Lasse Carlsson

“When you can't find your purpose in a day, make it to look after yourself.”
― Dodie Clark, Secrets for the Mad

“took her in my arms and let her cry, and I was crying too. After she’d quieted some, I asked for her husband’s number, and after I did the workup for rape, I called him. He’d been worried stiff, and was glad she was not dead. He couldn’t know, yet, that part of her had died.”
― Samuel Shem, The House of God

“LAWS OF THE HOUSE OF GOD I Gomers don’t die. II Gomers go to ground. III At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse. IV The patient is the one with the disease. V Placement comes first. VI There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm. VII Age + BUN = Lasix dose. VIII They can always hurt you more. IX The only good admission is a dead admission. X If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever. XI Show me a BMS who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet. XII If the radiology resident and the BMS both see a lesion on the chest X ray, there can be no lesion there. XIII The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.”
― Samuel Shem, The House of God

“Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion.”
― Samuel Shem, The House of God