People often ask physicians how we handle the emotional stress of dealing with ill children. What are our defense mechanisms? Do we practice a cool detachment? Do we shut off our emotions completely? Or do we go home at the end of the day and sob over a reheated dinner? ...The truth is that we are trained to do a job: recognize a problem, come up with a solution and execute that plan. Our ability to actually do something protects us from what you might expect would be a chronic depressive state. We feed off the satisfaction of being able to help and we know that things would be worse if we didn't or couldn't, do anything. For that reason, the experience of taking care of sick kids is much different from a hopeless walk through a pediatric ward as a visitor." - Katrina Firlik, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe - A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside
