Death to me is a sudden cessation of life. For many people, it doesn't give the chance for proper goodbyes leaving the family numb, angry or hurting.
Dying, on the other hand, is a process. Slow and painful, for the family AND the person.
It must sound pretty morbid that our profession thrives mostly on people getting ill. If all were healthy, they wouldn't go to hospitals and clinics. We would be jobless! But we all know that life is short. Death is inevitable. It's just a matter of time. And so, we have doctors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical companies.
Almost everyday, we get a Code Blue. A patient crashing, the rush to save a life, the need to think of what is happening with what little you know in so short a time. We follow an algorithm, a protocol designed in a way that everybody understands one another and anticipate on what to do next. Yet, not all patient comes out of it alive. There are no Meredith Greys, who after 1 and a half hour of being pulseless came back alive with no brain damage.
People die and it is beyond explanation why they do and why some survive. We say their time of death, leave their side and move on. We must appear callused to relatives. Maybe so. But in order to stay sane in this profession, we detach ourselves from "dying" and focus on cause of death. We appear stoic for the family and for our juniors who have yet to deal with death and dying.
Still... in some cases... we pause. We are reminded of our own losses. Doctors are human. We have families and friends. Our families and friends go through the same process. For some of us, while we take care of other people's families, our own families are being cared for by someone else. While we listen to someone else's hearts, we hope and pray our own families hearts are being listened to.
The profession takes so much from us so others may live. It is not easy to work in a stressful environment where people are in their worse pessimistic behavior, it is even harder when the doctor/nurse is at his worst.
"No one can confidently say that we he will still be living tomorrow"- Euripides
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