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We’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

Abraham Verghese

Wasn’t that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Definition Home House Question Wanted
Life for the Italians was what it was, no more and no less, an interlude between meals
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Country Interlude Less Life Meal More
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
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
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
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
I believe in black holes. I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Believe Black Future Hoe Past Smack Universe
Be careful! Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Bowel Careful Expand Loosen Mind Travel
The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Action Know Omission Turn Whether World
I’m a great believer in geography being destiny.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Believer Destiny Follow Geography Great Update
I think we learn from medicine everywhere that it is, at its heart, a human endeavor, requiring good science but also a limitless curiosity and interest in your fellow human being, and that the physician-patient relationship is key; all else follows from it.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Endeavor Good Heart Human Key Limitless Medicine Requiring Science Thinking
I had an uncle who, looking back, was probably not the most-educated physician around but he carried it off so well.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Back Carried Educated Looking Physician Probably Uncle Well
I was taking care of people my age who were dying. The constant feeling, hearing from them, was that life is transient and can end very quickly, so don’t postpone your dreams.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Age Care Constant Dream Dying Feeling Hearing People Taking Transient
I think America is really in denial about the degree to which residents, particularly foreign medical graduates, man the county hospitals of this country, and but for their services, I’m not sure how exactly we could manage.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Country Foreign Graduate Man Medical Men Resident Thinking
We aren’t even fighting disease. Its poverty. Money for food, medicines… that helps.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Disease Fighting Food Help Medicine Money Poverty
My sense is that the wonderful technology that we have to visualize the inside of the body often leaves physicians feeling that the exam is a waste of time and so they may shortchange the ritual.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Body Feeling Leave Physician Sense Technology Visualize Wonderful

We’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

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We’re losing a ritual. We’re losing a ritual that I believe is transformative, transcendent, and is at the heart of the patient-physician relationship.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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