Quotes from Lisa Sanders

A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian—solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do.

I don't count Jennifer among my mistakes. She had a severe infection and precious little reserve. Nevertheless, I think of her often. Those minutes of terror and confusion I felt standing powerless in her room served as a visceral reminder throughout my training... that the big picture isn't enough in medicine...

A lot of the appeal of internal medicine is Sherlockian—solving the case from the clues. We are detectives; we revel in the process of figuring it all out. It's what doctors most love to do.

If a doctor has worked through the problem well, there's a very good chance that one of these possible diagnoses will be right. The rest though, by definition, will be wrong. We are regularly wrong in the pursuit of being right. … The question we are taught to ask ourselves is, if it isn't that, what else could it be?

In medicine, uncertainty is the water we swim in.

a stroke is only a stroke after 50 of D50—a

In medicine, it is essential to rule out diseases that can kill, and then move on to those that may only make you wish you were dead.

Hemicrania continua is a type of daily headache characterized by persistent pain on one side of the head punctuated by episodes of sharp pain. The painful flare-ups are often accompanied by other symptoms, including watery eyes, runny nose, eyelid swelling, or constriction of the pupils. Remarkably, most patients with this type of headache get better when treated with an inexpensive medication that has been around for years: indomethacin.

Despite all the available technology, the tools doctors often rely on most are the most old-fashioned—a phone, a respected colleague, a mentor or friend.

One of the human limitations in medicine is that no one can know everything.

Medicine—to the extent that it can be called a science—is a sensual science, one in which we collect data about a patient through touch and the other senses according to a systematic method in order to make a diagnosis.

It is much more important to know what kind of patient has the disease than what sort of disease the person has," Osler instructed his trainees at the turn of the twentieth century.

While you may be able to say with precision what the average man will do, "you can never foretell what any one man will do.