The despair that was palpable among a few of my physician friends was rooted in a terrible and intractable truth: that patients mostly didn't take care of themselves or care for their own health, and then approached the doctor to "fix them up".<p>So the physicians are typically faced with a thankless job. It is not their job to cure or heal diseases, but to treat them. And there have been multiple times I myself have confronted a problem with my PCP, and do you know what I hoped to hear? "Rest a while" or "here's a diet I suggest" or "avoid <xyz> if you can" -- just pragmatic advice in the form of "doctor's orders" because I am the type of guy who likes to be told what to do by authority figures, you know?<p>But physicians are not in that business either. And so people come into the office, obese, with developing chronic disorders that will never get any better; they are stuck in their ways and can't follow good advice anyway; they're ignorant and poor, and their main sources of food are 7-Eleven and Burger King.<p>So if a person goes into medicine with the goal of "helping people" then they can really become disillusioned by the process itself. There are no miracles worked except by showing compassion, exercising patience, and sharing wisdom.