The "A Renowned Doctor Taught Lesson With A Story Of Failure" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Reading the "I Know A Story" column in my local Sunday newspaper.  The week's story was titled "Renowned doctor taught lesson with a story of failure."  The story was written by Dr. David E. Fuchs.  He began by telling the readers that ...One of my roles as a physician was caring for residents in nursing homes.   One day I entered the room of one patient, and immediately noticed the photo at her bedside.  It was none other  than Dr. C. Everett Koop, the esteemed pediatric surgeon and former surgeon general of the United States.  She revealed  that decades ago she had worked with him at Children's Hospital in Phildelphia.   One day Dr. Koop came to visit her.  I was fortunate to be in the building, and I came by to catch a glimpse of the surgeon idolized by nearly every doctor I know.  Despite his being in his 90s and in a wheelchair, I immediately felt that I was in the presence of greatness.  After all, he had developed several new surgeries to treat birth anomalies, and he separated more than one set of conjoined twins.  He revealed that he had recently been hired by Dartmouth Medical College to help teach medical students how to effectively relate to patients.  After some pleasantries and Dr. Koop making certain I knew I was to take especially good care of this patient, he began to share an experience from his career.  Though in my 60s, I felt like a young medical student again as I listened carefully to every word.  He recalled that, many years ago, a young woman had come into the emergency room and was diagnosed with a large blood clot in her lung.  She was going downhill fast, and he was summoned to take her to the operating room to remove the clot.  Because time was of the essence, the usual precautions against germs were skipped as he quickly opened her chest and removed the clot, literally saving her life.  Realizing that there was a high risk of post-operative infection, and, having access to a new wonder drug called penicillin, Dr. Koop told me how he sprinkled penicillin into the chest wound.  "I gilded the lily, he said."  What happened next was quite unexpected.  Her heart slowed, hen stopped beating.  There ws potassium in that ne drug - penicillin - snd in high doses, potassium stops the heart, for good.  He had saved her life, and a few minutes later, had inadvertently ended it.  I was struck by the fact that this world-renowned surgeon surgeon, with so many heroic stories to tell, chose instead to tell me this story of failure.  As I walked away, I wondered if his message was that we learn more from our mistakes than from our successes.  However, I came away feeling the a dose of humility can make the most successful msn appear even greater.  The author of this story, a retired physical, lives in East Hempfield Township.  C. Everett Koop died in 2013 at age 96.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.