Thursday, May 12, 2016

Dr. Michelle

Dear Dr. Michelle,

Congratulations again -- we are very proud of you!! Continue to devote your heart and soul to what you love to do and be the best doctor you can be!

As you open a new chapter in pursuing medicine, please allow me to once again share with you a few words from the book so brilliantly written by Dr. Paul Kalanithi.

When Breath Becomes Air
By Paul Kalanithi


A life spent in medicine would grant me not merely a stage for compassionate action but an elevation of my own being: getting far away from petty materialism, from self-importance trivia, getting right there, to the heart of the matter, to truly life-and-death decisions and struggles.

A mother came to me, newly diagnosed with brain cancer. She was confused, scared, overcome by uncertainty. I was exhausted, disconnected. I rushed through her questions, assured her that surgery would be a success, and assured myself that there wasn't enough time to answer her questions fairly. But why didn't I make the time? I feared I was losing sight of the singular importance of human relationships, not between patients and their families but between doctor and patient. Technical excellence was not enough. As a resident, my highest ideal was not saving lives -- everyone dies eventually -- but guiding a patient or family to an understanding of illness or death.

With my renewed focus, informed consent became not a juridical exercise in naming all the risks as quickly as possible, but an opportunity to forge a covenant with a suffering compatriot: Here we are together, and here are the ways through -- I promise to guide you, as best as I can, to the other side.

Our patients’ lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn't. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients. You can't ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.




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