eighty - three - "dr. herman" - eighty - three

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"The painful irony for doctors is that we often have to make you sicker in order to heal you. If a bone is healed unevenly, we have to re-break it. If a scar is too thick, we have to scrape it off and create a new wound. We break you down to rebuild you. We go to medical school because we want to learn how to fix what's broken, but we quickly learn that we often have to make things worse before we can make them better. It's risky, and it's frightening for surgeons and for patients, but usually, it's worth it. You get a second chance at life, and we get to be the architects of your second chance."
-Meredith Grey, S14E1, "Break Down The House"

"There's a saying we hear a lot around hospitals that goes like this: "Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional." But I doubt the person who coined it ever went through major surgery. Or maybe they didn't mean physical pain. Maybe they meant the other kind, the worse kind. Maybe they meant the kind of searing, seething, boiling pain that tells you you're a failure and a fraud. Suffering is optional. That person didn't know what the fuck they were talking about. As surgeons, we try to eliminate pain. As humans, we try like hell to avoid it. When we can't avoid pain, we try to understand it with petty little quotes that we can wrap our heads around, like "suffering is optional", or "time heals all wounds". And my personal favorite, "Every pain has a purpose." God, I hope that one's true."
-Meredith Grey, S14E2, "Get Off on the Pain"

"I am going to tell you a secret. Doctors are not gods. We like you to think we have all the answers. You have to trust us enough to let us cut open your flesh and poke around in your insides, so it's helpful if you think we have it all together. It's helpful if you don't know that just like you, we're anxious, we're insecure, we're angry. You have to let us come at you with a scalpel. So it's helpful if you don't know that just like you, we're wrecks. So, how do we do it? How do we save lives when ours may be falling apart? Well, for one thing, we never perform surgery without an assist. We look at the case, we gather the team, and accept we don't have to go it alone."
-Meredith Grey, S14E3, "Go Big or Go Home"

"There are 100 billion neurons in the human brain making and re-making connections. Helping us with math. Remembering our keys, our dad's voice. Working hard all the time. So when the brain is faulty, it's a big re-wiring job and there's no margin for error. When you're going into surgery, you worry you won't wake up. But with brain surgery, you worry you will wake up but you won't be there when you do. The trouble with crossed wires is you don't know they happened until it's too late. So we have to be very careful with our connections. They take time, care, and attention. They take vigilance and single-mindedness. We re-connect everything we can as carefully as we can. And then we just have to pray to God that we got it right."
-Amelia Shepherd, S14E4, "Ain't That a Kick in the Head"

"Uh, I need an MR angio to check the venousoutflow and the tumor vasculature."

"I got one two days ago."

"And I need to know what it looks like today."

"Yeah, I have a consult in a half an hour."

"You've got a grapefruit sized tumor on your frontal lobe. Your Chief of Surgery doesn't want you anywhere near a consult. You... oh. You haven't told her."

"Tom, I removed an inoperable osteoblastoma from a kid's jaw a week ago. I'm fine. I just... I need you to follow my plan."

"I'm not going to follow your plan because the part of your brain that makes plans is compromised. Your plans, your judgment, your decision making, your impulse control... it's all tumor. You understand? You are not a sound mind now, and you haven't been for years."

𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘶𝘮𝘢, 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘥𝘺 - 𝙂𝙧𝙚𝙮'𝙨 𝘼𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙮 (ON HOLD)Where stories live. Discover now