Rositsa Petrova’s Reviews > When Breath Becomes Air > Status Update

"I could see that in Brad's eyes I was not a patient, I was a problem: a box to be checked off. [...] I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor's office, so that when she was in a patient's gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect."

"I could see that in Brad's eyes I was not a patient, I was a problem: a box to be checked off. [...] I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor's office, so that when she was in a patient's gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect."

"At eight p.m. my phone rang: Mrs. Harvey had died.
I went home to sleep.
I was somewhere between angry and sad. For whatever reason, Mrs. Harvey had burst through the layers of paperwork to become my patient.
... From that point on, I resolved to treat all my paperwork as patients, and not vice versa."