It has been a frustrating week.  I feel overwhelmed at work, both with the workload and with my utter lack of sufficient clinical skills and medical knowledge.  And then work has been sad.  I made two patients hospice this week, one of my favorite clinic patients almost certainly has hepatocellular carcinoma, and another of my patients has advanced cervical cancer -- which, incidentally, is now a PREVENTABLE DISEASE.  GET VACCINATED AGAINST HPV!

These patients are good people.  They are young.  They are parents, siblings, spouses.  And I had to tell them they have advanced cancer.

I wish I could tell them it would be all right.  They could take a magic pill and get better.  But they won't. And while I can be liberal with morphine, I cannot say that it won't hurt.  And it might hurt a lot.

But then, if I understood why bad things happened to good people, I would be the wise (wo)man on the mountain.

And yet -- and this is what I really don't get -- why do I still get so upset over my small problems?