Being a Teacher

In becoming who I am, I've collected mentors and role models.  My role models were never the ones my friends in gradeschool had.  I had to seperate myself from my brother who had the market cornered on the all-american boy from kansas role, sometimes I wonder if I wouldn't have become something else if I didn't have him to polarize me into a more nerdy persona.  I know that I would have always been prone to it, even he ended up becoming an engineer, a science heavy profession, but to be myself and not a lesser copy of him, I think my rolemodels became Einstein instead of Chamberlain, comic book superheroes instead of Jordan.   There have been others like my father and my mother, my highschool science teacher, the doctor who got me started in all this...all of them have bigger shoes than I ever hope to fill.  But, I'm blessed for them and I know I'm in some way headed in the right direction as I occasionally get letters from people that I've taught, letting me know they are going into pediatrics or science since learning under me.  It's a huge honor when I get them, I save them in a drawer at home...I went into this thinking if I saved one life, the effect would last acrossed generations.  That feeling is muffled in comparison to the sense of accomplishment I get in knowing that, from time to time, I join the ranks or my progenetors and even if for a little while get to be like them, a teacher and a rolemodel.

Newbie Doc

Crying Wolf

Traffic was kind to me this morning and I find myself with plenty of time to catch up on emails and all the to-do's of the day.  What I have to write about is really more of a story than something that I actually experienced and I'll try to keep it brief.

Where I work there are what I call "famous" patients.  Patients who everyone has taken care of, patients who are well known.  Some for good reasons, some for less admirable ones.  This was a famous, like many, who had an actual disease...but the disease consummed him, warped his mind.  The disease for all intents and purposes had been delt with, but as is sometimes the case, the pain can twist your mind if it's gone on long enough and as he was he spent more time in the hospital than at home, for more often than not, no reason at all.  He cried wolf, but as is the state of things, you have to believe a patient even if they've "lied" a thousand times.  Every time a faked complaint, every time an admission and discharge.  One day, it wasn't fake and the mother knowing her son, sat on the complaint for two days.  By the time she took the young man into the hospital it was too late and the young man was finally given a rest from the awful life he was so unfortunate to have grown into.  Those of us who knew him and how annoying he was, we can't help but coldly smile that his "crying wolf" finally got the best of him, at the same time there is an apprehension that we would smile at death and we immediately rebound with a "this is terrible" thought...some of us wonder if what the mother did was on purpose...none of us blame her...we just wonder.

Newbie Doc