Doctors belong to an insular world—one of hemorrhages and lab tests and people sliced open. We are for the moment the healthy few who live among the sick. And it is easy to become alien to the experiences and sometimes the values of the rest of civilization. Ours is a world even our families do not grasp. This is, in certain respects, the experience of athletes and soldiers and professional musicians. Unlike them, however, we are not only removed, we are also alone.
