The monitors beep, the oxygen hisses, the carts roll, the nurses chat. It’s the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The tired resident logs into the computer. She reviews overnight events, vital signs, intake and output, labs, medications, imaging. She’s beginning to see the patterns and taking care of the patients isn’t as time consuming or taxing as it used to be back in July of intern year. She begrudgingly gowns up to see each patient as demanded by the signs on the door. Her physical exam skills have improved drastically with repetition and responsibility- she’s starting to understand how attendings “do it”. She thinks one day she may be there, operating effortlessly at the highest level.
As she rips the yellow gown off and stuffs it into the trash can, she wonders about life at home: her beautiful babies, her husband, her sister, the laundry, the bottles, the tile floors, the next paycheck. Will they be able to take a vacation next year? When will she get pregnant again? Hopefully in 8 months. Will it all go as planned? Is this what God wants her to do?
Meanwhile a baby is dying in room 22. This baby shares the same name as her daughter born last year, same spelling and everything. It’s a trendy name, she tells herself, there is no connection. But as a mother she shares a connection to each and every parent and child in the hospital. Gosh, she wishes she wouldn’t see the baby’s name on the list. Why does the baby have to die in the hospital? Is that what she would choose, if God-forbid, she found herself facing the same reality? She wishes she could hold the baby and feel the power in the tiny little girl before her flame goes out. She wants to pray over the baby. But it’s not her baby, and it’s not her place.
A little while later everyone lines the hallways for an “honor walk”. It’s her first one, and probably not her last. A beautiful young boy, with a head full of curl dark hair, is wheeled down the hall in the bed while a nurse bags his ET tube, his eyes closed forever. He’s been gone for weeks, but it’s finally time for good bye as he heads to the OR for organ procurement. Do we clap? No one is clapping because his mother is speaking as she walks in front of him. She is telling us his favorite foods, how he always called her “mama, mama, mama”. But he hasn’t woke up since he was hit by a truck 2 weeks ago. His mother was busy and didn’t know he left the house. His organs will save the lives of other children. He is a hero, as are the surgeons and others who will make his gift of life possible. Maybe it’s not the worst thing imaginable, maybe it’s humans making the best of a bad accident, like we always do.
Dear God, please don’t ever let me in the position of this mother, the intern thinks. Please, God.
Yesterday, after being gone a week for the holiday, she came to the hospital and was shocked to see a patient she had cared for the week prior off of the list. She checked the other lists and his name was absent. She checked the record and saw he had died 2 days after she left. He had drowned after Thanksgiving but was brought back to life, like the last patient, only to spend a few weeks with his family before his final good bye. There was no organ procurement. He was the same age as the intern’s other daughter – 3. What a fun age, they are so full of life and love. They are small enough to carry, old enough to talk to. The agony of this mother had been palpable the weeks before. She didn’t trust the doctors, and I didn’t blame her. What kind of voodoo magic had been performed to keep this baby alive when he clearly should have died in that pool? She hated us.
The mothers couldn’t stand to see their children suffer. The parents of the dying baby, knowing since shortly after birth she was terminally ill, said they slept better than they had in months the night after they decided to stop prolonging the inevitable end.
If we can’t put our hope in our doctors or in our families, then where can we put it?
I know the answer, is in my LORD, in eternal life in heaven with my creator.
But as a doctor, still alive and working, how do I cope? How do I cope with the fact that there are limits to what medical and surgical interventions can accomplish despite many generations of science, of advancement, lifetimes spent studying, just to save a life? Sometimes, in the hospital, it seems we cause more problems than we solve. Sometimes it feels we are simply delaying the inevitable, that we provide false hope. I often feel like a powerless bystander.
2.5 more years of my life to spend in this busy hospital, and I may never step into an ICU again. But that doesn’t change the reality, whether I am aware of it or not, that life is extraordinarily fragile and short. It is a reality that hardens most hearts but, my God, let it soften mine.
Doctor Mom of Daughters 