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Patients Quotes

Browse 45 quotes about Patients.

Patients Quotes

“Dr. Richard Selzer is a surgeon and a favorite author of mine. He writes the most beautiful and compassionate descriptions of his patients and the human dramas they confront. In his book Letters to a Young Doctor, he said that most young people seem to be protected for a time by an imaginary membrane that shields them from horror. They walk in it every day but are hardly aware of its presence. As the immune system protects the human body from the unseen threat of harmful bacteria, so this mythical membrane guards them from life-threatening situations. Not every young person has this protection, of course, because children do die of cancer, congenital heart problems, and other disorders. But most of them are shielded—and don’t realize it. Then, as years roll by, one day it happens. Without warning, the membrane tears, and horror seeps into a person’s life or into the life of a loved one. It is at this moment that an unexpected theological crisis presents itself.”

PeopleLifeYearsChildrenBookBodyHappensBeautifulYoungTimeTearsHorrorOne DayHumanCrisisThreatCancerProtectionUnexpectedWarningCompassionateImaginaryProtectedDieUnseenPresencePersonMomentShieldsTheologicalWalkTheNotDoToItImmune SystemBeAndMostOfBacteriaAwareRealizeOtherSituationsEveryDon TThemTheyFromWithoutEvery DayHisHarmfulPatientsByConfrontMythicalIntoDisordersPresentsItselfRollSurgeonGuardsItsDescriptionsSeemLoved OneDramasProtectsHardlyMembraneLife ThreateningCongenital Heart ProblemsDoctor Richard SelzerLetters To A Young DoctorPerson SSeeps
Book:Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future
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“Sometimes in the winter in the dark I'd wake and everything that smacked of dread would have lifted up and stolen away in the night and I would just be lying there with the snow blowing against the glass. I'd think that maybe I should turn on the lamp but then I'd just lie there and listen to the quiet. The wind in the quiet. There are times now when I see those patients in their soiled nightshirts lying on gurneys in the hallway with their faces to the wall that I ask myself what humanity means. I would ask does it include me.”

NightHumanityDarkWinterDreadPatients
Book:Stella Maris
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“Who gets to be the judge of reality? If it was deeply felt, believed, spoken about often or altered your life course, then it was real enough. Faith doesn't get the luxury of all those things one hundred percent of the time, but we call that normal behavior based on a gut feeling.” I said. I looked at his wife and she busted out laughing. Her husband was trying to catch invisible butterflies above his head—dementia. My patients teach me the most sobering of truths: Why wreck his smile. If I could see them, I would want to catch them too.”

RealityFaithBeliefDreamsPerceptionExpectationsRealismMiraclesBest FriendsPonderingFairytalesViewpointPatientsGods PlanTsloama
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“I think timing is better left up to God to decide then religious leaders. I once met a man that brought his wife flowers in the hospital. They held hands, kissed and were as affectionate as any cute couple could be. They were both in their eighties. I asked them how long they were married. I expected them to tell me fifty years or longer. To my surprise, they said only five years. He then began to explain to me that he was married thirty years to someone that didn’t love him, and then he remarried a second time only to have his second wife die of cancer, two years later. I looked at my patient (his wife) sitting in the wheelchair next to him smiling. She added that she had been widowed two times. Both of her marriages lasted fifteen years. I was curious, so I asked them why they would even bother pursuing love again at their age. He looked at me with astonishment and said, “Do you really think that you stop looking for a soulmate at our age? Do you honestly believe that God would stop caring about how much I needed it still, just because I am nearing the end of my life? No, he left the best for last. I have lived through hell, but if I only get five years of happiness with this woman then it was worth the years of struggle I have been through.”

LoveWisdomTruthHappinessWaitingRelationshipsMarriageGracePerspectivePatienceTrue LoveSoulmatesTimingElderlyUnderstandStrugglesSeeChoosingStayingpositiveu ComStaying PositivePatientsMisleading
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“Sophia elbowed her in the side. "Are you deliberately ignoring my question about the dashing major, or are you simply displaying your superior manners?" "I have nothing of interest to tell you about Major Kurland. He is still bedridden and remarkably argumentative." "In my experience, men never make good patients," Mrs. Hathaway said comfortably. "They either behave like children, or imagine they are the only mortal in the entire world to ever be so sick, or near death." She set a stich in her embroidery. "Mind you, I'm not surprised Major Kurland is a difficult patient. After his distinguished career in the military, it must be hard for him to be idle." Lucy didn't argue the point. The whole village seemed intent on hero-worshipping Major Kurland, and wouldn't hear a word against him. Only she, Foley, and Bookman seemed to know what it was really like to tend the oh-so-ungallant major.”

MenHero WorshipPatients
Book:Death Comes to the Village
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“The reality is that the lives of the smallest patients are in our hands, and their clinical condition can change in an instant. No matter how many times you are involved in situations such as this, the physical stress and anxiety as well as the emotional and psychological effects of being immersed in that environment are dramatic and lasting on the human body, mind, and central nervous system. These effects are severe, and I firmly believe that they are cumulative over your lifetime.”

ActionFictionHealthDoctorsRealisticStrifeFamily LifeRuinPatients
Book:Burned Out
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“I was able to shake off the near-death experience, and whether it was true or not, I was able to use it as some sort of moral validation as to the importance of my existence, or at least the importance of me completing this job, because clearly God, the universe or whoever understood that there was no other human being alive on this earth stupid enough to take this job.”

FictionHealthDoctorsMedicalRuinPatientsDomesticMedical ThrillerDomestic ThrillerMedical Fiction
Book:Burned Out
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“In the Awakenings movie I found it very interesting that the most profound awakenings in the catatonic patients occurred in 1969, the year that the Aurora Borealis was seen from N.Y. to Louisiana. It seems the patients were getting environmental radiation stimulation in addition to their L-Dopa drug that year. L-Dopa plus radiation therapy may eventually be proven to be a very potent brain stimulant.”

InterestingBrainDrugProfoundEnvironmentalTherapyMovieRadiationNewLouisianaStimulationYearAurora1969PatientsPotentYorkAwakeningsStimulantAdditionNyCatatonicL DopaBorealis
Author:Steven Magee
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“Everything stinks: creosote, bleach, disinfectant, soil, blood, gangrene. The military authorities say uniforms must be preserved at all costs, but that means manhandling patients who are in agony. Cut them off, says Sister Byrd, and she's the voice of authority here, in the Salle d'Attente, not some gold-braid-encrusted crustacean miles away from blood and pain, so cut they do, snip, snip, snip, snip, as close to the skin as they dare. On either side of Paul as he cuts are two long rows of feet: yellow, strong, calloused, scarred where blisters have formed and burst repeatedly. Since August they've done a lot of marching, these feet, and all their marching has brought them to this one place.”

WarPainBloodPatientsMarching
Book:Life Class
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“I don’t understand hospital chaplains that try to rob my patients of their anger. Sometimes anger is a key motivator that gets people to take action. Anger can push a cancer patient to jump out of his hospital bed, walk down to the nurses station and scream, “I am getting the hell out of here!”. There is a misconception that God is simply sweet and passive. Actually, God can be quite cunning, manipulative and relentless with his children. What we consider as negative traits are actually helpful in molding us. He will use a negative emotion if needed to push people to do things that will change them for the better. He will allow people or situations to derail us if there is a chance that those interactions will push us forward. Personally, I don’t want a God that is going to send some church member to my deathbed with a plate of cookies and tell me to have faith. Actually, I rather have a God that screams, “Get the hell off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Walk down the hall with that Physical Therapist so you can get on with your life!" A little anger in a person can push them to do amazing things.”

GodInspirationDesireMotivationSpiritualityChallengesAnswersSorrowAngerAdversityIllnessObstaclesSicknessHospitalsWill PowerDrivePatientsTrajedy
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“The pressure remains all in one direction, toward doing more, because the only mistake clinicians seem to fear is doing too little. Most have no appreciation that equally terrible mistakes are possible in the other direction—that doing too much could be no less devastating to a person's life.”

HealingDoctorsMedicineDecisionsTreatmentDecision MakingTerminal IllnessPatients
Book:Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
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“We're not hunter-gatherers anymore. We're all living like patients in the intensive care unit of a hospital. What keeps us alive isn't bravery, or athleticism, or any of those other skills that were valuable in a caveman society. It's our ability to master complex technological skills. It is our ability to be nerds. We need to breed nerds.”

HumanityTechnologySocietyGeniusFutureBraveryIntelligenceComplexityMasteryHospitalBrainsHunterPatientsAthleticismNerdsGeeksAthletesBreedCavemanHunter GathererBrainiacGathererIntensive Care
Book:Seveneves
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“The nurse read them again. This time, I wrote them down. Then I spent a minute studying them. She was afebrile, I noted. That was good. Her heart rated was 96, a high number I had no idea how to interpret. Her blood pressure was 152 over 84, another highish set of numbers that told me nothing. Her respiratory rate was 26 - also high, and vaguely disquieting. Her O2 sat - the oxygen content of her blood - was 92 percent: low, and in the context of that high respiratory rate not a good sign. The nurse was still looking at me. "I hear she's a whiner," I said hopefully. The nurse shrugged. "She asked me to call you.”

DoctorCluelessPatientsPatient CareInternal MedicineIntern
Book:Internal Medicine: A Doctor's Stories
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“It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on American Idol before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness—it was scarred and worn beyond repair”

DeathLossNurseNursingCopingLessonYearRepeatPatients
Book:The Repeat Year
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“EDS is a scary and challenging diagnosis, but the consequences of not knowing are far greater than that of a correct diagnosis. EDS symptoms can range from the very mild to the extremely severe. One thing is certain, though: If I had received a diagnosis back when my symptoms were mild, I would be living a very different life now. Every single day, in my struggle to actualize the person I still can be, I cannot help but mourn the person I could have been.”

DisabilityChronic IllnessDisability QuotesPatientsInvisible IllnessChronic Illness QuotesEhlers Danlos Syndrome
Author:Michael Bihovsky
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“In the absence of any therapy, the mentally ill of the 20th century were chained, shackled, straitjacketed, kept nude, electrocuted, half-frozen, parboiled, violently hosed, wrapped in wet canvas, confined to “mummy bags”, subjected to insulin-induced hypoglycemic comas, forced into seizures with massive doses of the stimulant Metrazol, injected with camphor, drugged into three-week comas with barbiturates and tranquilizers, involuntarily sterilized, and surgically mutilated. Rape by hospital staff was common, as was humiliation and verbal abuse. One reporter noted that a state hospital patient had been restrained for so long that his skin was beginning to grow around the leather straps.”

PainAbuseMental IllnessPatientsInstitutionalizationTorturesMental Hospitals
Book:Mouth
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“When you get sick you will be surprised by who steps up and who steps away. I can honestly say I did not think this would apply to me. I could not imagine that anyone in my family or circle of friends would not be there for me. Wrong!”

TreatmentHelpCancer PatientsChallengingPatientsTrue StoriesLife Threatening DiagnosisUnchartered TerritoryFirst Hand Advice
Book:Voices of Cancer: What We Really Want, What We Really Need
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