and I were tired of the Hamptons and were talking of spending future summers elsewhere, perhaps in New England. “Before you decide,” she said, “you ought to take a look at Quogue. It’s like you”—meaning boring.
“I can still see her at the table in the kitchen,” Ginny said to me over the weekend. “All those physics and chemistry books.”
Amy was catching up with the preparatory courses for medical school. She had taken not a single science course in college, and had only decided on medicine after two years of waitressing and bartending and thinking she might become an actor. We asked an actor friend if he would speak to her about the requirements and pitfalls of the profession. Amy emerged from the two-hour conversation intent on becoming a doctor. We told our friend that if he gave his mini-lecture to every young person aspiring to be an actor, parents would pay him a fortune.
I wish my dad had lived long enough to see her start out in her practice. We gave Amy his medical bag as a gift for her medical school graduation. On one side of the bag, just below the handles, were my father’s initials in gold letters. We had Amy’s initials put on the other side. When we presented her with the bag, she held it close and sighed, “Oh.”
In 1996, I wrote an essay on the character of physicians for New York magazine’s issue on the city’s “Best Doctors.” Amy was in her second year of medical school, and I interviewed her for the piece. I asked her how medicine had changed from my dad’s era to hers. She said that formerly physicians had stature and mystery. Her grandfather “was a Doctor, ” she said. “I’ll just be a doctor.”
“Why hasn’t the stature of doctors risen, given all that medicine has accomplished in the past few years?” I asked her.
“It’s odd,” she said. “Doctors used to be the be-and end-all when they knew very little. Now that they know so much more, it works to their disadvantage. When something goes wrong, people think: ‘Well, they should have known,’ and the fact that the ordinary person knows so much about medicine demystifies the profession. The idea of a second opinion is sound practice now. Yet it seems to imply that the first opinion is likely to be wrong. And then, too, death may have been more generally accepted years ago. People don’t believe in death these days. But doctors do.”
“Is it more of a job than a calling?” I said.
“More of a job, but an interesting job,” she said. “If I were viewing it as a calling, I think I’d be disappointed. But the work itself is endlessly fascinating. The driving force for doctors is simply not knowing.”
Moments of “not knowing” could also have painful consequences. I remember my father’s drained and helpless face when a patient he had been treating for a long time died of lung cancer, my father’s specialty. I remember Amy’s face a few years ago after the death of a patient, a one-and-a-half-year-old child. He had been born prematurely with multiple developmental problems related to hydrocephalus. A ventricular-peritoneal shunt had been placed in his brain to release pressure by draining increased fluid to his abdomen. The child had been neglected by his mother, but his foster mother, whom Amy respected, had been diligent about checkups. An infection developed in the shunt. The symptoms were barely detectable, as is usual with developmentally delayed babies. Still, Amy felt she should have noticed some small sign of change. Doctors often depend on an educated sixth sense about trouble, since most of the time they deal with commonplace ailments. A pediatrician mainly sees breaks, sores, bruises, cuts, colds, and strep. Harris told me, “She took it very hard when the child died. She had a great sixth sense, but she thought it had failed her. She blamed herself.”
All Amy wanted out of medicine, as she said in the interview for the New York magazine piece, was “to make people feel
“I can still see her at the table in the kitchen,” Ginny said to me over the weekend. “All those physics and chemistry books.”
Amy was catching up with the preparatory courses for medical school. She had taken not a single science course in college, and had only decided on medicine after two years of waitressing and bartending and thinking she might become an actor. We asked an actor friend if he would speak to her about the requirements and pitfalls of the profession. Amy emerged from the two-hour conversation intent on becoming a doctor. We told our friend that if he gave his mini-lecture to every young person aspiring to be an actor, parents would pay him a fortune.
I wish my dad had lived long enough to see her start out in her practice. We gave Amy his medical bag as a gift for her medical school graduation. On one side of the bag, just below the handles, were my father’s initials in gold letters. We had Amy’s initials put on the other side. When we presented her with the bag, she held it close and sighed, “Oh.”
In 1996, I wrote an essay on the character of physicians for New York magazine’s issue on the city’s “Best Doctors.” Amy was in her second year of medical school, and I interviewed her for the piece. I asked her how medicine had changed from my dad’s era to hers. She said that formerly physicians had stature and mystery. Her grandfather “was a Doctor, ” she said. “I’ll just be a doctor.”
“Why hasn’t the stature of doctors risen, given all that medicine has accomplished in the past few years?” I asked her.
“It’s odd,” she said. “Doctors used to be the be-and end-all when they knew very little. Now that they know so much more, it works to their disadvantage. When something goes wrong, people think: ‘Well, they should have known,’ and the fact that the ordinary person knows so much about medicine demystifies the profession. The idea of a second opinion is sound practice now. Yet it seems to imply that the first opinion is likely to be wrong. And then, too, death may have been more generally accepted years ago. People don’t believe in death these days. But doctors do.”
“Is it more of a job than a calling?” I said.
“More of a job, but an interesting job,” she said. “If I were viewing it as a calling, I think I’d be disappointed. But the work itself is endlessly fascinating. The driving force for doctors is simply not knowing.”
Moments of “not knowing” could also have painful consequences. I remember my father’s drained and helpless face when a patient he had been treating for a long time died of lung cancer, my father’s specialty. I remember Amy’s face a few years ago after the death of a patient, a one-and-a-half-year-old child. He had been born prematurely with multiple developmental problems related to hydrocephalus. A ventricular-peritoneal shunt had been placed in his brain to release pressure by draining increased fluid to his abdomen. The child had been neglected by his mother, but his foster mother, whom Amy respected, had been diligent about checkups. An infection developed in the shunt. The symptoms were barely detectable, as is usual with developmentally delayed babies. Still, Amy felt she should have noticed some small sign of change. Doctors often depend on an educated sixth sense about trouble, since most of the time they deal with commonplace ailments. A pediatrician mainly sees breaks, sores, bruises, cuts, colds, and strep. Harris told me, “She took it very hard when the child died. She had a great sixth sense, but she thought it had failed her. She blamed herself.”
All Amy wanted out of medicine, as she said in the interview for the New York magazine piece, was “to make people feel
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