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We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.

Abraham Verghese

When I wake to the gift of yet another sunrise my first thought is to rouse him and say, I owe you the sight of morning.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Another Gift Morning Sight Sunrise Wake
I grew up and I found my purpose and it was to become a physician.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Become Found Grew Physician Purpose Up
Being the first born gives you great patience.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Being Born First Giving Great Patience
Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school – not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Clinical Conversion Cynical Medical School Student Undergo Year
Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Board Digit Jumped Number Pray Shiva Two Uninvited Wrote Zero
The process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialised language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve;.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Information Ironically Language Learning Process Specialised Volume
We come unbidden into this life, and if we are lucky we find a purpose beyond starvation, misery, and early death which, lest we forget, is the common lot.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Beyond Common Death Early Lucky Purpose Unbidden
And then by the end of the third year they completely lose that ability, partly because we teach them the specialized language of medicine.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Ability Completely End Language Medical Partly Specialized Teach Third Year
If we are fortunate, we ‘beat’ the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having ‘succumbed after a long battle.’
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Battle Beat Cancer Fortunate Long Posthumously Praised Succumbed
The rituals we use for marriage, baptism or inaugurating a president are as elaborate as they are because we associate the ritual with a major life passage, the crossing of a critical threshold, or in other words, with transformation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Associate Baptism Elaborate Inauguration Marriage President Ritual
I still find the best way to understand a hospitalized patient is not by staring at the computer screen but by going to see the patient; it’s only at the bedside that I can figure out what is important.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Best Computer Hospitalized Important Patient Screen Understand Way
I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI, or orthopedic consult.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Believe Cat Hospital Inspiration Joke Limb Missing Motivation Scan
Certainly when I got to medical school, I had role models of the kind of physicians I wanted to be.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Certainly Medical Model Physician Role School Uncle
The flip side of suicide is that it leaves a lingering question in the minds of the people who survived. Its like a cancer thats metastasized. The suicide is the cancer and the metastasis is all these people saying, Why? Why? Why?
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Cancer Flip Leave Mind People Side Suicide
When I use the word ‘healing’, by that I mean that every disease has a physical element that we’re very good at handling, but there’s always a sense of the violation. ‘Why me?’ ‘
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Disease Element Good Handling Healing Job Mean Physical Spiritual
We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We’ll leave much unfinished for the next generation.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Broken Fixing Generations Next Unfinished

We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.

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We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.

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