56 Quotes About Surgery

Of the many 'firsts' with which I have been involved at the Texas Heart Institute —including the first successful human heart transplant in the United States and the first total artificial heart transplant in the world—the achievement that may have the greatest impact on health care did not occur in the operating room or in the research laboratory. It happened on a piece of paper... when we created the first-ever packaged pricing plan for cardiovascular surgical procedures.

A good doctor should not avoid performing surgery or prescribing a bitter pill if it is in the interest of the patient. Similarly, a wise person must not avoid taking unpleasant and difficult decisions, if they are in the interest of the people and the organisation.

When push comes to shove we can afford to lose an arm or a leg, but I am operating on peoples thoughts and feelings... and if something goes wrong I can destroy that persons character... forever.

Medication, surgery, and radiation are the weapons with which conventional medicine foolishly shoots the messengers called symptoms.

With all due respect to my surgeon, in a perfect world he would be out of a job.

He kept eating, with a stubborn determination like something in a dream, until he heard the door open and close again. There was still some soup in the bowl. He set it on the floor for Major, let his head fall into his hands, and sobbed like a broken-hearted child. Or like a young man, barely more than a boy, waking up with only half a leg.

He staggered and might have toppled sideways if Clara had not been there, grabbing his arm and steadying him. He turned toward her and saw her read, and then reflect, the anguish in his face. Her grip on his arm went from support to a more frantic clutch. She said under her breath, “You can get through this.” And after a long, shaky breath: “I’ll get you through it.”But her hand was trembling on his arm.

Break free from the binding robes of passion that feels like a lump in your heart, perform that surgery today, and you'll be set free forever.

It was clear to me that using your earned sick time for essential surgery would put a target on your back at the toxic W. M. Keck Observatory.