From Emergency!
"When I was an intern at San Francisco General, a bag lady came in saying she was falling down on occasion. Since she was in her sixties, we worried about heart problems or transient strokes. She reported no other medical problems or symptoms.
We helped her undress, which took time because she was a mummy of clothing layers interspersed with layers of newspaper. When we got down to the last layer and uncovered her leg, it was alive with thousands of maggots wriggling in what was left of her flesh.
I felt a visceral stun. There was a moment where my brain could not absorb the information my eyes were sending to it.It had to make some adjustment before moving on.
I think of this now as I watch a coworker bite a doughnut while working on a mutilated trauma victim, and I wonder if as the bizarre becomes commonplace there is a hidden cost to the self."
Do you think there is? If you deal every day with drug addicts faking pain to get their fix of morphine; half-crazed homeless women stealing your ambulances; children crying in shock, having seeing their little brother decapitated and little sister mutilated after an accident in a car driven by their drunk mother; little girls with their skulls shattered after being hit by a car, the pieces of bone under the scalp clicking together at the slightest touch; do you think it does something to you? Desensitizes you? Could you do it at all? Would you even try, knowing how many people die even if you do as much as possible for them, but also how many you'd save? Would you try knowing how many moments you could get a good laugh out of later, but also how many would leave you devastated?
About Me
- Katie
- I am a high school senior pursuing an 8 week internship at the county coroner's office. This blog chronicles my experiences there.
1 comment:
First of all, that first part is downright creepy. eeEEEeeEEEeeeww.
Anyway, certainly anyone who deals with those things regularly will react to things differently than I would. It's harder to care as deeply about things when you see them torn up so badly. Having to deal with all of that regularly could easily cause clinical cynicism and detachment from the world in self protection.
Yet to choose that life is the opposite of cynicism and detachment. It is to put put hope into all the situations that seem hopeless and to dedicate yourself to those people who may just be trying to take advantage.
To survive that without emotional breakdown requires putting up mental shields and desensitizing oneself. But to choose to put yourself through that is evidence of strong compassion and sensitivity. If that person continues to come back every day and go through the same things, it's evidence that the sense of caring hasn't been lost. But it has to be burried or else your very self will be destroyed.
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