Death and grief

Over the last few weeks, I’ve had quite a few patients that were cactus. They were circling the drain, waiting for the inevitable, with nothing short of a miracle able to alter their fates. As fantastic as mondern medicine is, there are simply some things that cannot be fixed.

As I was performing a post-mortem wash on a recent patient and preping them for their trip to the morgue, I was struck by the reaction of one of the wardies who came to help me roll the deceased and place them in their body bag. The wardie had never seen a dead body before, and was a little nervous about the whole experience.

He didn’t seem concerned that that the dead might rise and that we would be forced to fight a zombie (although I’m sure it was in the back of his mind). His main concern was how to handle the body respectfully, and how the patient’s family were. After reassuring him that my patient had had a dignified death, where her family loved her enough to let her go, rather than insisting that we violate her with every piece of high-tech equipment that we can bring to bare, the wardie was fine. A dignified death, that lacked tragedy and highly-strung grief was somehow OK, and not scarey at all.

This got me thinking about the nature of death and it’s associated grief; and how death, itself, doesn’t affect me, but the grief felt by families does. At the same time, Ten out of Ten wrote an entry on his blog that describes what I was going to write (though much better that I reckon I would have):

I am not saddened by death. It’s just part of my workday, occurring sporadically, occasionally in tragic fashion though much more typically the end result of too many years or poor health decisions. I used to feel a sense of disquiet, but this has long been displaced by ambivalence through emotion-numbing repetition. I remain unfazed, and simply move on to the next task at hand.

I am saddened by grief. I dread telling people a loved one has died, all the more so when they are unprepared. I dread the reactions, the sadness and anguish and tears and while I can’t comprehend the full extent of their pain, I feel a small part of it course through me.

I wonder if I’ll be numb to this someday too.

Original post here.

I hope that I don’t become numb to this pain.