When I’m at work, I’m all there. It’s all consuming. It swallows me up, whole. When I’m on 12 day blocks, I’ll wake bolt up right thinking of Mrs S’s chest pain or Mr T’s blood pressure. Did I hand them over to the night team, did I finish their work up properly, did I do my best for them? I still haven’t gotten to grips with the fact that each decision is perhaps just one of hundreds in the day for me but may be THE one for the patient. Just because I order tests, stick in drip lines, listen to hearts day in day out; for most of the patient’s in the hospital it’s a time of firsts, from being seen on ward rounds to being taken to theatre. Hospitals are alien. I need to remember just how scary each step can be when you’ve got no idea what’s happenning to you or what the diagnosis might be. And when patients’ get angry, throw a rude comment in my direction and when families demand to know facts and figures, they’re often scared. It is scary and it’s unknown.
“It’s hard. There’s all these wires, all these tubes, all these medicines, all these new words, all these explanations but I just want to know what’s happening.”
I wonder if you ever loose the worry, the waking-bolt-up-right-in-the-night moments, the image face of a patient on a knife edge or the pain etched on the faces of their loved ones. I’m not sure you do. But somehow I think you must become more at peace with your decisions in light of years of experience. At least I hope you do. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure it would be a pretty unbearable exsistence.
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