The Maze

Greetings! - Very touching story - thank you! I agree that it sometimes better to be satisfied than to be happy. Being satisfied seems to be a fullfilling feeling in itself! Perhaps, the goal was reached, afterall?!

mariam@ispahani.org

Being out in the field of critical care I have learned by experience a thing which I think should have taught back in the medical school. This is ``Devine Disconcern``. I am impressed and infact moved by the thoughts and feelings of this young doctor but try this devine disconcern thing it realy helps. Medicine is not a field or proffession like other professions. If you look around you one will experience that it is only doctors who carry their work in their minds all around the clock. Duty or no duty they always have some of their patients on thier mind. I know paople who spell physician orders during sleep. Devine Disconcern alone will not help. You start with ``Empathy`` toward you patient (ofcourse a human being. Empathy is defined to put your foot in you your patient`s shoe and feel like him. Try your utmost and beyond and pray. If you want to be sane in the rest of your life try being Devinely Disconcerned after you leave your patient or vice versa.

These ideas may sound a bit outlandish but they do help. My advice to you and all fellow doctors starting their clinical life is to read page 15(Corrigan`s secret door) of Oxford Hand Book of Medicine. Remember you can not fight with fate. Bloody tiny bacterias and viruses are ruthless creatures who don`t think weather they kill a becheolor or a married man, a terorist or a doctor, an angel like kid or a ruthless killer, a nice looking girl or a cruel step-mother, a poor old women or a healthy weight trainer.

nicely written but smacks of naivete. i`m not a doctor but i do know of ER experiances first hand. sometimes it is better to drown than to keep floating on illusions. there is a healer in all of us. i have found that breathing my headache out thru my ears to be more conducive than two tylenols. as a society, we count too much on doctors (everyone in my family is a doctor and i resepct their profession..not an attack on those of the medical profession). this piece read very much like your poetry...almost disjointed and dream like.

rizvi

`I saved one man that others had given up on! I was the happiest person on Earth...I fainted!

... only an assurity that I have the power to heal.`

Thankyou doctor, for sharing the passions of this wonderful, wondrous feeling with us.

On a side note, I’m somewhat disillusioned with the obsession of some of my very own childhood friends who are now finishing house jobs in Pakistan with MONEY alone. Even their self-confessed ethics have shaken my er,‘faith’, in why doctors choose their profession. What a fool I was to think that altruism would somehow survive in the medical profession untouched, while the rest of society collapsed around it.

But its nice to hear your story. So all doctors aren’t in it for the dough. But I daresay you’re the exception, than the rule. I wonder if your being a woman has anything to do with your heightened sense of compassion and sensitivity and caring?

I don`t know if this is entirely relevant: `Little Fable` by Franz Kafka.

``Alas, said the mouse, `the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid,I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into.` `You only need to change your direction,` said the cat, and ate it up.``