Soot grew up in India and did his first decade of medical training there, where he saw a lot of serious illness and chronic problems like undernutrition, which led to suffering. When he first started seeing patients in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic, he saw what he believed was just as much suffering, but of another kind, an emotional kind. “There was just so much suffering,” he reiterated, “so much suffering that didn’t make sense.”
Understanding his approach through that lens makes for a slightly less Internet-video-friendly concept. But it’s compelling in conversation. Before long I actually found myself pouring out my own stories to Sood, telling him about a thing I had to do earlier this week that I was nervous about. He has that way of listening that’s not so common on the East Coast, where you wait until a person is done speaking before you start. You maybe even wait a few seconds to make sure they’re done speaking. Novel. And so I just kept going.
This article was originally published on www.theatlantic.com. Read the original here.
*Image of “brain“ via Shutterstock
