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- #4,021
I honestly think most doctors - and certainly all of them worth the paper their medical degree is printed on - would just be profoundly sad. What a waste of time, talent, and resources it is to keep throwing temporary cures at someone like Kelly. It's not even that she's incapable of understanding how much effort is being expended upon making her well, which adds to the frustration.
Surgeons, in particular, are generally regarded as extremely prideful, almost arrogant, and will work their asses off to be the "best" at their chosen niche. They truly choose surgery over having a life or relationships outside of work. It's a gift and a craft, not just a job. Obviously, being any kind of physician is a calling, but surgery is beyond that, even. A surgeon is actively cutting and removing and rearranging; it's truly art. Surgeons spend thousands of hours practicing incisions and sutures, for example, often starting with animal models or cadavers and practicing on them for months before ever so much as breathing on a living human being. Yes, a hack job incision or shitty, bulging line of sutures will get the job done, but no decent surgeon is going to do that. There's an incredible degree of competition within the field and within oneself to be the very best at whatever they do. At some point it's not even about the patient outcome, it's just about this single-minded obsession with being the unquestionable master of a craft.
This is part of why surgeons are reluctant to touch the work of another. If one guy isn't the best, the next one is at a disadvantage from the beginning if he tries to fix the first one's work. Same goes for chronically noncompliant patients. Yes, sometimes people cannot understand why the things they do are hurting them,and that's one thing. No surgeon is going to want to do anything with a patient who will actively work to fuck everything up as soon as the anesthesia wears off.
Most doctors get over the noncompliant patients, because there's still a duty to provide care even when you suspect your patient is hurting himself. Surgeons, though? Nah. Especially since so many procedures are elective on some level, no surgeon is going to volunteer to do some cutting edge, incredibly complex procedure on someone who can't or won't stop fucking themselves up. That's when they slap a "patient is not a candidate for surgical management" on the EMR and turf them to the intensivist or other speciality.
Plastic surgery guys (and gals) are among the most notorious for being highly competitive and incredibly passionate, almost neurotic, about the quality of their work. I think a lot about the guy who did Kelly's failed skin grafts. Those were art. They were beautiful. That surgeon studied and practiced for YEARS to do them. It's not just a thing that you graduate medical school and know how to do. It's hours and hours and hours of practicing, squinting through a surgeon's loupe as your neck cramps and your eyes throb and your wife leaves you and takes the kids because she doesn't even know who you are anymore. It's keeping your skills sharp by volunteering to scrub in when you'd rather be asleep in your bed, making row after row after row of practice sutures with Prolene 6-0 filament then starting all over because you can do better.
It has to be a kick in the balls to see them picked apart like nothing. Somewhere in Canada, there's a surgeon who is secretly relieved that they just hacked 'em off and were finally done with the whole mess.
