A Large Case of Strep

The smallest deeds make the biggest difference in this world. This is particularly true when they are done in a spirit of giving and humility. I must confess that there have been many times that I have forgotten this. It seems that every time I forget, I am reminded of it by something in my life or practice.

In my three years of residency training I saw hundreds, possibly thousands of patients. Numerous times I was awakened in the middle of the night to admit dying patients or to go rushing up the stairs in a desperate attempt to stave off death in the Intensive Care Unit. In this whole three years I received only two thank you notes from patients. Of these two, one of them stands out clearly in my mind.

It was a busy day in my clinic in my second year of training. I was working in the office seeing patients after having been up most of the previous night on call. I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get done early when my nurse told me that the front office had added another patient on to my schedule.

I swallowed my frustration as I went in to see little Alex. He was just a year and a half old. His mother was a Russian immigrant who spoke poor English. She was on the brink of tears. She explained, in broken sentences, that Alex had run high fevers over the last two days and he was not drinking very much.

I examined him carefully and quickly discovered the source of the child’s fever. His tonsils were huge and swollen with white patches. A quick throat swab confirmed the diagnosis: Strep Throat. After my nurse had given him a shot of penicillin, I assured his mother that Alex would be better soon.

Two weeks later I received an envelope at the office. In it was a card from Alex’s mother, thanking me for curing her son. Reading the broken sentences within, you would have thought that I had saved Alex from death, not cured him from Strep Throat. Yet, in his mother’s eyes I had done much.

These are the things that matter most. It is said that we are called, not to do great things, but to do small things with great love. This is true.

To take care of small matters is very important. There are so many more cases of Strep Throat than there are cases of meningitis to treat and yet, there is a tendency to believe that those with Strep Throat don’t really matter since their problem is small in comparison. Nothing could be further from the truth, for problems that may seem small to others are huge to those experiencing them – even if they just have Strep Throat.