I would like to think of myself as cynical or hardened I
really would like to…most of the time I am.
I started residency in the CCU ( Cardiac Care Unit) and while it wasn’t as
horrendous as I thought it would be. I realized that my break from medicine has
made me a little soft or maybe just very soft. As a medical student, I saw
patients die. When I was an AI, I signed
out a patient when I was done for the day. When I came in the next day he had
died. He was 95 and his family seemed to
take his death well. They were other instances of death in different
rotations. I was generally unaffected by them.
Maybe you become a little blunted when death surrounds
you. By generally unaffected I mean empathizing
with the family but not getting emotionally entangled with the family.
A really young patient coded and died minutes after she was
transferred to the CCU and I was holding back tears. For another patient, I
skidalled away as family hugged each other and cried. I did not want to burst
into tears. It makes me wonder if I am really cut out for this medicine stuff.
I don’t have any profound answers.
It’s ironic.
I realized I DID have a heart in the unit for bad hearts.
