Airplanes

There are some things that have happened here at the hospital that I find it impossible to wrap my brain around. Situations that I understand to be true, and know how truly horrible they are, yet I am able to keep functioning - almost as if I've blocked out the part of my brain that understands what is really happening. I fear that if I truly understood, I wouldn't be able to function. My brain seems to know that I can only empathize so much before I give all of myself away and wind up in a big puddle on the floor.

When the first patient I'd gotten to know died, I felt like the world should stand still. A life had just ended. That is big. Why was there not a moment of silence, worldwide, for the gentle man who had just passed on? That was a hard day. Today, I was right there in the midst of probably the most tragic situation imaginable. And... I kept going. I've done my job, I'm enjoying it even. Do we become numb to the tragedy? Is that what is necessary to keep going in this field? I'm not sure.

We get snapshots of people's lives, that's all. Especially as medical students, where, except for the occasional random coincidence or 'frequent flyer' (someone who is in the hospital a lot), there is no such thing as follow up. I see people that are sick and broken, and we do what we can then we send them home. Very few leave the hospital 'fixed.' They are just 'stable.' Most of the time, especially on the trauma service, leaving the hospital is just the beginning of an entirely new life. These patients have to learn how to live with their illness or injury. That is huge! And it is really easy to lose that perspective in the position we're in, I think. Hard to understand the tragedy, the changes, the life that is going on around us every day.

Sometimes, when I see planes flying by, I wonder what all the people on the plane are travelling to do - business? vacation? wedding? funeral? It intrigues me that there are all those people up there, unseeable, above my head, and that they all have a reason to be on that plane; they all have lives about which I'll know nothing. The hospital is kind of similar. Everyone here has a reason to be here, they all have lives outside this temporary existence. The difference is, is that I'm privileged enough to get to see a few of those snapshots from their life, and to understand a little of who they are. I guess I never will understand the entirety of any of their lives, I'm just struck today by how difficult it really is.