In 1997, Mary Schmich, a Pulitzer-prize winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune, wrote a column that read as a “hypothetical” speech to that year’s graduating class. The idea was to impart wisdom accumulated after decades of life to a younger generation just starting out, to clue them in on things the author wished she had known when she was a fresh-faced 22-year-old. One of her nuggets was, “Don’t worry about the future. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind. The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.” Unfortunately, our lives in general, and medicine in particular, are full of examples of things that we just took for granted as safe but which turned out to surprise us with some negative effect. Read More