Just What I Needed

Walked into a patient's room last night to help start the workup, and she immediately opened with "Doctor, I'd like you to meet my son."  After explaining that I was the tech, and still many years of education and many more loans away from an MD, I proceeded to hook her up to the monitor, run an EKG, and draw a set of cultures.

An hour or so later, as I was getting her packaged to go upstairs, she grabbed my hand, smiled, and said, "Don't worry honey, you're going to make it."  After struggling a bit lately over the whole med school application process, it was a perfectly-timed and gratuitously nice thing to say.  It's amazing how a few kind words can put you in a good mood for the rest of the night.