Thursday, November 17, 2011

Tribute to Life

It's been almost 3 weeks since I began my pediatrics rotation, wow! I had been debating what the "final" post for surgery should be - either a collection of quotes I've obtained on surgery, or something more meaningful. I decided to go with the latter.

A few days ago, I saw the following vid on the blog Chronically Lost in Thought.

My Friend Jason. from Shot at The Dark on Vimeo.

It's an interesting vid for me to watch, as it presents the same hard decision but from a different perspective - a family member's. The decision to let someone die isn't an easy one, but sometimes it's the "right" one.

On the doctor-side of things we reflect end-of-life decisions back to the patient and/or their family member(s). Our goal at this point in a patient's life is to ease suffering or at least prevent prolonging suffering. We don't consciously, however, consider that the family member's agony in losing someone personal, and with them, lose all possibilities of creating new memories and tying up loose ends of the past.

So just something to muse on before I proceed to the much happier world of peds.