A is for Aphorism
For some reason I have been tossing off apothegms to my patients this week. I know doctors love their wise old adages - for example when I was an intern my favorite one was, “The intern always eats,” which means (of course, bubeleh, if you already know what it means then you obviously survived an internship) that since the intern is low-doc-on-the-totem-pole, forced to stay up all night admitting the bibulous, the nauseated (two afflictions often found in the same corpus), and the insomnious, he must be allowed to put away enough victuals for the long night ahead. I remember other sayings from those years ago, pithy (pithy? Dr. Charles call your office!) quotes designed to rally the troops at the witching hour of an on-call shift, which usually was around 11:00 P.M., the time when the evening admissions were all tucked in and the great engine of the hospital began to slow down for the night. It is during these crucial hours, when the quicksand of fatigue starts to wear down a doctor’s will to perform, that the brave cry out things like, “Never let the sun set on a pleural effusion!” and the sarcastic announce, “I’m off to bed; call me if you want but remember - it’s a sign of weakness.”
I guess I have been a fan of medical aphorisms since I was old enough to understand The House of God, which is the bible of quotations for all doctors who have been infected like myself with the black humor virus. Anyway, here are a few of the words of wisdom I have been slinging this week:
“Remission is like a free stay in a luxury hotel that won’t tell you when your time is up.”
“No matter how effective chemotherapy is, there comes a day when you’re better off without it.”
“I’d rather have you asleep and free from pain than wide awake and in agony.”
“The job of the oncologist is to look into the future and prepare the patient for what lies ahead.”
“Cancer works 24 hours a day - without ever taking a break. We need to be just as aggressive in killing it.”
“Please don’t worry too much - that’s what you’re paying me to do for you.”
“I can’t guarantee that your cancer can be destroyed, but I can guarantee this - we will have a plan to defeat it.”
“My goal is that you and I are looking at each other one year from now - and laughing.”
I’m sure there are a myriad of doctors’ sayings out there. Someday the medical blogosphere needs to compile them and entertain the world with our witticisms and wise proverbs culled from a lifetime of trying to live up to our patients’ expectations of ourselves while simultaneously giving out free demonstrations of what Hemingway meant by the phrase “grace under pressure“.
