By Allan B. Colombo

Did you ever lose someone who you loved? Was it by a car accident, was it in the workplace, or did you lose them to cancer? If you have never experienced the death of a loved one, you are fortunate. However, death of our loved ones is something that all of us will experience, until we experience our own someday.

There is no escaping the inevitables of life, and I know firsthand how painful it can be to watch a loved one die because I witnessed my mother's slow, agonizing death from cancer in 1995. To make this tragedy even harder to swallow, her doctor, an 80+-year-old DO, misdiagnosed her condition and then, at least twice, denied her the luxury... no, the right to have a second opinion. Perhaps if the Canton, Ohio-based doctor had done her job right, or provided my mother with the name of a second doctor, her life may have been prolonged--or at least made more comfortable.

Even more, it pains me to recall how this DO yelled at my mom, as told to me by my daughter who listened on from the waiting room. My mother had begged the DO to send her to the hospital for tests because she was in so much pain. The DO said no, that she had already diagnosed her condition as arthritis.

I am not a vengeful person so we'll allow the Good Lord to deal with her. In the mean time, I would like to share with you my Reflections of Pain, which are comprised of journal entries and notes taken at the time this situation took place, in 1995. If it can help someone to cope better with what they are or will someday go through, then that is all I can ask.

To the doctor who misdiagnosed her and refused to give her the benefit of a second opinion, shame on you. I often think that you should someday give an accounting to the Lord for your unprofessional conduct, but whether you do or not is not up to me. I just hope that by now you've either retired or that you don't do to anyone else what you did to Nova Colombo.

Click HERE to read Reflections of Pain.