Surgeon: The View from Behind the Mask - Hardcover

Weeder, Richard S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0809246066 ISBN 13: 9780809246069

Publisher: Contemporary Books, 1988

Synopsis

Nothing unsettled Cooper more than “playing God.” That four years in medical school gave him responsibility over life and death seemed both outrageous and blasphemous, a trespass against the free will of the patient and the prerogatives of God. Cooper didn’t think himself wise enough to make decisions involving anything more than medical expertise, though he knew plenty of doctors who felt otherwise. And yet the role was thrust upon there were those cases like Amy’s when he had to decide whether to use maximal effort to preserve life or whether to let the patient die. Sometimes the patient couldn’t tell him what he wanted and there was no family to ask. Sometimes meaningful life was over, and Cooper had to decide what was meaningful. And even when oth- ers were involved, they often deferred to What do you think, Doctor? It flattered his ego, of course. He could become cocky exercising such power. But then he’d make a wrong decision or get a bad result, and the fact of his fallibility would bring him up short, like a dog on a leash. At other times, he felt mocked by this times when his sleep was interrupted to provide sleeping pills for someone who’d just dozed off, or times when he was asked to see “immediately” a patient who’d been lying around in the hospital for three days. He was at the beck and call of anyone who had a problem he couldn’t solve. His extraordinary power was thus a burden as well. He was caught in the paradox of being both master and servant at the same time.

Edition details

• Publisher: Contemporary Books
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0809246066
• ISBN 13: 9780809246069
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 229