KOK Edit: Your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM)
KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) KOK Edit: your favorite copyeditor since 1984(SM) Katharine O'Moore Klopf
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Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Knowledge with a Price

2008 Sichuan earthquake (photo courtesy of Wikipedia)Sometimes my work makes me sad.

This afternoon, I'll be editing a manuscript about gas gangrene in wounds caused by buildings falling on and trapping people in China during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. I know that what the researcher-physician authors learned during the quake will help people wounded by all sorts of severe physical trauma. But just imagining the anguish on the faces of those injured parents and children and grandchildren—and the faces of the friends and relatives searching for them—makes me hurt for them all.

To help people so badly hurt and not fall apart yourself takes incredible courage and emotional strength and resilience. I'm grateful for physicians and other health-care workers who can do that.



1 comment:

Dick Margulis said...

"To help people so badly hurt and not fall apart yourself takes incredible courage and emotional strength and resilience. I'm grateful for physicians and other health-care workers who can do that."

That's exactly the feeling I have when I visit someone in a dementia unit and I see the smiling, ever-patient staff, doing, for pitiful wages, work I know I would never have the courage to do myself with such grace and love.

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