Ameera JR

“Who will I be when I have fewer patients? When I have no patients at all? It's often noted that "practice" as it relates to medicine has two meanings: the act of caring for patients and the doctor's never-ending process of perfecting his or her craft. But there's a third meaning, too, one I'm only now appreciating as I contemplate the end of my career. Medicine is a practice in the way that yoga or meditation is for many people, an activity repeated so often that it becomes a kind of incantation. I have, for so long, stood to my patients' right sides as physicians have done for centuries, palpated the lymph nodes in their necks, armpits, and groins; auscultated their hearts and lungs; asked the same questions I first learned to ask nearly forty years ago—What makes the pain better? What makes it worse? These rituals are for me an anchor without which I fear I might simply drift away. Of course I suspected all along that what I feared wasn't abandoning my patients, but myself.”
― Suzanne Koven, Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life

“The world was bigger, stranger, richer, and wilder than I had a right to ask for.”
― Richard Powers, Playground

“I am continually amazed at how life just continues on as usual, despite the tragedy that exists all around us.”
― Hadley Vlahos, The In-Between: Unforgettable Encounters During Life's Final Moments

“How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.”
― Richard Powers, Playground