OHCM

"Not for her a listless, dull-eyed wordless decline; with her it is all rush, gabble, celerity. She had always been a talker, but now her dementia unleashes torrents of speech.... One train of thought switching to another without signal or pause, rattling across points and through junctions at a rate no listener could follow... Following the sense is like trying to track a particular ripple in a pelting torrent of talk." 

Ahhh~~~ Sometimes I love the OHCM (Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine) more for it's dramatic yet charming anecdotal inserts rather than for it's main purpose of providing a quick source of reference during clinical activities. Take the above excerpt for example. With a little play of words, it managed to make dementia look slightly more appealing than it really is. How cool is that, huh?

Today, i found another interesting piece in the OCHM:

"Be aware that using QALYs relentlessly can make us cruel; sentiment (the alternative to QALYs) may make us useless, but it is better to be useless than cruel."

That actually put a smile on my face. =)

So even if I turn out to be a useless doctor someday; even if my future patients think I do nothing useful to help them; even then, at least I'll remember that it is better to be useless than cruel. =))