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Giving Prospects for Life From the Past to the New Millennium

Jana B. A. MacLeod, MD

Arch Surg. 2006;141:705-707.

It was early and the patients bore our presence as we switched on lights, pulled back covers, and inquired about bodily functions. It was the early morning hours, and we were performing morning resident rounds in a university-teaching hospital. One lady was sitting up, ready for the residents. She was packed and eager to go. Unlike her roommate, she had no large incision to heal; she was not hooked to an analgesia-administrating pump or a plastic tube in her nose. She had a small, dry gauze bandage over her right upper quadrant. We looked down at the clipboard where her results were written. She looked up, eager to hear the good news that all patients long to hear. . . . 

Author Affiliations: Division of Trauma and Critical Care, Department of Surgery, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, Ga.