?" I said, "Well, I feel that, um, fair. I'm a little better than fair. So he said, "Well, in your age group with all the friends that you have, how do you feel? Do you feel better than them? Worse or what?" So I said, "I'm at the top of the line on that. I'm still doing everything I want." He said, "Well, that's good." And so I noticed he was able to ask me questions that was easy for me to answer.

[00:08:49] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:08:50] Mr. Taylor: And so, that's when I asked him, could he keep me at the same age, or keep me up, and he said, "Oh, yeah, I can do it, do that. I can do that."

[00:08:58] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:59] Mr. Taylor: "Your expectation's a way I can deal with it." And from that we formed a friendship, not only that, the conversations, anything that I had to ask him, he gave me an honest answer, and the same thing for me.

[00:09:14] Dr. Cifu: Did you see him first, or did your wife see him first?

[00:09:16] Mr. Taylor: I did.

[00:09:18] Dr. Cifu: And when you, I guess, sort of suggested to your wife, "Hey, I saw somebody new, there's someone for you to see," what did you tell her? What was...

[00:09:26] Mr. Taylor: Well, I said, "Hey, you're going to like him."

[00:09:27] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:09:30] Mr. Taylor: Yeah, because this is my second marriage. My first wife, I married her in '53, she passed in '07. So that's 54 years. That was a difficult situation, I mean to lose her after that period of time.

[00:09:46] Dr. Cifu: Of course.

[00:09:47] Mr. Taylor: And I'm trying to think if she was your patient, and I don't think she was. I don't think she was. Okay, and then it took me three years to get remarried.

[00:09:59] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:09:59] Mr. Taylor: And I've been married now 13 years to my current wife.

[00:10:02] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:10:02] Mr. Taylor: And she was living in Michigan.

[00:10:04] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:10:05] Mr. Taylor: So I was glad that the medical services they were receiving, where she was, she had to go to 60 miles to her...

[00:10:13] Dr. Cifu: Oh, boy.

[00:10:14] Mr. Taylor: She was in Dowagiac, and I think she had to go to South Bend, and so forth and on. So when we got married, then when she came here, I immediately requested that Dr. Chin would receive her as a patient, and he did.

[00:10:28] Dr. Cifu: Terrific. And then a question, and I often ask my patients this, you know, you've obviously seen a lot in life and a lot in medicine. I mean, I'm sure your experience with medicine in the army and afterwards, you know, is another world from where we are today. What have you sort of seen change that you appreciate as kind of good changes or maybe things that have changed for the worse over time?

[00:10:55] Mr. Taylor: Well, the youngsters nowadays, they're too smart and academically smart. Dr. Chin has, uh, he has interns, residents of all types. And I can evaluate the youngsters when they come in, don't misunderstand. And like I say, clinically they are right on point.

[00:11:16] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:11:17] Mr. Taylor: Uh, but what they have to learn is they have to ask questions. And sometimes I tell them that, I say, "Hey, I know you know it all, you're the smartest they got, this is the biggest, smartest institution..."

[00:11:32] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:11:33] Mr. Taylor: "...but you have to communicate with your patient."

[00:11:36] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:11:36] Mr. Taylor: "You have to get their confidence, et cetera." So I work on them like that and surprise them a little bit. I ask them where they're from, I go through their history.

[00:11:45] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah.

[00:11:45] Mr. Taylor: And we get down to it, make a little contact with them. Now, I have a granddaughter. She is finishing up her... She's a doctor. She's from Green Bay.

[00:11:57] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:11:58] Mr. Taylor: She went to the university at Madison, Wisconsin but she decided... I thought she was going into sports medicine, but she decided she wants to be a pathologist.

[00:12:12] Dr. Cifu: Huh.

[00:12:13] Mr. Taylor: So now she's finishing up her last couple of weeks down in Phoenix, Arizona, wherever the specialty is and she's coming back and she's going to do her practicing in Wisconsin.

[00:12:25] Dr. Cifu: It's wonderful.

[00:12:28] Mr. Taylor: I don't know what she's going to do, but she can do what she wants. So based on that, I'm only trying to say, when I look at these students, second year, third year, it's easy for me to talk to them.

[00:12:39] Dr. Cifu: Yeah. My sense is also from the way you said it, that you feel like you can read these people pretty quickly and feel like, oh, this is someone who I connect with or not. Is that true?

[00:12:49] Mr. Taylor: That's no question.

[00:12:50] Dr. Cifu: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:52] Mr. Taylor: Kids are kids.

[00:12:53] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:12:54] Mr. Taylor: I mean, I don't mean... They're smart kids....

[00:12:56] Dr. Cifu: Right, right.

[00:12:58] Mr. Taylor: ...but they are kids.

[00:12:58] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, well we struggle with, I think, that teaching and are there things that you can sort of identify that you feel like, ah, you know, "This is what makes someone who I can instantly connect with even across, what is it, 60 years, you know, age difference with these young doctors."

[00:13:19] Mr. Taylor: Oh, yes, because I've got five children. My oldest is 69, then I had 68, 65, one of them would be 62, and I think I have one 58 and we were family-oriented, meaning we grew up in a Catholic family, meaning they all went to Catholic school, same classmates, for eight years. So I'm still in contact with all of those families. And so you get around, that means you're in a social environment with children of all ages, et cetera, et cetera. And, um, we're still in contact, and they're from doctors to lawyers to Indian chiefs, and some have been to jail, and some... So, I only say it like that. When you talk to a youngster, and I call them, I can say youngsters too, you can see where their goals and objectives are.

If they're on track, if they're... If you're talking to them, and they'll reveal whether they know it or not, uh, and you can see based on your experience of children that you've known. If your oldest child is 69, you've seen a lot of children in between.

[00:14:36] Dr. Cifu: Right.

[00:14:37] Mr. Taylor: They can't BS too much out of you. And you tell them that upfront. And when they come, you say, "Hold it. Let's not go there." That's the best I can say.

[00:14:48] Dr. Cifu: That's great. I'm going to let Dr. Chin ask a couple of questions, but I have one more maybe a little bit more specific question. You know, in the medical care that you've experienced over your life, are there times that you know, medicine, the care you've received has sort of let you down, that we haven't done as good a job as you'd hoped for whatever reason? Whether it be, you know, in the way the doctors relate to you or the way the care is provided, where we've fallen short that we can learn from.

[00:15:23] Mr. Taylor: Well, I can't complain. I'm going to rate the University of Chicago as a 10 plus. I've been to a lot of hospitals over the country. I've been in a lot of small towns where they just don't have the facilities.

[00:15:39] Dr. Cifu: Sure.

[00:15:39] Mr. Taylor: Uh, not only that, depending on the system or where you are, I went South in 1970 to open a plant and, uh...

[00:15:54] Dr. Cifu: This is when you were with GM?

[00:15:55] Mr. Taylor: Yeah. And what happened was, the way things were, integration had just come about, schools were just converting, classes were just getting mixed, medical... They had segregated waiting rooms for doctors. They had what they called colored waiting rooms and white waiting rooms. And I had an incident because my job was manager of manufacturing. All the supervisors reported to me, I reported to the plant manager. And that being said, we were buying houses, bringing people in, and everyone had to get a doctor. And so we went to see to Jackson, Tennessee clinic, this particular doctor, he was going to not only be our doctor at first, he's going to have all of our employees to give them physicals.

[00:16:52] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:16:53] Mr. Taylor: And as soon as I got there to see his facilities, I saw this big division. So I reported it back to my plant manager and that meant it was going to corporate. And he says, some of the Southerners who were familiar with this situation, who worked in personnel in other different places, saying, "What do you mean they're prejudiced down there?" I said, "I'll tell you one reason. You have an identification for Jackson clinic?" "Yes." So I said, "Pull it out." So what it was, all my white employees had Mr. So and so. And the four black supervisors I had, their names were Arthur Taylor. So my plant sergeant said, "What?" So he made a phone call. We got these kinds of things but also at the same time, as he examined our prospective employees, black employees always had high blood pressure, murmurs, et cetera, et cetera. It was just evident to me. It wasn't evident to other people until I brought it to their attention. Uh, so services around the country are different. We'd have to go to different... We didn't need, at that date and time, I didn't need any real medical treatment at that time.

The racial situation in the medical field has changed since 1970, in my opinion. That's the only thing I can be witness to.

[00:18:25] Dr. Cifu: Sure.

[00:18:25] Mr. Taylor: Uh, how people treat you, um, at the reception desk to the finish line...

[00:18:34] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah.

[00:18:34] Mr. Taylor: ...it's another thing. What I'm saying, when you get a good reference to go get an X-ray, uh, you run into certain situations and either you... I evaluate them every time I go in.

[00:18:48] Dr. Cifu: Sure.

[00:18:48] Mr. Taylor: I give them a 5, 2, 6, 7, whatever. But I know. And I trained my children to be the same. They're all professionals. And we've been able to carry that through. On the race whole thing, I never had a big problem, any problem with it. That's me personally. My children were trained to be able to handle that type of situation and they've all been in integrated communities. Yeah, well, in 1970, we left Chicago and we were the first blacks to integrate West Tennessee. We bought a house. Nobody threw a rock or threw an egg at our house. However, the FBI was flying them helicopters over our heads, but we never had a problem. So the integration went well.

And I became the vice president to the association of the whole northern part of the county. Uh, but that, that took work.

[00:19:51] Dr. Cifu: I imagine when you were doing that work in 1970, you know, setting people up with the physicians, I imagine you really impacted the health care that those employees were getting.

[00:20:02] Mr. Taylor: No question.

[00:20:03] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:20:04] Mr. Taylor: For example, we had one young lady, I'm trying to think, who was failed, she was actually failed. And I think she had inverted ovaries.

[00:20:15] Dr. Cifu: Okay.

[00:20:15] Mr. Taylor: And I waived her anyway.

[00:20:18] Dr. Cifu: Got it.

[00:20:18] Mr. Taylor: Uh, and the reason I waived her is because she told me, she said, "Let's tell her I got four or five children, don't have a husband. I need a job. And they won't let me get one."

[00:20:28] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:20:28] Mr. Taylor: "They're going to keep me on this [unintelligible]." So when she goes in, inverted ovaries or whatever it was, when her thing came back, I waived her that and called the particular doctor and he wanted... I said, "Whoa, I'm not going there with you."

[00:20:45] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:20:46] Mr. Taylor: So, um, what I did do is changed doctors. I got to change that. Um, I knew the law. I knew how, what we could do and I had the chairman of the board backing what we were doing.

[00:21:04] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:21:05] Mr. Taylor: So, I took a different approach to that, but things started to work out surprisingly when you run into those kind of problems and you start working with it, people turn out to be okay.

[00:21:14] Dr. Cifu: Sure.

[00:21:16] Mr. Taylor: I'm sorry I got into this...

[00:21:17] Dr. Chin: The more the better. So I wanted to ask you, Mr. Taylor, that, so, I've learned a lot from you, that, you know, you're almost like 90, you're about 90 years old, and so you've seen a lot of the world and a lot of life, and we got some sense of that over the past 20 minutes. And, uh, I wanted to follow up on the question Dr. Cifu asked, that navigating the healthcare system as a man, navigating the healthcare system as an African American man and, you know, you talked about Jim Crow in the South and, you know, there are issues now, today, too, in terms of, you know, being a man, an African American man, navigating the system. Um, how have you succeeded? Because I think, like, you have an incredibly high amount of emotional intelligence and, like, people skills. You have a very good way with people. And so, you know, what is this challenge that, you know, you face as an African American man navigating the system? And then how have you succeeded? How have you taught your children to succeed in this system?

[00:22:14] Mr. Taylor: Well, my mother and father got married in 1930. My father worked for the railroad. He started working on the railroad when he was 15. But as I grew up, I had three siblings. I was the oldest. And my father would tell me, he says, "Junior, when I leave out of this house, you're the man of the house. Now, whatever your mother wants done, you do it." And he put a responsibility on me that I had to accept, that was to take care of my siblings, take care of my mother, etc. And I only say that, when you receive responsibilities, either you accept them or you don't, I've been always the person who did not mind taking on the challenge.

And I was in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, all that, went in the military. Um, I'll tell you, if you're 15, with all men, you have to hold your own. And, I mean, or they'll run over you, but I didn't allow that, I just held my own. And, uh, I started being promoted. I was a buck sergeant when I got out and one imperative was you don't get ranked. They don't give it to you. You have to earn it. Trust me.

Uh, but one of the things, I'd been in ROTC in high school. And when we had class, one of the instructors came in, in basic training and he says, "We're in map reading course. And does anyone here know what a map is?" And of course, everybody froze, in basic training, they're not safe very much. You don't volunteer nothing. So nobody, he said, "You mean to tell me that nobody knows what this up on the wall is?" I raised my hand. So he pointed at me. "What is it?" I said, "That is a graphical representation of an area of land drawn to scale on a piece of paper." He said, "What did you say?" So I repeated, "Okay," he said, "stay right here." So he was a buck sergeant. He went and got staff and everybody else and I had to repeat that. I became PFC. And I said, sure, you know if you know your stuff, you might be able to get it. But I say that only to say my training has trained me not to tell people what to do, you have to learn the job yourself.

And in my case, I'm always one of those people, if you're doing it, I want to know how you did it. And I'll follow through and I'll learn how to do that particular job that's not my work job but I expect that basically out of my... professional people that I deal with. Uh, I was fortunate, in Danville, Illinois, we had a black doctor, he went to Meharry, Fred Crockett, and, uh, his children were the same age as mine, so we just moved into town. He said, "Hey, brother," we hooked up right away. He was one of the smartest doctors I met. And the reason he was smart because whatever you went in to see Fred Crockett about, you said, "Doc, um, I don't feel good, uh, my chest is hurting, my stomach is hurting," he said, "Whoa, that's rough." He said, "You're going to the hospital tomorrow, and when we got results..." He never would diagnose on your visit. He would send you to the hospital then when you came back with the results, which came back pretty fast then, he became a genius. And, uh, I say that only to say, he always, he said, "Bro, we got to do this here. You gotta work this here." So forth and on. And he did that with all of my family but,so for 27 years, I was with him. So when I came here I had been familiar with being around. I'm not shy of doctors.

[00:26:14] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:26:15] Mr. Taylor: And I say that because so many people when they come to see a doctor they are frightened. Around the country, it is more so, depending on what type of medical education or whatever.

But I've had doctors say, "You're not from around here." And you say, "Well, what does that mean?" Well, you'd only just accept it. That's basically what they're saying.

[00:26:46] Dr. Cifu: Right.

[00:26:48] Mr. Taylor: And then the facilities, do they have the facilities to do it? I don't want to go off on a tangent on it, but I look at black people around the country who are not getting proper medical attention. It's either they're not intelligent enough to know that they have to talk to somebody about it or they keep away from it. And it's the way it's always been.

[00:27:10] Dr. Cifu: It's also one of the hardest things, I think, for us as doctors, right, to, you know, empower people and get people comfortable asking for the things that they want, right? Because often people come into the office and are hesitant to either be honest about what's bothering them or ask for the things that they need.

[00:27:34] Mr. Taylor: That's absolutely right. I've talked to so many patients, I say, "Did you tell your doc?" "Oh, no, I didn't tell him." I was like, "Well, why didn't you tell him?" "I forgot," and I tell them, "Well, write it down, and get there and hand them the list."

Dr. Chin has my wife's relatives, they come, and they are really medically ignorant in terms of what they need, and it's the... I'm not going to say just the education, just the way, that's the way it was. Doctor, period.

[00:28:10] Dr. Cifu: I think Marshall and I are probably the same, that we've said, I love lists more than anybody in the world because when people come in and have written out all of their concerns, boy, it makes life easy for us to be able to say, okay, I can go through those and make sure we tackle everything on this visit.

[00:28:29] Dr. Chin: There's another question, Mr. Taylor, that, you know, 90 years, and so like anyone you've had your life journey and you had your life health journey and at times that we've needed to expand the medical team when, you know, an issue rises, right? So it's getting to know like a new team of doctors and nurses and all. And so what does that all sort of like mean in terms of the like, you know, the doctor-patient relationship and how it evolves over time? And what happens when the team gets larger and, you know, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen and stuff and so like, what have you learned as a patient regarding how to sort of be effective as a patient again, sort of navigating that system and, you know, getting the best possible outcome for yourself?

[00:29:09] Mr. Taylor: Well, you have to be knowledgeable yourself, first of all. When I grew up, we had two doctors, Dr. Jones and Dr. Miller. And no matter what happened, the kid falls, breaks his arm, my dad got a cut on his hand, doctor comes with a bag, takes care of it. That's the end of that. Follow-up, you go to see him in his office or something like that. I guess what you're asking me, I've always had bad skin, acne, sebaceous cysts, and things of that order. And I went to see a doctor, T. K. Lawless. He was a world-renowned dermatologist. He... Black, creol from Louisiana. He could not go to college in Louisiana, so they paid his tuition to get him out of state, to send him up to the University of Iowa. Where he got his degrees and et cetera. And as it turned out, he just went to the top of it.

He went to Berlin and he became over there... As a matter of fact, there's a clinic in Israel right now named after him. So, surprisingly, he and I hooked up 'cause he was treating my particular case and he really treated it. He taught me a lot about doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. I mean, we became friends. And he was a hard man to get along with but he would say, "Did you ask them this? Do you do this? You got to go over here..." And he would... He liked Michael Reese Hospital at that time. Well, that was the only one. He said, "Go to Michael Reese and get this done." And he'd send me a slip in there. And I think I went to him a hundred or so times.

[00:31:05] Dr. Cifu: Wow.

[00:31:06] Mr. Taylor: Yeah. And when my kids came, took care of them and all that. And he educated me about how you deal with professionals...

[00:31:15] Dr. Cifu: Yeah, yeah.

[00:31:16] Mr. Taylor: ...in a lot of ways.

[00:31:17] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:31:18] Mr. Taylor: You know, so I've been around people who, like you say, doctors, lawyers, and I listen.

[00:31:24] Dr. Cifu: Yeah.

[00:31:24] Mr. Taylor: You know, but did I answer your question to your satisfaction?

[00:31:28] Dr. Chin: Yeah.

[00:31:29] Mr. Taylor: Basically, okay? Well, ask me because I'll tell you.

[00:31:34] Dr. Cifu: Guys, I want to thank both of you so much, both Dr. Chin and Mr. Taylor for taking time out with me today. Really appreciate you answering all these questions for us. Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Clinical Excellence Podcast. We are sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence at the University of Chicago.

Please feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts and ideas on the Bucksbaum Institute Twitter page. The music for The Clinical Excellence Podcast is courtesy of Dr. Maylyn Martinez.