Doctor-author often finds laughter the best medicine

Matt Hogan, medical director and chief of staff at Emory Decatur Hospital, has been described as “a doctor with an unconventional, and somewhat unrefined, sense of humor.” The presenter at DeKalb Library Foundation’s most recent Books + Bites session, Jan. 30 at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Hogan shared stories from his most recent book, Foot in Mouth Disease: Musings of an Unfiltered Physician.

Hogan explained that he had initially envisioned a career in the arts—possibly music or writing—when a dramatic event changed his course. His brother, after having too much to drink, had an automobile accident that took the life of a young mother and left the brother hospitalized for a long period. Time that he spent in the hospital visiting his brother and another sick relative inspired him to go to medical school.

Despite a successful medical career, Hogan never abandoned his urge to write or his sense of humor. He said so many unsettling things happen at a hospital that having a sense of humor is a survival mechanism. “Sometimes you laugh in situations when you really want to cry,” Hogan said.

When he was working as a hospitalist, a doctor who only sees patients in the hospital, Hogan was on a schedule of a week on and a week off. During his weeks off, Hogan said, he was restless, looking for a hobby to fill his days. The COVID pandemic meant more days stuck at home with nothing to do. Conversations with a patient who was also a writer and who knew he had only a short time to live convinced Hogan to spend his days off writing.

Hogan acknowledged that his first writing efforts weren’t well received. Then he decided to try writing about the odd world of hospitals and those he interacted with, especially patients.

“In medical school you’re taught to keep a somber, almost robotic presence in front of patients, but every now and then my real personality, including my sense of humor, would slip through. Sometimes the patient would appreciate it, sometimes not,” Hogan said.

Hogan said Foot in Mouth Disease in not a traditional book. “It’s a collection of essays, not one cohesive story,” he said, adding that the chapters can be read in any order, and not every essay is about Hogan’s medical career.

The chapter he chose to read from at the DeKalb Library Foundation event focuses on Hogan’s medical career. He explained that it was a safe choice since some chapters are a bit racy and, not knowing the audience, he wanted to avoid giving offence.

Titled “Fibromyalgia with a Twist of Lyme,” the chapter explores the gap between what a patient tells the doctor and what’s really going on.

Hogan recounts a conversation with a friend. “We were discussing the likelihood of doctors being replaced by artificially intelligent algorithms that could diagnose with greater speed and accuracy. I believe this future to be an inevitability, but he brought up a sound point that what a patient complains about isn’t always what’s really going on, and thus AI could be fooled….How quickly could it determine that a patient’s chest pain is referred pain from their gallbladder? Or better yet, how quickly could AI determine that a patient is lying?”

He continued, “The brain itself is a particularly tricky organ to figure out, and navigating a patient’s mental processes requires experience more than innate intellect.”

In response to the question “Why do patients lie?” Hogan said, “I suppose for the same reasons anyone else lies. Embarrassment….Mr. Smith would rather tell me that his son left the Buzz Lightyear doll standing straight up on a chair in his bedroom, and he accidentally sat down on top of it while changing clothes.”