Too Much?

As medical professionals, we usually fantasize about wild and improbable situations: someone collapses in a restaurant – we splice them open with a butter knife, replace a valve with a hollowed our stick of carrot.

Most of our fantasies dissolve when we wake, banished to the back of our mind. But sometimes, we’re sure, if we try hard enough – we can live the dream.

The fantasy is simple, pleasure is good, and twice as much pleasure is better. That pain is bad, and no pain is better.

When you were a kid, it was Halloween candy. You hid it from your parents and ate it until you got sick.

In college, it was the heady combo of you, tequila, and… well… you know.

But the reality is different, the reality is that pain is there to tell us something. And there’s only so much pleasure we can take without getting a stomachache… and that’s ok. Maybe some fantasies are only supposed to live in our dreams.

As a medical professional, you take as much of the good as you can get, because it doesn’t come around nearly as often as it should. Because good things aren’t always what they seem. Too much of anything, even love, is not always a good thing.

How do you know how much is too much?

Too much too soon?

Too much information?

Too much fun?

Too much love?

Too much to ask?

And when is it all just too much to bear?