What Good is Care Without Compassion?

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What Good is Care Without Compassion?

The AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my first day there, after an hour of "training," I met Paul, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and then needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted; he didn't want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasn't used to anyone being kind to him - even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little bought so much. While elated that I had literally made Paul's day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, "Do I really want to go into medicine?"

What had so upset me about my day with Paul? Before then nothing in my personal, academic, or volunteer experiences had shaken my single-minded commitment to medicine. Why was I so unprepared for what I saw? Was it the proximity of death, knowing Paul was terminal? No it couldn't have been. As a young boy in gutted Beirut I had experienced death time and time again. Was it the financial hardship of the hospice residents, the living from day to day? No, I dealt with that myself as a new immigrant and had even worked full-time during my first two years of college. Financial difficulty was no stranger to me. Neither financial distress nor the sight of death had deterred me. Before the day in the hospice, I only wanted to be a doctor.

My interest in medicine had started out with an enjoyment of science. From general biology to advanced cellular/behavioral neuroscience, the study of the biological systems, especially the most complex of them all, the human body, has been a delightful journey with new discoveries in each new class.

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