How blessed am I?

How blessed am I?

How blessed am I?

Well I’ll tell you.

I’m incredibly blessed to have MS and a medical degree.

I’m blessed because I get to celebrate twice when a new medication comes out for MS. When I celebrate as a patient, I feel like, “Cool, another medication that might help to slow down my MS even better than my current medication does!”

Plus, and here is the really great part, as a physician I feel like, “Excellent, now I have another weapon to use to help slow down MS for my patients!”

So, it’s like, “Yeah for me” PLUS “Yeah for the 300 other MSers that I take care of.”

That means that I get to feel “Yeah-good” 300 times more potently than if only I had the MS.

How blessed am I?

To go one step further, I calculated the chance that I could become a doctor AND get MS.

First, the chance that I could become a doctor:

583,629 (number of MDs in 1994 when I graduated med school)

249,600,000 (US population in 1994 when I graduated med school)

= 0.002 chance that I become a doctor

Second, the chance that I could get MS:

400,000 (MS population in the US)

324,238,436 (US population)

= 0.0012 chance that I get MS

Therefore…

The chance of getting both MS and a medical degree:

0.002 × 0.0012 = 0.0000024

Now change the decimal to a fraction:

0.0000024 = 24/10,000,000

Now simplify the fraction:

24/10,000,000 = 1/416,667

To give you an idea of what a 1/416,667 chance is, here are a few things with similar odds:

• Death by Tsunami
• Asteroid hitting the earth
• Yearly chance of getting hit by lightening

How blessed am I?

I have a great wife, daughter and son who I care for and who care for me.

How blessed am I?

I have a roof over my head and air conditioning inside.

How blessed am I?

I have lawn mower that starts after two or three pulls most of the time.

How could I be more blessed?

If all mathematicians / statisticians who read this don’t give me crap for the way I calculated the chance that I got both MS and a medical degree.

Blessings to you!