My Song: Memoir of an ER Physician

Book excerpt: Thirty years in the making, one hundred thousand patients later, the hundred numinous patients I will forever treasure. It has been said that memoirs are the narratives of our life, and as such, become the manner and method of how we make sense out of our life's journey. Indeed, I could not imagine my life without my career in the ER, since without it; I would truly feel like a naked, wizened skeleton devoid of skin, flesh or viscera. The ER experience was the alchemist's stone that touched my ordinary life, and in so many ways, made it exquisitely gilded. Many were the patients that stirred the invisible fabric of my soul, and made the ordinary universe seem so much more expansive and unequalled. The magnificence of the ER flows from the commanding variety of patients, not unlike the arresting diversity of flora in the plant kingdom, renders a regal awe upon the eyes and souls of the beholder.