“A jumper?”. Yes…. You know, the mom or dad or brother or sister or much loved child who has lost grasp of the value of their life and feels that they have nowhere to turn and makes the sad, devastating choice to jump… From the metro… From the parking garage at the medical center… Well, that’s what a jumper is.. Not a mere inconvenience to the metro line schedule or the trauma team’s breakfast.
Maybe in medicine we are worse at labeling or desensitizing ourselves than in other fields… I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing… I want, I need, I will remember what’s most important… Life, family… And the value of each individual is the same.. But sometimes I need a jolt, to bring me back.
It’s a strange thing really, to deal with people who get sick, who (thankfully) get well, who get better and go home, who go to hospice, who die. It changes your perspective- for good and for bad. For good? Yep… You can crash my car, forget to pick up my child from school on time, mess up my bank account, tear the buttons off my clothes at the dry cleaner and my response is basically the same… “Ufff… That’s not good… Well, it’s not like somebody died”. And… I’m over it. Yeah… So basically my kids get away with … well, not murder… Because that would be someone dying… I’ll just say that discipline is not my strong suit.
The bad? In the heat of the moment, in the hurry of the day, in the blur of patients in and out of the operating room and on the wards, the daily rush …. We eventually become less sensitive. It serves as protection. It’s no fun to see a baby born prematurely who has been growing and thriving over the last weeks suddenly get a severe intestinal infection and have all of their bowel die. That’s fatal… Or near fatal.. And you feel yourself detach. Perhaps it’s like a mass casualty … Pay your attentions to the ones you can save first…
Humanity is one of the reasons that after a short stint in private practice I returned to a university. Surrounded on a daily basis by young, intelligent students who have never seen any of this before and who still remember why they chose medicine..to help people.. To serve. It gets blurry… The billing, the insurance, the lectures, the office, the phone calls, the schedule, the sleep deprivation…. And then in perfectly clear focus you turn and see your medical student crying next to this poor helpless preterm baby…. I see them playing games with the kids in the cancer unit… I see them staying late coloring books with our patient recovering from trauma. They hold the kid’s hands as they are rolled back to surgery. They ask why? They ask What if? They ask Could you try?
They remind me to treasure every moment with my kids, they remind me to read and stay fresh, they remind me how afraid these families are in the hospital, they remind me of who I am and who I strive to be.
They keep it real.
Verona Mira
This is a topic that’s near to my heart… Many thanks! Where are your contact details though?