No matter what ailed you, you went to see the barber surgeon who wound up cupping you, bleeding you, purging you. And, oh yes, if you wanted, he would give you a haircut and pull your tooth while he was at it.
She had always assumed that she would have years to sort out the meaning of life... As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
We have the sense that medical students come to medicine with a great capacity to understand the suffering of patients. And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don't postpone your dreams.
There are moments as a teacher when I'm conscious that I'm trotting out the same exact phrase my professor used with me years ago. It's an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
We're losing a ritual. We're losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.
Your job is to preserve yourself, not to descend into their hole. It's a relief when you arrive at this place, the point of absurdity, because then you are free, you owe them nothing.
I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.
Pray tell us, what's your favorite number?"... "Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223"... "And pray, why would this number interest us?" "It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, 'One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes'.