Quotes from Samuel Shem

I make my patients feel like they're still part of life, part of some grand nutty scheme instead of alone with their diseases. With me, they still feel part of the human race.

But gomers are not just dear old people," said Fats. "Gomers are human beings who have lost what goes into being human beings. They want to die, and we will not let them. We're cruel to the gomers, by saving them, and they're cruel to us, by fighting tooth and nail against our trying to save them. They hurt us, we hurt them.

I know there is so much to learn about medicine and it is all new. It is fascinating all the time and there is nothing more amazing than the human body. The hard physical part of the job will soon become usual and you must watch your health.

This might have been the only thing that could have awakened you. Your whole life has been a growing from the outside, mastering the challenges that others have set for you. Now, finally, you might just be growing from inside yourself. It can be a whole new world, Roy, I know it. A whole new life." Eyes wet with tears, she said, "I'm going to love you even more, Roy, because I've been waiting a long time for you to begin.

GOMER: Get Out of My Emergency Room; "a human being who has lost—often through age—what goes into being a human being" (the Fat Man).

If Mickey tried to pump his chest, his bones would crunch into little bitty bits. Not even Mickey, seduced into the Leggo's philosophy of doing everything always for every patient forever, would dare call a cardiac arrest. Mickey called a cardiac arrest. From all over the House, terns and residents stormed into the room to save the Man With Agonal Respirations from a painless peaceful death.

Each of us was becoming more isolated. The more we needed support, the more shallow were our friendships; the more we needed sincerity, the more sarcastic we became. It had become an unwritten law among the terns: don't tell what you feel, 'cause if you show a crack, you'll shatter. We imagined that our feelings could ruin us, like the great silent film stars had been ruined by sound.

The thing is, said Gilheeny, is that we live in constant fear of our lives. It makes the blood pressure elevate like an Arabian geyser, and the tension headaches we get would knock the balls off a bull with the twist in the maxillary sinuses themselves.

I'm telling you that the cure is the disease. The main source of the illness in this world is the doctor's own illness; his compulsion to try to cure and his fraudulent belief that he can.

Gomers," said Howie, "gomers are what's going on." "You mean old people? We took care of old people too." "Gomers are different," said Eddie. "They didn't exist when you were a tern, 'cause then they used to die. Now they don't." "Ridiculous," said the Leggo emphatically

Talking about medicine, I told him with bitterness about my growing cynicism about what I could do, and he said, "No, we don't cure. I never bought that either. I went through the same cynicism—all that training, and then this helplessness. And yet, in spite of all our doubt, we can give something. Not cure, no. What sustains us is when we find a way to be compassionate, to love. And the most loving thing we do is to be with a patient, like you are being with me.

what I had to live with, the rest of the world must never see, for it separated me from them, as it had just done with my former best friends and with my one long love, Berry. There was rage and rage and rage, coating all like crude oil coating gulls. They had hurt me, bad. For now, I had no faith in the others of the world. And the delivery of medical care? Farce. BUFF 'n' TURF. Revolving door.

Of course not. People expect perfect health. It's a brand-spanking-new Madison Avenue expectation. It's our job to tell them that imperfect health is and always has been perfect health, and that most of the things that go wrong with their bodies we can't do much about. So maybe we do make diagnoses; big deal. We hardly ever cure.

Ah, it's a tough case: the only relief for her dementia is dialysis, but the thing that keeps her from signing for dialysis is her dementia. A real tough TURF.

Hmm. Say, did that BMS has a hobby?' The head nurse picked up the chart, turned to the special section created by Pinkus, called 'Hobbies, and said, 'Nope. No hobby.' 'There,' said Pinkus. 'See? No hobby. He didn't have a hobby, do you understand? Do you have a hobby, Roy?' With some alarm I realized that I did not, and said so. 'You should have at least one.

Kissinger was now a loxed-out, quivering, drooling gomer in a wheelchair—in the sick hell of eternally end-stage Parkinson's.

M BH: Man's Best Hospital; a BMS-affiliated hospital founded by WASPs; competitor of the House of God.

He crossed his legs in a slick way that showed that here was a guy, finally, who really knew how to sit down and cross his legs.

The measure of a person's psychological health and growth is not in the self, but in the quality of her or his relationships.

Yeah, but I've got to decide soon, I said, feeling lost, cast out alone after so many programmed years. I don't know what to do.

LAWS OF MAN'S 4TH BEST HOSPITAL Learn your trade, in the world. Isolation is deadly; connection heals. Connection comes first. Use the "we." It's not just what we do; it's what we do next. It's not that we do what we think we can get; it's what we dare to do together. Without health-care workers, there's no health care. Squeeze the money out of the machines. Put the human back in medicine. Stick together, no matter what.

This was the bottomless panic at the lost smooth cheek of childhood, at no longer being young.

It's our job to tell them that imperfect health is and always has been perfect health, and that most of the things that go wrong with their bodies we can't do much about.

wasn't dementia a fail-safe and soothing oblivion of the machine to its own decay?