why we do what we do

In my last post, I talked about three people close to my heart who were fighting for life...theirs or for someone they loved. One was facing difficult and risky surgery in an effort to defeat an oppositional defiant cancer. One was in ICU with Covid pneumonia, who ended up on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) in a last ditch effort to save his life. Another friend's husband passed away while they were on vacation out West.

This week I want to update you on their progress so far.

My friend's surgery went well. Meaning, not only is he recuperating, but so is his wife, his sister and brother, and his children and grandchildren, all of them feeling better because he has done better than expected.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence

by every experience in which

you really stop to look

fear in the face."

~Eleanor Roosevelt~

The young man with Covid came off  ECMO today, stood up, and spoke for the first time in three weeks. His recovery so far is considered something of a miracle, if you believe in that sort of thing. Meaning his mother, father, brother, sister, wife, and two young children now believe in them without any question...as if they hadn't been praying for a miracle this whole time.

"Good doctors replace the fear of illness

with trust in recovery."

~unknown~

My friend made it home from somewhere in Texas where her husband passed, and laid him to rest this week. She'll be charting a new path forward now, with the help of all of us who love her.

"Patients don't care how much you know,

until they know how much you care."

~www.geekletters.com~

The point is this:

This is why healthcare providers including doctors, nurses, and therapists in every field do what they do. Because when you help one person heal, you help everyone around them heal. You get to see relief and gratitude on all their faces. And you get to feel it, yourself. This is why you go without food or sleep. This is what compels you to devote your time and attention to strangers when your own children and loved ones ache for your presence. This is how you wrestle fear, and uncertainty, and exhaustion to the ground, and hold it down for the count. How you rise again, and how you help your patients move on from there.

This is our narrative in medicine, the story of our lives. 

"Wherever the art of medicine is loved,

there is also a love of humanity."

~Hippocrates~

jan