When I was in high school and college, I had a reflexive distrust of people who planned to become a doctor. It seemed to me to be the first refuge of anyone who wanted to make lots of money and be guaranteed a prominent place in society. A lot of them didn’t really want to be doctors; their parents had just pressured them into it as a prestigious, reliable career. Part of me still feels that way. (Exceptions are made for people who want to go rid Africa of ebola or do some such good work. So stop typing that email right now, Fiona!)
Anyway, every once in a while something comes along to counterbalance that bias. I just got off the phone with the father of a 37-year-old woman with a hole in her heart, and the surgeon who just completed a triple-organ-transplant to give her a new heart and new lungs. After years of fainting, oxygen tanks, and life forever on the edge of physical collapse, she’s going to be able to live a normal life. The doc said how odd it is to do one of these heart-lung transplants — once they take out the old organs, there’s just an empty cavity where they used to be. I can’t imagine what that must look like. <Paul Harvey voice> For the rest of the story, </Paul Harvey voice> look in tomorrow’s paper, probably deep inside the metro section.