“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why,” Mark Twain. Being an avid reader of Twains works during my teenage years I had always been intrigued by this quote. It had ignited within me the flame to contemplate for my true calling. As I commenced my third year at medical school, my quest finally came to an end as I was asked to plunge head-on into the life and shoes of a surgeon. I had been called in to help with a trauma laparotomy of a patient who had been a victim of a major bomb blast in one of the busy areas of my hometown, Lahore, Pakistan. Hundreds of people had been injured rendering the city as well as the nearby hospitals in a state of complete chaos. “It is going to be a long night Asad!” muttered the surgeon as he effortlessly slipped his hands into the surgical gloves. “But I am sure, tonight will help you decide whether you belong to this side of the red line.” I eyed the redline that marked the sterile zone. Over the next seven hours my mind and body were stretched to the limits. Pain crept into every single muscle and my body hurt from contouring like a pretzel as I held the various retractors, latching onto every single movement in my visual field. I found myself captivated by the strokes of the scalpel, clicks of the forceps and precision with which the attending maneuvered inside the patient’s abdomen; a sea of red and yellow to me. It was right in those moments when all the shackles of doubt broke
The title of the short story I have read is ?The Invalid?s Story? by Mark Twain. At the beginning of the story we meet a man whom?s name is unknown. He is transporting the body of a childhood friend John B. Hackett who died the day before from ?unknown causes?. The body of his friend is in a coffin which he refers to as a ?gun box?. A box of Limburger cheese was set at the foot of the ?gun box?. While on the train the expressman whose name is Thompson finds out that the man is transporting a dead body and starts to ask him about who?s the body and about his life. The smell of the body is very potent so Thompson makes a comment about how the body is ripe. He has
Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.
In the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, a theme of freedom is expressed. Freedom takes on a different view for each character in the novel. In Huck's journey, and in Jim, the runaway slave, they acquire freedom. Jim's hunt for freedom is an escape from slavery, while Huck's is a method to get away from the civilized world. Their search for freedom is for one reason, their happiness. This is expressed throughout the novel in Jim's wish of escaping slavery and Huck's desire for being uncivilized.
Dr. Vincent Lam is a profound Canadian physician and writer. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is his award winning novel that speaks on the reality of what it’s actually like to be in medical school aiming to be apart of a medical profession and the difficult expectations students must face while still managing to stay sane during those challenging years of their lives. It’s a collection of short stories partly based off of his experiences in the medical field, following the lives of fictional characters Ming, Fitzgerald, Chen, and Sri as they endure medical school and later work as doctors. Dr. Lam does a remarkable job at incorporating unique and compelling characters with intriguing storylines who face common and extraordinary moral dilemmas that seem to shape their overall characters. Lam introduces themes of love, fear, tradition, drugs, death, self doubt, duality, etc.
Selzer’s The Exact Location of the Soul captures the essence of being a physician by using first person point of view, a series of personal anecdotes, and such striking imagery.
Ever since the bird spoke into a microphone at a giant event he has been getting fans following him everywhere. Sometimes it gets annoying for the bird when fans are bugging him too much. Like the other day someone stole his favorite socks! But today that can't happen because he has to go to a special event that will boost his career. If fans bug him today his career will be ruined! Today is a special day for the bird. When the bird woke up, he put on his new tuxedo and shiny boots. He was so excited for the special event because he could possibly get an even better career. But he still loves his old job, but he just needs a little bit more money because it is hard for him to keep paying for the house he bought because his job pays minimum
From the beginning of the book, the reader is thrown into a strange case. A new arrival at the trauma bay, a man about twenty-three-years-old, had been shot in the buttocks, but his vitals remained stable. Dr. Gawande began with a brief exam which revealed the entrance wound on his cheek, but no exit wound was visible. However, a rectal exam and urinary catheter revealed that the bullet had passed through the bladder and rectum. Even worse, it could have hit major blood vessels, a kidney, or other section of the bowel. The patient was instantly narcotized once they reached the operating room and a quick, deep, incision was made in the middle of his abdomen; stretching from the rib cage to the pelvis. When they separated the skin with retractors,
Mark Twain is important to American literature because of his novels and how they portray the American experience. Some of his best selling novels were Innocents Abroad, Life on the Mississippi, Huckleberry Finn, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In these books, Mark Twain recalls his own adventures of steamboating on the Mississippi River.
One might think of surgery as simple as going to the hospital and receiving a complex operation that saves ones life or improves their quality of life. What most people do not realize is the hardships that those people go through unless they had surgery performed on them themselves, and same thing for the surgeons it is not easy for them as well, even though they are professional and highly trained.
My supervisor, one of the head nurses, hurriedly pulled me to the corner of the bleach white hospital room and directed me to put on gloves, an eye mask, and a face mask. I felt as if I was preparing for war as I put on all of the required gear. The sound of expensive shoes click-clacked down the hallway indicating the arrival of two doctors who rushed into the room and shouted out orders to the staff while pulling the doors to the room shut along with the curtains. Two doctors, eight nurses, an intern, and a dying patient squeezed into the already claustrophobic ten by fifteen-foot room. The machine monitoring the patient’s vital signs continued to beep incessantly as my heart rate accelerated. Throughout my internship, I had never seen a patient in critical condition until that moment. I remembered my teacher’s advice if we were ever in a situation such as this: take a few deep breaths and sit down if you feel like you’re going to pass out. In that
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain Mark Twain's, The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, is a story told from the eyes of the young Tom Sawyer. The story takes place in the small rustic town of St. Petersburg Missouri. Tom Sawyer is the main character of the book. Tom is an imaginative young man who always seems to be getting into trouble.
As Mark Twain said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” Mary Oliver in her poem embraces the same idea that Mark Twain presents in his quote; she is no longer afraid of death because she embraces life fully and accepts the fact that death will come, and when it does come she will be proud of her life and all that she has accomplished. Oliver’s use of symbolism, personification, repetition, and alliteration throughout the poem assists in the meaning of the poem – that death is certain but should not be feared but rather embraced and used as a tool to fully live ones life. When death comes is a poem about Oliver anticipating the arrival of death in a myriad of ways. Oliver captures the innate curiosity humans have regarding death. She also regards life as precious, and hopes like many others that when she dies she can be happy with the way she lived her life without doubts and regrets.
For what seems an eternity, I’ve searched the facility’s sullen hallways for any clue, any sign of the surgeon. Down broad, meandering passages and narrow stretches I thought might never end, I called
In the biography Mark Twain: The Divided Mind of America's Best-Loved Writer by David W. Levy it was made clear that Mark Twain was very involved with all the society changes in his time period. Many of his novels have a theme circulating around the different changes and problems in society including slavery and racism. Mark Twain has been through the years preceding the Civil War, the Gilded Age and industrialization, this book explores his attitude and actions during the time period. This book is very good with explaining and going into detail about what happened in Mark Twain’s life in the 18th and 19th century.
One afternoon in 1992 when I was 8 years old, my parents picked me up from school as usual. My father was driving a motorbike, the Honda Super Cub. I sat in front of him and my mother sat behind. We were on the main street and had almost arrived at our house when a truck suddenly hit the back of the motorbike. Everything happened as fast as a snap. The Honda Cub was trapped underneath the truck, and we were thrown off. My mother was lying on one side of the road, holding her bleeding knee while my father, with both legs injured, was still trying to protect me. As a result of that, I was lying in my father 's arms without injuries. Fortunately enough, all of us were still conscious and transferred to the ER of Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. As soon as we arrived, my father was immediately admitted to the OR while my mother was lying on a stretcher in pain, and I was sitting next to her; we were waiting to be seen by doctors. After seeing my mother and me, the doctors decided that my mother needed surgery as quickly as possible. That moment in the ER was the first time I had ever seen doctors, nurses, and patients in such crisis situations. I was worried for my parents ' well-being; I was begging doctors to see my mom promptly because she was bleeding and in pain. And the thought of becoming a doctor that day struck my mind.