Today as I was working in the infecious dzs ward, an elderly man died right in front of my eyes. He has an Do Not Resucitate Order; hence, we didnt do anything to revive him.
The rest of the ward went on to document his flat ECG, his pulseless pulse (ironic right), his fixed and dilated pupils. All to make sure he is really (legally) dead.
It is all so cold.
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The story about one doctor versus the whole World.
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- Marc
- Shatin, Hong Kong
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2 則留言:
it's funny how such a natural thing as death can evoke such a diverse spectrum of reactions. it's been the topic of books, debates, songs, poems; the reason for fear, longing, sadness, confidence; the hushed word, the 'i-couldn't-care-less- bravado word, the taboo word.
haha. yet i can't help but marvel the matter-of-fact approach doctors (or university science students at that -i'm stil one myself! :) )take when they come smack face to face with this phenomenon. it's not that they lack sympathy; it's just that in their job they cannot afford to allow their emotions into the picture. and though i understand that, it's sometimes ironically funny, that doctors, most exposed amongst their fellow homo sapiens to the miracles of the human body, can at the cease of its workings cooly investigate the failure of the blood circulating system, calculate the number cells that die as a result per minute, and comment on the colour and the duration of rigor mortis of the fast decaying corpse. and all this while the rest of the world cries over the loss of a human life in all its complexities, relationships and beauty.
hmm. thanks actually for that wake up call... was fast becoming as cold as that when it comes to viewing the human life -like a scientist playing with his/her lab rats without getting emotionally involved. haha. :) studying DNA-RNA matching basepairs and comparing animal reproductive cycles littered generously with scientific terminology tends to do that, i heard. bah.
cheers.
pakis
(actually malay for 'fern' the plant, which happens to be what people call me when they want to get my usually distracted attention. :P )
The first dead patient I see is my grandmother. Sad... and that is the only time I kissed a dead person. The face was so cold, so wasted, so helpless. I still remember the growling feeling... I have been avoiding dead patients in the ward. I dun like death and still cant really take it...
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