Inspired by disease and death

doi:10.1136/bmj.a167

BMJ 2008;336:1206 (31 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.a167

Letters

The secret lives of doctors

Inspired by disease and death

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Where I grew up you were lucky to make your 10th birthday. Ioften arrived at school to find an empty desk, the occupierhaving died the night before. My grandmother was in terriblepain for two weeks before she could be transported to Ibadan,some 50 miles away, to have a simple parotid abscess drained.A man across the road fell from a palm tree and evisceratedhimself. His slow death from peritonitis was the most distressingI ever saw. My cousin was in isolation for weeks, crying forcompanionship, after contracting smallpox—50 years laterI still have nightmares about him. These were the reasons why,at the age of 7, I decided to be a doctor.

I read somewhere, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. Itis our light not our darkness that most frightens . . . [Full text of this article]

Olusola O A Oni, consultant orthopaedic surgeon

¹ Leicester LE7 7WA

ooni141400@aol.com