Letter: Dr. Hussain deserves better from paper

I’ve been a patient of Dr. Nizar Hussain for nearly three years at his office on Opitz Boulevard in Woodbridge. I am a 78-year-old man currently suffering with pancreatic cancer, and it was under the watchful eye of Dr. Hussain that I received life-saving treatment.

On March 2009, a family member noticed that my skin looked yellow (painless jaundice). I went in to see Dr. Hussain and immediately he suspected that something could be seriously wrong and had me admitted to Potomac Hospital. Through a series of tests that took weeks, it was finally determined that I did indeed have pancreatic cancer.

Dr. Hussain was very patient with me and helped me find the best medical care and local doctors who could address my illness.

I was operated on on June 4, 2009, at Inova Fairfax Hospital and have maintained a regiment of chemo treatment and regular checkups with Dr. Hussain. There have been several times during my chemo treatment cycles that I’ve been very ill because of my low immunity.

Dr. Hussain is one of the only doctors I’ve dealt with in my life who truly cares about how I feel physically and emotionally. Many doctors only see you for five minutes and rush out of the exam room; Dr. Hussain always takes his time with me, and I feel he genuinely cares about me as a patient.

The state of the human condition is deteriorating because when a doctor shows care and compassion by hugging a patient it can be construed as a “sexual” encounter. Well, I looked death straight in the eye several times over the past 20 months, and Dr. Hussain has always been there for me, building me up and giving me hope.

Only a month ago when I saw him, during one of my low points, he looked straight at me and said, “I don’t see death in your eyes, George.”

Thinking about it brings tears even as I write this. I cannot tell you how much it has meant to me to have a world-class doctor treating me as I contend with specialist after specialist. And his people skills are equally as impressive. There were many times when I didn’t think I had a chance, or that I was too tired to go on, and he motivated me by reminding me how far I’d come and what was possible.

This man appears to be a target of the folks who filed the charges of sexual misconduct [“Doctor charged with sex crime,” Dec. 16]. I cannot understand how the reputation of such a wonderful doctor could be so quickly tarnished and his chances of practicing medicine potentially ruined.

Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert is looking for additional stories to build a strong case against this wonderful man and doctor. If it were not for Dr. Nizar Hussain and his outstanding medical insight, care and compassion throughout this process, I would have been dead more than a year ago.

Please understand his style of treatment (which may not be as common today as it was only 20 years ago) is not inappropriate but appropriate when you know that the physician cares about you physically and emotionally. Very few doctors show the compassion that Dr. Hussain has consistently shown me for the past three years.

Reporters have a job to do, but a salacious story with no context or tangible content does nothing but sells newspapers, regardless of the victim(s) it creates.