The Patient in the Mirror

For the first week after his diagnosis, Dr. Juan Villagomez wasn't sure exactly who he was supposed to be: a man who heals or a man in need of healing?

He didn't see how he could be both.

He had been stunned by the lab report, sure that it should have said "ulcer" or "gastritis." After all, he was just 38--thinner than he used to be, a little stressed, but fit, he thought, for a busy doctor with his own family practice and a long list of community commitments.

The report said "adenocarcinoma," a cancer in his stomach. A doctor friend showed it to him on a June evening in 1996, hours after he arrived home, jubilant, from a 560-mile AIDS benefit bike ride down the California coast. He felt his spirits crash into a thousand pieces.

He was back at work the following Monday, still in shock, when a longtime patient--an amiable, elderly woman with a knack for telling off-color jokes--walked in. She had been fighting stomach cancer herself, with some success, for two years.

Villagomez did some chest X-rays, saw her cancer had spread and realized, with a mental thud, what it meant.

"There were all these metastases, all these tumors in her lungs," he recalled. "I was looking at her, realizing: 'This lady is going to die.' And here I am . . . thinking, 'I, too, will die.' "

Death, for that first week, overtook his dreams--ghoulish images, skeletons, corpses. He awakened crying, walked to the room of his two small children and agonized: What would become of his family?

Three years later, he is still alive, and on most days, does not dwell on the subject of death. He'd rather trade "besitos" (little kisses) with his 4-year-old daughter, Gabby, when she comes home, wiggly and breathless, from preschool. He'd rather talk about his love of medicine, about what he has learned from being on the other side of the stethoscope, and most of all, about his faith in God.

His journey, as Villagomez refers to his illness, has forced him to navigate between worlds that society tends to set rigidly apart.

How to be both doctor and patient, both a man of medicine and man of God? He has struggled against these divisions throughout his professional life, but now, more than ever, he seeks reconciliation.

Doctors, of course, are not exempt from death, but most spend their careers trying to control disease. Losing control of his own health at such a young age is Villagomez's distinct tragedy. His unusual reservoir of faith is what he considers his blessing.