From SERMO:  I am on the verge of retirement. Sometime within the next year or two I will retire. I would love to retire now, but I have to wait until my daughter graduates from college in the spring. And then I would like to continue working long enough to finish paying off the mortgage. Altogether - about 1 1/2 years.

In the past year I have been remembering many of the more memorable moments in my career - the good and the bad. And I have been wondering if I made a significant difference in anyone's life other than my family.

I did make one save all by myself - not as part of a team. I intubated a 3 year old who was cyanotic with a tamale in his trachea. I just happened to be in the ER of the little hospital (it wasn't staffed by physicians back then) when the EMTs brought him in. I apparently shoved the tamale down into the bronchus and he was able to take a deep breath and then blew tamale all over my face and I gave him a great big kiss. He recovered entirely. Don't ask why I didn't cric him.
And there was the 48 y o man that I hustled off to the cardiologist just because I had a bad feeling about him. He had a 99% occlusion of the RCA and his only symptoms were fatigue and a sense of doom. Then the nitbrain went fishing the next year and didn't wear a life vest and drowned.

But have I actually made a difference? I like to think so. I had a choice when I was accepted to med school. I had also been accepted to 5 law schools. But I have never regretted my choice. I think lawyers have to make a lot of compromises with their what? conscience? soul? ethics? maybe all 3. I don't think I've ever had to do that. And I probably would have been a lousy lawyer.
But I still wonder - how much good (or bad) have I done. Have I left something worthwhile behind?

Copyright © 2012 H.E.Butler III M.D., F.A.C.S.