"And then she says: 'Do you think I'll be well enough in March to have the wedding?' March was when they had been supposed to get married. You have no idea how terminal she was - I mean really. Just slipping away. What do you say? I have no idea what I even said. Whatever I could think of to get through the moment somehow. And I went back to the residents' room, and I just lost it. The rest of the team came in and I was there sobbing, and they were like, what, what? And I told them, and you know what they said? They said: 'If you're that thin-skinned, if you're going to let things get to you like that, you shouldn't be in medicine.' That's what they said. And I spun on them and I said: 'If I ever stop letting things get to me, that's when I'll quit medicine.' And it turned out the chief resident in psychiatry was sitting there, listening to all this - I hadn't seen him - and he stood and said, 'That's the sanest thing I've heard all week.'"
- from "On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency," By Emily Transue, MD
*Part I continues in Part II blog entry below: Two Reviews: Lives in Crisis.
- from "On Call: A Doctor's Days and Nights in Residency," By Emily Transue, MD
*Part I continues in Part II blog entry below: Two Reviews: Lives in Crisis.