The Expert Practice Of Medicine

Some people practice for the fortune.  They think expensive houses and flashey cars will quench the inner flames of  insecurity.  Some people practice for the fame.  They toss around the title doctor as if it is the answer to a question that no one bothered to ask. 

I don't know why I became a physician.  I remember some vague notion about helping people, but many professions offer such opportunities without so much personal cost.

Growing up with a learning disability, success was rare and often earned long after the sweat had been wiped from my brow and the creases in my forehead had unfurled.  I remember the feeling of inferiority.  I remember the hours of hard work bent over with pen in hand and paper muddled with eraser marks.

We are products of our own dysfunction.  What better field to pursure for a child continously bucking up against the heals of his peers.  As the years passed, my endurance grew, and I learned to sprint out of those chains that embraced me.

Yet, even today, I am still a little boy pushing up against a puzzle that requires faculties far above my means.

There is no challenge greater than the expert practice of medicine.  There are no equations as complex as human pathophysiology.

True empathy requires a daunting reserve of emotional inteligence.

No matter how exhausted I am at the end of each marathon of a work day,

I can't help but still feel an all encompassing sense of awe.