Perspectives: They can't save our souls.

(originally posted 10/13/05)

Of note today was the man who came in for what I thought was going to be a routine blood draw. He was about the same age as my stepfather, and he looked healthy enough. After I draw the blood, he says, "It's nothing to me, now."

He goes on to tell me that he has a fifteen percent chance of surviving the next four years, even though the surgeons "got it all out".
When someone tells you something like that, you don't need to ask what "it" is. There could only be one "it".

I didn't know what to say to him. Finally, I asked, "Does it put things into perspective?"

"What? Put WHAT into perspective? Know what it all means? NADA. Nothing. It all means NOTHING."

There was that.

There was also realizing that the tall, musclebound gentleman I later drew blood from (who was very nice, and an all around pleasure of a patient) was somebody of some note in the sporting world, *after* the fact of having drawn his blood.

Then there is seeing a middle aged man or woman lying in a bed, wearing a diaper, with an IV hooked up to them, and realizing that this person is somebody's mother or father, and that this person has been laying here all day probably bored out of their mind and that the only people who see very much of them are the nurses who come and go. Some of these people have been in the hospital for a month or much, much longer. Doesn't anybody come at least and play cards with these people?

I can only imagine how boring and lonely it must be. The treatment somehow almost seems worse than the disease, sometimes.

One man was crying out for the ER doctor to come over and give him some painkillers for his stomach. The doctor couldn't do so, and finally, he firmly said, "I can't do that, you KNOW I can't do that, and I NEED YOU TO BE QUIET!".

After the doctor left, the man cried, "I can't go on like this anymore. Nobody should have to live like this."

The guy needed something, I thought, and it wasn't painkillers.

We make doctors into priests, but it's not their job to be priests. We get angry when they can't save our souls. And certainly the lone doctor on the floor in that ER, can't save every soul in every room, particularly the ones who don't want to be saved.

Why does the woman who keeps ODing on vicodin, keep coming back? Why didn't she find a more efficient means of killing herself? That's something my mentors in the clinical lab keep discussing.

I think she looks for something. They all look for something. That's how they end up here.

The problem is, we're all of us looking for something.

That man who found out he was dying, though.

I don't think he was looking for anything.

I think for once, he'd finally figured it all out.

He didn't seem sad, to me.