I was angry with myself because I still loved her, or at least I loved that dream of our togetherness. My feelings were unreasonable, irrational, and I couldn't change them. That hurt.

Patients know in a heartbeat if they're getting a clumsy exam.

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'

Students undergo a conversion in the third year of medical school - not pre-clinical to clinical, but pre-cynical to cynical.

The bottom line: health care reform is about the patient, not about the physician.

My VIP patients often regret so many things on their deathbeds. They regret the bitterness they'll leave in people's hearts. They realize the no money, no church service, no eulogy, no funeral procession no matter how elaborate, can remove the legacy of a mean spirit.