Bassem

All hope abandon, ye who enter in!

[Bassem @lBass_]

When he came home at two in the morning and his mother was shocked at the blank look he gave her, she was deploring precisely the sole alleviation Rieux could then experience. To fight abstraction you must have something of it in your own make-up."

[Bassem @lBass_]

"All he was conscious of was a bleak indifference steadily gaining on him as he gazed at the door of the hotel.
After these wearing weeks, after all those nightfalls..Rieux had learned that he need no longer steel himself against pity. One grows out of pity when it's useless.

[Bassem @lBass_]

And in this feeling that his heart had slowly closed in on itself, the doctor found a solace, his only solace, for the almost unendurable burden of his days. This, he knew, would make his task easier, and therefore he was glad of it.

[Bassem @lBass_]

‘But can it really be that you don’t talk to anyone?’
‘Strictly speaking, to nobody.’
‘So who are you, then, explain yourself!"

[Bassem @lBass_]

"...tell me the story of your life.’
‘The story of my life!’ I cried out, frightened. ‘My story! But who told you that I have a story to tell? I don’t have a story …’
‘But how have you lived if there’s no story?’ she interrupted, smiling.
‘Absolutely without stories of any kind!

[Bassem @lBass_]

I lived, as they say, on my own, that is, absolutely alone – alone, completely alone – do you understand what it means to be alone?’
‘But what do you mean by alone? Do you mean you never see anyone?’
‘Oh, no, of course I see people, but nevertheless I am alone.’

[Bassem @lBass_]

He informed her of the deaths of Tomas and Tereza. She could not get over the news. The last link to her past had been broken."

[Bassem @lBass_]

What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end?..

[Bassem @lBass_]

Sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing to betray. The unbearable lightness of being—was that the goal? Her departure from Geneva brought her considerably closer to it. She received a letter from Prague. It was from Tomas's son..

[Bassem @lBass_]

We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina—what had come over her? Nothing. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness..

[Bassem @lBass_]

"Sabina settled in Paris, but she could not escape her melancholy. If someone had asked her what came over her, she would have been hard pressed to find words for it. When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness..

[Bassem @lBass_]

Hell is other people

[Bassem @lBass_]

"in my brief time as a physician, I had made more moral slides than strides"

[Bassem @lBass_]

https://t.co/rUcDiNhSbI

[Bassem @lBass_]

https://t.co/oj8cg0JQS0

[Dr Kamlesh Darji @DrKamleshDarji1]

Residency tip:

Be Reliable

Nobody tells you this before residency, but showing up on time matters more than you'd think. Not in a bureaucratic, "someone's watching the clock" way - but because your team is exhausted, your patients are anxious, and the person waiting for you to relieve them has been on their feet for hours. When you're late, someone else pays for it.

Following through on the small things is where most people quietly fall apart. You say you'll call the family back. You say you'll check that potassium level. You say you'll follow up on the CT/biopsy result. And then the shift gets busy, and it slips. It happens to everyone. But the residents who find a system - a notes app, a scrap of paper, anything - to make sure nothing falls through the cracks are the ones attendings genuinely trust. That trust is worth more than any exam score.

Being prepared is less about impressing your attending and more about knowing your patients well enough to actually help them. Walk into rounds having already thought about why Mr. Bhai's blood pressure dropped overnight, not just that it did. That small habit, done consistently, is what separates residents who feel reactive from ones who feel in control.

Here's the honest truth: residency will have people who are sharper, quicker, and more naturally gifted than you. That's fine. What you can always control is whether people can count on you. And in medicine, that's EVERYTHING.

[Bassem @lBass_]

https://t.co/R5VLRrBxzx

[Bassem @lBass_]

I've seen people who are good people by all means say the most horrendous most inhumane things about their friends just because they ask for a break.

[Bassem @lBass_]

Residency really makes the Stanford Experiment seem mild and ethical.
You give a few people a lot of power and all the incentive to punish or force their counterparts "the prisoners" even though they're basically peers and that's all because of a few shifts.

[Bassem @lBass_]

We're are the prisoners of our superiors and the guards of our prisoner colleagues and everyone does everything they can to make sure you fall in line or else