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

What Good is Care Without Compassion?   The help hospice reeked from disease and neglect. On my origin twenty-four hour period there, after an hour of training, I met Paul, 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 Hospital for a long-overdue appointment. It had been weeks since he had been outside. After searching for twain and a half hours, he was called in and past 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. remove from his family and seemingly ignored by his friends, he wasnt used to anyone being affable to him - even though I was only talking about a Big Mac. When it arrived, Paul took his first bite. Suddenly, his face lit up with the biggest, closely radiant smile. He was on top of the world because somebody bought him a hamburger. Amazing. So litt le bought 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 treat I had not seen before. Right indeed 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 cargo to medicine. Why was I so unprepared for what I saw? Was it the proximity of decease, 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 financial hardship of the hospice residents, the living from day to day? No, I dealt with that myself as a newly immigrant and had even worked full-time during my first two years of college. Financial difficulty was no stranger to me. incomplete financial distress nor the sight of death had deterred me. Before the day in the hospice, I only wanted 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 complex of them all, the humankind body, has been a delightful journey with new discoveries in each new class.