Things not to forget
Wellness
Training has a way of crowding out the things that keep you steady inside it. This page is the ballast — a poem I come back to, a few lines from the physicians and surgeons worth keeping close, and a handful of sentences from people still in the work.
The one I keep
Rudyard Kipling
If—
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Voices that carry
The physicians and surgeons of the last century left more than technique. These are the lines I’d want a junior to have taped above the desk.
“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
“Medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability.”
“The secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient.”
“A physician is obligated to consider more than a diseased organ, more even than the whole man — he must view the man in his world.”
“Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence.”
“The greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it.”
From someone still in it
Dr. Lee Zhao writes about reconstructive surgery and the long arc of training with unusual honesty. Two lines I keep close — read his essays, they’re worth the time.
“Residency teaches you to operate. What follows teaches you that residency never ends.”
“The master predicts, the novice reacts.”
Quotations belong to their authors and are shared here for reflection, with attribution. Kipling’s “If—” is in the public domain.