When I finished my residency, I worked at both a public and a private clinic. And one day they brought a girl to me with a severe bruise on her arm. I examined her, took a picture, there was nothing serious.
But my attention was attracted by a certain defect of the girl’s brush. It turned out that she had a congenital pathology: her fingers are barely mobile, the brush practically does not bend. The girl’s parents complained that they could not afford the operation, and the surgeons said that the chance to correct the defect was not very great.
For me, this case seemed very interesting, I already imagined exactly what manipulations should be done to help the girl. A few days after the examination, I asked the girl’s parents to bring her to my private clinic for surgery, assuring them that I would do everything absolutely free of charge. They will only have to pay for physical therapy afterwards, but this is not a problem, I have agreed with a familiar specialist. The parents were a little doubtful about the success of the operation, because they had been assured for a long time that it was impossible to help the child, so they asked me:
— What guarantees are there that our daughter will not get worse?
— You know, she won’t become a pianist, for example, but she will be able to use her hand quite confidently if she is engaged in therapy after surgery. She will be able to hold a pen, so there will be no problems with the letter. But then the girl herself intervened in the conversation:
— Uncle Doctor, can I draw? I dream so much to learn how to draw beautifully!I assured her with a smile that she would be able to do that, too. It was time for the operation, it was successful, and after that my parents regularly took my little patient to physical therapy. When a year later they came to me for a routine examination, the girl, beaming, handed me a drawing. A flower with multicolored petals was painted on the leaf, and at the bottom there was an inscription: «Thank you, doctor!», written in an unsteady childish handwriting. And you know, I’ve never received more expensive gifts in my life …
