Hospital moments that reshaped my view of humanity.

A few days ago, I finished my third year of medical school. That year was also my first fully clinical year i.e. I spent all of it on hospital grounds. Physicians are often put in situations that challenge their humane side. I have probably learned more by passing on the hospital floors about humanity than I have in the past 24 years where I amassed friends, enemies and idols. I have learned much more about the value of a life than in all the humanity courses combined. I have learned even more about the absurdity of it than from reading Sartre, Camus and Ionesco. Looking back on these 12 months, I wanted to note down some of the most intense moments:

 -Seeing my first embryo on ultrasound and having it turn out to be dead.
All the arguments I have had pro or against choice suddenly became irrelevant. I am a deep believer in the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy but standing there, I had to admit, it did not feel right at all. I still think however that if she could go through with it, it is her choice but unlike what I had previously thought, I would think twice if I am ever in a condition where the fetus has half my chromosomes.   

-Diagnosing a 3 year old kid with advanced cardiomyopathy requiring transplant.
Looking at the confusion in the father’s eyes as the doctor begins to explain to us in a not so discrete tone how this child is destined to die if he does not get a transplant.  

- Hearing the inspiring recovery story of a drug addict my age.
This has by far been the most inspiring moment of my medical path so far. It is both destabilizing and reassuring to see a young man take control of his life and turn an extremely horrible situation into a success story.   

- Carefully approaching the parents of a possible abuse victim.
How can you explain to parents that it is very likely someone close to them has sexually abused their daughter when she was barely 5 years old without reconsidering the value of humanity. 

- Soothing a young girl after learning she got her infection from the man she thought she loved.
Imagine her crying as you told her that he caught this from someone else and transferred it to her when she thought he was faithful.

-Seeing and smelling the blood of a teenage trauma victim as it sprays all over your white coat, and ultimately losing that patient.  

- Meeting uneducated empowered women who overcame more adversity than you can imagine and argued about feminism, equality and metaphysics without having read about it in a book

 -Watching the truth being hidden from a man with cancer and vaguely answering his questions when he asserts you're his favorite part of the medical team. What can you do in a society that refuses honesty and claims it is in the greater benefit of the patient?

-Gazing into the eyes of a paralyzed speechless man as he moaned begging not to be fed by a tube. How much is left of you if you can no longer express yourself? You’re just a consciousness stuck in its place, incapable of drifting away as those around you forget who you were.  

- Hearing the screams of a patient with cancer in the bone. Never will I forget the plead for help as I stood there speechless after all the possible pain medication given was in vain.

  

- Trying to understand how the patient who makes perfect sense at day, deeply cuts herself with any available item at night. Mental illness is not a joke to be fiddled with. It is a very frightening notion not to be able to control the full spectrum of your emotions.   

- Watching daughters instantaneously shift from pleasant polite ladies to irrational, shouting insane women when talking to you about the well being of their dying mother. I think this is my closest encounter with the pure form of what they call love.

- The intense fear when finding similarities between my life and the story of a schizophrenic patient.