Rosalind Kaplan
I think a lot about quitting medicine lately. A lot.
Then I have a morning like yesterday morning:
I see a patient I’ve known for more than twenty years, caring for him through an adrenal tumor, a major gastrointestinal surgery and now renal failure, for which he needs a kidney transplant. As we review his last set of labs (stable, thank goodness), he is sanguine, hopeful. He may have found a donor, and he might make it to transplant without dialysis. He has to live–he has a wife and a child.
Next, I mess up my schedule entirely by spending more than half an hour with a patient who only came in to talk–not about herself, really, but about her husband who has just been diagnosed with a probably fatal illness. I break all of my own rules and tell her what I’d do if this were my own husband–how to push him to get emotional support, where to go for a second opinion….When she leaves, we hug like sisters.