What Good is Care Without Compassion? :: Medicine College Admissions Essays

What Good is Care Without Compassion?   The AIDS hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my prototypic day there, after an hour of training, I met capital of Minnesota, a tall, emaciated, forty-year-old AIDS victim who was recovering from a stroke that had severely affected his speech. I took him to General infirmary for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After waiting for two and a half hours, he was called in and hence needed to wait another two hours for his prescription. Hungry, I suggested we go and get some lunch. At first Paul resisted he didnt want to accept the lunch offer. Estranged from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasnt used to anyone being kind to him - even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lighten up up with the biggest, most radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So little b ought so much. While elated that I had literally made Pauls day, the neglect and emotional isolation from which he suffered disgusted me. This was a harsh side of medicine I had not seen before. Right then and there, I wondered, Do I really want to go into medicine?   What had so upset me about my day with Paul? Before then nothing in my personal, academic, or volunteer experiences had shaken my single-minded commitment to medicine. Why was I so unprepared for what I saw? Was it the proximity of death, knowing Paul was terminal? No it couldnt have been. As a young boy in gutted Beirut I had experienced death time and time again. Was it the monetary hardship of the hospice residents, the living from day to day? No, I dealt with that myself as a new immigrant and had even worked full-time during my first two years of college. Financial obstruction was no stranger to me. Neither financial distress nor the sight of death had deterred me. Before the day in the hospice, I only wan ted to be a doctor.   My interest in medicine had started out with an enjoyment of science. From general biology to advanced cellular/behavioral neuroscience, the study of the biological systems, especially the most mazy of them all, the human body, has been a delightful journey with new discoveries in each new class.