On my medicine rotation.
I was carrying about 3 patients at the time. 2 of them were awesome, very grateful, very enjoyable patients to take care of. 1 patient always treated me like crap. I saw him every morning at 5:30am, always tried to address his needs and concerns and all I got was a scowl. Despite my pleading, he always left the floor to go to the cafeteria. He even went so far as to tell my attending that I didn't know what I was doing and that I couldn't hear his murmur if my life depended on it (my attending checked, he had some mitral regurg, oh well I guess I'm just not that good yet).
On my last day of the rotation:
When I am done with a rotation on my last day, I always make sure to say bye to my patients. Said bye to my 2 "favorite" patients, shook hands, wished them well. Overall was a very pleasant experience. Decided to leave my last patient alone because I didn't want to get cursed out at 11pm after a long day. Besides, he probably would rather not want to see me anyways and would be happy to never see me again.
I walked to the parking lot to my car. Turned on my engine. Sat there in the dark for a good 10 minutes before deciding I would go back and say bye to the last mean patient. Maybe I'd have to hear his crap, but at least I felt like I could sleep easy knowing I gave him the same courtesy that I did to my other patients.
I walked back into the hospital. I walked into his room with my backpack on, shook his hand, told him it was a privilege to work with him and wished him all the best. He grabbed me by white coat, pulled me into him, buried his face in my chest and started crying uncontrollably. He thanked me for all I had done and told me I was going to be a great doctor.
I'll never know why he broke down like that. But as I walked back to my car, I remember thinking about all the bullshit I went through to get to medical school. All the practice MCATs with low scores that crushed my self confidence. All the nights studying various esoteric lectures. All the step 1 studying and the abuse from attendings and residents. All that stuff felt like it led up to that one personal moment I shared with that patient. No attendings, no residents, no evaluations, no honors/high pass/pass/fail, no shelf scores.
Now when I'm on colorectal surgery and the attending tells me to stand by the patient's rectum and collect all the shit, I sometimes reflect back on that encounter. I've realized that 99% of medicine is really difficult, often times unpleasant and excessively tedious. But 1% of the time it's pretty damn rewarding and really makes it worth it to put up with all the nonsense every single day. Medicine can eat away at your soul if you don't cherish those few moments that make you realize how awesome this field is.