Luck

Go ask a doctor how it goes after the on-call day, and odds are that the doctor will tell you how lucky or unlucky he has been.

Some of us take solace, after a stormy night, by calling ourselves unlucky. To us, a peaceful night means luck.

But be not beguiled.

Now that I've got senior enough to be on call once in a while, what I look forward to is the luck (sort of) to see more difficult cases and learn. I remember reading once that medicine is knowledge, judgment, experience, and luck. With that in mind, I called myself lucky (I still do) when my pager was bleeping all night during my recent call days.

Lest I be misunderstood: I do not want to suggest that a good doctor is one who prays for a busy on-call day. Nor do I think it always proper to work nonstop. Yet, when I think about my two recent on-call days, I see that I was really lucky to come across patients that I can learn from them: first, I learned to stick a long needle into the pericardial sac around a patient's heart, and next, I learned to place a balloon pump into the aorta of a failing heart.

And I owe it all to a bit of luck.