What Does It Mean To Be A Doctor?

What Does It Mean To Be A Doctor?

-Dr. Peter Reimann

What it means to be a doctor

is a number of things.

People come to you

and want advice about their health

and they complain about what they consider

is missing from their health

Or they don’t.

They say, “What the hell do you think is wrong with me?

Lass mich allein, I’m fine

und du bist fur mich ein Borstenschwein!”*

What advice would I give a young doctor?

First I’d ask, “Why do you want to be a doctor?

Is it that you want to make money?

What for?

Or is it that you want to help other people?

What for?”

You ask me what was my reason to be a doctor.

I think my question was something of natural history.

Why are there people who need help?

Very complex, of course.

Do they need help because

of the hostile environment

or their internal hostility

or blah, blah, blah

What was the best thing about being a doctor?

…okay, one more question: $10-

Another complex  question.

It’s a job in which you keep your hands clean

You don’t get literally dirty

or it’s a job in which you make people feel a little better

or you make them feel really bad

Is that good?

Could be good-

Could be really bad…

and so on

and so on

*translation:  “Leave me alone, I’m fine

and you are for me a pig with many stiff hairs in his snout!”

(This poem was composed with Dr. Peter Reimann and his daughter Hannah in Springfield, New Jersey on Jan. 4th, 2013. Dr. Reimann is very playful with making up rhymes and jokes that his name means "rhyming man." He know many German poems by heart and recited and translated a few for us on the spot. We created the poem by asking questions around being a doctor. Hannah wrote down the answers to create the lines of the poem and translated the German lines. She is working on a film about her father and we will post links to it soon.)