I lost my Hepatitis A vaccine record
which apparently isn't even needed to go into the OR. However, that has not prevented the surgeons from eluding us at every possibility, leaving one last crucial hole in a horrible mess of paperwork that started the day I came in and won't end until it's too late for us to go observe operations anyway. The fifty bucks I spent at the immunization clinic probably could have been put to better use, although I didn't actually pay for that, but now maybe I should go to Honduras, because I hear that that requires a Hep A vaccine so that means that I basically get $50 off a trip there. Perfect. I wonder how much plane tickets to South America cost?
Another autopsy today. Fetopsy, actually. I'll let you guess what that is and spare you the details. Suffice it to say, one of the interns fled the morgue once we started on the scalp. Last autopsy, on the adult, she simply complained of being hungry the whole time.
Should I feel as numb to this as I am? I suppose I had a slight twinge go up my spine at key moments, key as a relative term, I suppose the moments where in a manner of speaking, a world is laid bare before you, the golden city emerges from the parting valley walls of a forbidden mountain pass, the monuments of revelation come out from behind the dissipating mist, although the more accurate cinematic metaphor would be the scene in Independence day where the scientist makes the first incision onto the very alienesque alien who is curled up in a fetal position inside his biomechanical super hyper tech suit and the tentacles curl up and all hell breaks loose.
What I'm actually saying is that nothing exciting like that happened. Not on the table, not in the room, not in the building or in that little dead head that was being cut into or the less (more?) than dead head perched on my shoulders waiting for a life lesson every time it gave the command to the other limbs to extend a finger and touch the liver, or when it asked the question of where to find the gallbladder or the caudal lobe and the same head that confuses the hypothalamus with the thyroid gland and secretly basks in the approval of getting obscure medical terminology correct as if that provides verification of the meaning of riturals. The meaning of routines, of saving a life here or one there, in the clinic or on the surgical bench, with an astute diagnosis or the cut of a laser, the question of what constitutes a life saved and who gets credit for what, where, and which is the expendable link in the chain of need and dependence, the doctor or the nurse, or the dosimetrist or the radiologist, maybe the clerk, the security guard, the politician?
I'm not bothered. I write like I was. I'm more bothered that I'm not bothered than I'm actually bothered. And I'm more concerned about my general lack of concern of anything when it happens, than the things itself. Medicine is pragmatic, unsentimental, but not out of any lack of feeling -- compassion drives it, but the practice of it is the result of intense calculation and triage. I say this with the most pronounced aversion to any mystical or spiritual interpretations, but is a life saved a life redeemed? Should it be the call of the doctor to not only give back heartbeats, but also to uphold a civic and social responsibility, one that goes beyond just the physical well-being of patients, but their lives' meanings too?
Another autopsy today. Fetopsy, actually. I'll let you guess what that is and spare you the details. Suffice it to say, one of the interns fled the morgue once we started on the scalp. Last autopsy, on the adult, she simply complained of being hungry the whole time.
Should I feel as numb to this as I am? I suppose I had a slight twinge go up my spine at key moments, key as a relative term, I suppose the moments where in a manner of speaking, a world is laid bare before you, the golden city emerges from the parting valley walls of a forbidden mountain pass, the monuments of revelation come out from behind the dissipating mist, although the more accurate cinematic metaphor would be the scene in Independence day where the scientist makes the first incision onto the very alienesque alien who is curled up in a fetal position inside his biomechanical super hyper tech suit and the tentacles curl up and all hell breaks loose.
What I'm actually saying is that nothing exciting like that happened. Not on the table, not in the room, not in the building or in that little dead head that was being cut into or the less (more?) than dead head perched on my shoulders waiting for a life lesson every time it gave the command to the other limbs to extend a finger and touch the liver, or when it asked the question of where to find the gallbladder or the caudal lobe and the same head that confuses the hypothalamus with the thyroid gland and secretly basks in the approval of getting obscure medical terminology correct as if that provides verification of the meaning of riturals. The meaning of routines, of saving a life here or one there, in the clinic or on the surgical bench, with an astute diagnosis or the cut of a laser, the question of what constitutes a life saved and who gets credit for what, where, and which is the expendable link in the chain of need and dependence, the doctor or the nurse, or the dosimetrist or the radiologist, maybe the clerk, the security guard, the politician?
I'm not bothered. I write like I was. I'm more bothered that I'm not bothered than I'm actually bothered. And I'm more concerned about my general lack of concern of anything when it happens, than the things itself. Medicine is pragmatic, unsentimental, but not out of any lack of feeling -- compassion drives it, but the practice of it is the result of intense calculation and triage. I say this with the most pronounced aversion to any mystical or spiritual interpretations, but is a life saved a life redeemed? Should it be the call of the doctor to not only give back heartbeats, but also to uphold a civic and social responsibility, one that goes beyond just the physical well-being of patients, but their lives' meanings too?
posted by Wang at 9:08 PM
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