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Nothing Cheerful
Feb. 26th, 2004 09:27 pmSo Matastas often complains that I don't ever write about anything cheerful, here.
That's because often, I don't have that much that's cheerful to write about. Sometimes satisfying stuff, like helping someone out or saving a life. But more often, entropy wins out.
I haven't felt like updating lately, to tell you the truth-- while I still love endocrine, four of my patients from last rotation (bone marrow transplant) have passed away. Four people I cared about. Some patients you don't really connect to-- others, you sit on their bed for hours playing Celebrity Deathmatch or talking and laughing or chatting with parents and holding the baby.
There's a funeral tomorrow, and I don't know yet if I'm going to go. The family doesn't know me; the girl who died did. The one stuck in the same dingy little room for 50+ days before she died. I don't know if I'm up for another session of whispers and 'what's she doing here? who's that?' Or worse.
And my opinion is (always has been) that funerals are for the living to help them bring closure, not for the dead.
There are times when I want to be approximately as mature as my son, to whine and to stomp my feet and to insist that it's not FAIR and that Somebody has to FIX it. Now.
But in the end, my heart hurts less than their parents' hearts do, or at least in different ways.
Goodbye, Cade. Goodbye, Tom. Goodbye, Christie. Goodbye, Jessica. I'll miss you, and remember you, and thank God that I had the privilege of knowing all of you during your too-short lives.
That's because often, I don't have that much that's cheerful to write about. Sometimes satisfying stuff, like helping someone out or saving a life. But more often, entropy wins out.
I haven't felt like updating lately, to tell you the truth-- while I still love endocrine, four of my patients from last rotation (bone marrow transplant) have passed away. Four people I cared about. Some patients you don't really connect to-- others, you sit on their bed for hours playing Celebrity Deathmatch or talking and laughing or chatting with parents and holding the baby.
There's a funeral tomorrow, and I don't know yet if I'm going to go. The family doesn't know me; the girl who died did. The one stuck in the same dingy little room for 50+ days before she died. I don't know if I'm up for another session of whispers and 'what's she doing here? who's that?' Or worse.
And my opinion is (always has been) that funerals are for the living to help them bring closure, not for the dead.
There are times when I want to be approximately as mature as my son, to whine and to stomp my feet and to insist that it's not FAIR and that Somebody has to FIX it. Now.
But in the end, my heart hurts less than their parents' hearts do, or at least in different ways.
Goodbye, Cade. Goodbye, Tom. Goodbye, Christie. Goodbye, Jessica. I'll miss you, and remember you, and thank God that I had the privilege of knowing all of you during your too-short lives.
