My greatest strength and my greatest weakness as a physician is the closeness I feel toward my patients. With that comes both great joy and terrible sorrow. How suffocating the sorrow can feel. How crippling it can be.
As is my habit, I signed on to the hospital electronic medical record tonight to check on some of my old patients that I knew were inpatient. Three of my patients were in ICU this week. One, a child that I saw through a terrible seizure and a stroke has made it out of the ICU and onto the main floor of the hospital and is seemingly doing well. Two, one of my cardiac babies, still on a ventilator and appears to be holding pretty steady.
And three, a beautiful 12 year old girl who I admitted in February with relapsed leukemia, whose only chance for survival was a bone marrow transplant, who has not seen her home since that day in February when I admitted her. Her name is gone. It is no longer on the inpatient census. I cannot breathe, I know what this means. SHe had been doing so well until late last month. She was looking forward to going home with her new fresh healthy bone marrow. She was smiling again. And now she is gone.
It was not unexpected. I knew she was doing very poorly with the most sophisticated ventilator being used in an attempt to help her breathe as they tried to find an explanation for why she was struggling so. I knew 2 weeks ago that she likely wasn't going to make it. Still, the tears are falling now, and I write as a way to release some of that pain. I pray for her and her family with the hope that she is now dancing in heaven with her hair grown back and a big smile on her face.
I close with my heart heavy tonight and an almost frantic feeling that I should do something anything to make sure I make the most out of everything in my life. Will this ever get any easier? Do I want it to?
1 comment:
that's the difficult side to be on this profession.
Hope you could pass it....
keep on going and help other that still need you........
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