![]() ![]() But I also possess my father’s high cholesterol, which rises to alarmingly higher levels on my annual blood tests and threatens to turn my very heart into a waxy candle, ready to burn. During my residency years, I’d occasionally lift the end of a two-hundred-pound ICU bed (patient included) into an elevator when the wheels got stuck. ![]() I have my father’s compact, sturdy frame, which made me unexpectedly strong when I was younger. I see surgery and syringes full of steroids in my future. I also have her spine, which is to say, I have her osteoarthritis. Even spending time with my family, I find myself watching them, almost creepily, as if they were the contents of my personal scrying bowl. I have turned that diagnostic focus inward with a relentlessness that has amplified over time. ![]() But if there is anything I know about human nature, it’s what I know about myself: humans are desperate to discern who they are, and what fate will befall their bodies and minds. Before the experiences and technologies of today, the future was a vastly larger, unknown black box. ![]() I have sensed a lethal cancer over a video call I have seen heart failure that portended death from across the room. But I can also foretell the future without touching a person. Most of the time, I have with me the aid of my stethoscope, a gentle hand, and a hospital replete with laboratory tests, scanning machines, and consultants. As a physician, I am in the business of seeing people and making judgments. ![]()
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