The Tao of Surgery (With Apologies to Lao Tzu)

摘要

It was a night on call like any other, and I fell into bed after a round of beeper madness. If I can get another couple hours of sleep, I thought, I might make it through office hours in the morning. I had just closed my eyes when I felt a poke. Standing above me was an old Chinese man with a staff. He was dressed in robes and looked at me with an uncompromising stare."You are a surgeon, yes?" he said."Well, I'm an ob-gyn," I replied."Don't you do those operations called hysterectomy and laparoscopy? Don't you do C-sections?" With each question he poked me with his staff."Ouch! Okay, okay, I am a surgeon.""Good" he said. "Listen to me now. I am Lao Tzu, and I have come across time to teach you to be a better surgeon.""Lao Tzu? I studied you in that Chinese philosophy course in college that was supposed to be an easy A. You founded Taoism. All about the Way of the Universe. You wrote the Tao Te Ching."