The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE…guilt leads to righteous action, but rarely is it the right action.
More Abraham Verghese Quotes
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And pray, why would this number interest us?” “It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, ‘One zero, two ones, three twos, two threes’.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
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.
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Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
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In an emergency, what treatment is given by ear? Words of Comfort.
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It’s an eerie feeling, as if my old mentor is not just in the room, but in my shoes, using me as his mouthpiece.
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The most important innovation in medicine to come in the next 10 years: the power of the human hand.
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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.
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Empathy can be replaced by cynicism.
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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.
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Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”… “Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″… “
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Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?”….I met his gaze and I did not blink. “Words of comfort,” I said to my father.
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There is a point when grief exceeds the human capacity to emote, and as a result one is strangely composed-
ABRAHAM VERGHESE -
The greatest sin is not finding it, ignoring what God made possible in you
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Now, as to the problem of how much health care costs and how we reform health care … it is another story altogether.
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No blade can puncture the human heart like the well-chosen words of a spiteful son.
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This is my life, I thought…I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil
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If seems almost un-American to enjoy delays, and perhaps enjoy is not the best word, but certainly a delayed flight
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What treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?
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Still, it’s an apt metaphor for our profession. But there’s another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family.
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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.
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What we are fighting isn’t godlessness–this is the most godly country on earth.
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As she bent over the child she realized that the tragedy of death had to do entirely with what was left unfulfilled.
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What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it.
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Ignorance was just as dynamic as knowledge, and it grew in the same proportion.
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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.
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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