The book is marked by an earnest reverence for the practice of medicine. Faced with frustrations that push many doctors toward cynicism, Ofri struggles to see her work as a sacred calling. She agonizes over how to convince a lonely old man who has stopped taking his medicines that his life is worth living. She fights to see brokenness and fear in a patient's irritability and rudeness to hospital staff. She spends an hour with a directionless young man persuading him to take the SAT and pursue college.
On first reading, Ofri's idealistic approach to medicine struck me as a bit over the top. She seemed to endow the ordinary events of a doctor's day with a disproportionate amount of drama and meaning. To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a physical exam is just a physical exam. But perhaps my initial response only proves Ofri's point that we physicians too often overlook the deep significance of our work. Quite easily medicine becomes tasks to complete instead of people needing our care. Grinding through our day, we lose sight of what a special role we can play in patients' lives.
For some doctors, it takes becoming a patient to understand the weight of a physician's words and actions. For instance, in one story about getting an amniocentesis, Ofri comes to see that events which seem trivial to doctors can be frightening and overwhelming when they happen to you. As an obstetrician prepares to stick a needle into her belly, Ofri realizes that it is the very same needle that she has so unflinchingly stuck into patients' spinal canals, bone marrows, lung cavities, and abdomens. But, she writes, “This is the first time I've ever faced the business end of the needle. It is metallically menacing, like medieval armor, and far larger than I ever recalled its being.”
Through stories like these, Ofri reveals what a tremendous honor and responsibility it is to be a physician. Indeed, one senses that one reason Ofri wrote these stories was to remind herself of this vital fact. I, for one, would do well to follow her example.