the downside of doctoring

 

 

 

 

One of the perks of being a physician is the fact that you get to live in a state of perpetual awe. It starts with the first pass of the scalpel on your first day in the anatomy lab. It continues as you tease out every organ, blood vessel, and nerve in the body you've been assigned to dissect. A sense of wonder punches you in the gut the first time you hear a beating human heart and realize that your own heart has been pumping steadily and predictably without any effort on your part since before the day you were born. 

You'd have to be a toadstool not to be mystified by the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of your very own body. You'd have to believe in miracles if you understood the way a broken bone heals, what it takes for an open wound to close, how a lifeless heart can pick up the beat again.

Don't even ask what happens during sex.

I studied medicine for seven years and practiced it for over three decades, so I understand how the body works. I know what it takes to keep it up and running, and most of the time, I know how to fix it when something goes wrong. Most people don't. They get out of bed in the morning and expect their bodies to cooperate with their plans for the day. They have to get their children off to school and get to their jobs. They don't have time to be sick.

But what if you woke up in the morning and you couldn't move the left side of your body, and your speech was garbled so you couldn’t tell anyone what had happened? What if you woke up to find the infant you rocked to sleep the night before pale and lifeless in her crib? What if everything that was familiar and predictable to you changed in a heartbeat?

We expect our bodies to work, but sometimes they don't. We think our children are safe, but we can't guarantee it. We take health and happiness for granted until something goes wrong. The cancer comes back. The paralysis is permanent. The depression won't lift. Sometimes the afflictions of the body go beyond its ability to heal, and beyond the physician's ability to help.

What then?

When a patient under his care gets worse and there is nothing he can do about it, a doctor feels helpless. When he has tried everything he knows and nothing has worked, he feels like a failure. So not-God as is sometimes still expected of physicians.

And that's the problem. The downside of doctoring is that sometimes the patient gets worse despite your noblest efforts. The cancer spreads. The heart fails. The wound won't close. There is nothing more you can do. You concede it would take a miracle for the patient to recover. All you have left is prayer.

But what if you don't believe in miracles and you've given up on prayer? Your sense of awe comes into question. Your sense of wonder falters. Hope fades away. Where do you turn? 

You might try this. Study the night sky. Watch for the first signs of spring. Check for the pulse in your own wrist.

jan