Jerome Groopman quotes:

Hope can be imagined as a domino effect, a chain reaction, each increment making the next increase more feasible... There are moments of fear and doubt that can deflate it.

Help, then, is the ballast that keeps us steady, that recognizes where along the path are the dangers and pitfalls that can throw us off; hope tempers fear so we can recognize dangers and then bypass or endure them.

Despite education and knowledge and experience, when you are the patient--suffering, confused, and despairing--it is very, very hard to take matters into your own hands. I was not a George Griffin, able to stand alone and challenge the prevailing assumptions. I needed an external voice, strong and determined, to guide me."

There is an authentic biology of hope. Belief and expectation - the key elements of hope - can block pain by releasing the brain's endorphins and enkephalins, mimicking the effects of morphine.

It took more than science to make hope real.

The freedom of patient speech is necessary if the doctor is to get clues about the medical enigma before him. If the patient is inhibited, or cut off prematurely, or constrained into one path of discussion, then the doctor may not be told something vital. Observers have noted that, on average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.

Hope is the elevating feeling we experience when we see - in the mind's eye - a path to a better future.

False hope can lead to intemperate choices and flawed decision making. True hope takes into account the real threats that exist and seeks to navigate the best path around them.

Hope gives us the courage to confront our circumstances and the capacity to surmount them.

To hope under the most extreme circumstances is an act of defiance that permits a person to live his life on his own terms. It is part of the human spirit to endure and give a miracle a chance to happen.

I had learned that every patient has the right to hope, despite long odds, and it was my role to help nurture that hope.

True hope is cleareyed. It sees all the difficulties that exist and all the potential for failure, but through that carves a realistic path to a better future.

Many years before when I had serious back pain from a sports injury, the surgeons said they would explore my spine and "figure it out." Out of frustration I had impulsively opted for the procedure. They ended up fusing the vertebrae. It left me debilitated. In hindsight, I blamed myself more than the surgeons. I had pressed them for a solution when in fact none was apparent because the cause of the pain was obscure.

Hope, true hope, has proved as important as any medication I might prescribe or any procedure I might perform.

Hope differs from optimism. Hope does not arise from being told to "think positively," or from hearing an overly rosy forecast. Hope, unlike optimism, is rooted in unalloyed reality.

Even when there is no longer hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul.

I feel that I have to do everything better just to be judged as okay. It is something I wish I could let go of. It's something that I wish just wasn't there.

On average, physicians interrupt patients within eighteen seconds of when they begin telling their story.