Doctors

I had the sense to pull my car over to the side of the road when I heard the surgeon's voice on my cellphone. It was a stunningly beautiful September morning, and I tried to keep anxiety over the biopsy at bay. His initial words, "We have an unpleasant surprise," brought an abrupt end to such efforts. It was there, in my car, on the side of the road, that I became a cancer patient. "You learned you had breast cancer in a phone call?"

For activists on both sides of the debate over legalized abortion, the criminal trial of Dr. George Tiller, which begins Monday in a Wichita courtroom, is an oddly unfulfilling culmination of a struggle that has wrenched Kansas for years. Tiller, 67, is one of a handful of doctors in the country who terminate late-term pregnancies and has virtually become public enemy No. 1 to those who oppose abortion.

Once a patient becomes terminally ill, relationships between patients, their caregivers and their primary doctors can change. Now a study offers an unusual glimpse of what patients and their doctors are thinking as the end of life approaches -- and it shows that patients sometimes feel abandoned. The study, published March 9 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved 55 patients with incurable cancer or advanced lung disease who were expected to live a year or less.

Opening arguments got underway Monday in the criminal case against Dr. George Tiller, one of the only physicians in the country who provides late-term abortions. And by day's end, it was clear that the case could hinge on such nonmedical issues as who paid for copy paper and toner, the meaning of a hug and whether selling a beat-up sedan to a colleague can constitute proof of guilt.

Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas doctor who has become a national symbol of the struggle over legalized abortion, unexpectedly testified in his defense Wednesday during the criminal trial that abortion opponents are following with passionate interest. Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who perform abortions in the last trimester of pregnancy, has been targeted for years by abortion foes who would like to see him in prison and his clinic shut down.

In a trial watched closely by activists on both sides of the abortion debate, Dr. George Tiller, the Kansas physician accused of performing illegal late-term abortions, was found not guilty Friday. The jury of three men and three women deliberated for less than an hour. Tiller has been targeted by antiabortion politicians, legal officials and activists for years, but this was the first time he faced a jury.

I was more than a little concerned about Pete, age 11. His mother had brought him to see me one Friday afternoon; he was limping and complaining about a few days of bad ankle pain. Examining him, I found that his left ankle was tender, swollen and warm, but he hadn't remembered injuring it. I ordered an X-ray and blood work, trying to ascertain whether he had developed septic arthritis -- an infection deep in his ankle joint -- the worst-case scenario.

With initial autopsy results inconclusive, the investigation into Michael Jackson's death focused Friday on whether the pop icon, who had struggled with painkiller addiction in the past, overdosed on prescription drugs. "We know he was taking some prescription medication," Craig Harvey, a spokesman for the L.A. County coroner's office, said at a news conference announcing the completion of the autopsy.

As Michael Jackson's father moved Sunday to assert control over his son's estate, his attorney said that the family has not been able to locate a will for the pop icon and that Jackson's mother will seek custody of his three children. "That's who Michael would have wanted to have the children. She loves them dearly," lawyer L. Londell McMillan told CNN outside the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles before the BET Awards.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives are trying to identify and interview "multiple doctors" who treated or prescribed medication to Michael Jackson going back years, a law enforcement source told The Times. Until now, much of the attention surrounding the pop icon's death has focused on Dr.