Whirlpools

I just got out of the shower and am trying hard to be awake. I have to do this for her. For my patient whose illness baffles me. She was admitted at the hospital downtown but i just came back from another hospital poring over her previous records. She is dying before my very eyes and I am afraid to admit and look at her eyes that she may have gone past the line of reversibility.

It is sunday and I spent the afternoon in that cold library. I had keys to that big old library and i sat myself on one corner and began reading her story. I went to church last night and they preached about love. Loving all the people God has placed in your life. She will be loved by this kid doctor.

How Maroon 5ish.

I have to humor myself and tell myself i need to feel less. But this is me, and i can't deny the passion that drives me, and the nerdiness that keeps me going. Her story began when she was barely forty, and started worsening for the past five years. She is now seventy years old. I cringe at how much she suffered lately.

What is it like to be in pain? To close your eyes and just be surrounded by IV fluids and strange people in white who come in and talk to you for five minutes and leave you for the next 1435 minutes? If i do manage to get her through this, what kind of life am I offering her?

Breathing but not really living.
Having eyes but not being able to see.
Having a body but not being able to dance.
To have hands so deformed by sickness it could not even be lifted to touch her children's faces.

And tears are now welling up because I am so limited.
Because there is only so much i can do when i want to do more. i want to promise her the moon, i want her to wake up and just be able to walk and hear the birds heralding that spring is coming. That the snow is melting outside, and winter is passing. I'm afraid it will always be winter for her.

I want her to live her life to the fullest, but i am unable to.

I wipe my eyes and talk to myself. Crazy.
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On another cheery note, my program director, Doctor L., my new sensei, along with some of the residents took turns drinking laxative shots in front of a patient who was hesitant to take it because it tasted bad. All four of them had to rush to the restroom afterwards. He reminds me so much of Patch Adams and I am so glad to be working with him.

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