I may have written a post about this issue before. Anyway, if so, here we go again….

Loosing a patient is very traumatic. It happens to every doctor and it is a pipe dream to think it would never happen to you.  It is a fact that some specialties are less prone to experience it than others. However, when it does happen, most physicians have no one to talk to. Fellow physicians are the worst group of people to seek solace from. The majority have their own professional and personal issues. Then is the judgmental bit – “If you had done A instead of B, maybe…” Which leaves our significant others, the majority of whom have already been overburdened with medical talk to the point where they are insensitive and frankly do not care anymore.

Would it not be great it there was “Vent” for physicians. 1-800-VENT! You call and talk anonymously to a listening ear about the death you had in the OR. About the fact that the team did all it could. About the fact that the patient had undiagnosed SAM or carcinoid or cirrhosis! About the fact that you were in the OR for 15 hours. About the fact that you bonded with the patient and his wife gave you a hug and his kids shook your hand. About the fact that the malignancy was inoperable. About all those things we are supposed to keep inside because we are supermen but really aren’t.

What if…?

I recently cared for a wonderful young man in the ICU with Pseudomonas septicemia.

The patient crashed faster than you can ever imagine. It is an absolutely challenging and high-morbidity entity and the management is literally a race against time.

He was status post bilateral lung transplants due to cystic fibrosis and was neutropenic from immunsuppression.

Even though he had been sick all his life, he always run when he was intermittently healthy, was in a rodeo and had travelled the whole US. He was always up to something constructive.

As impressive as his disease entity was, his life was even more exemplary. He made more of an impression on me than an unforgiving bug.

OK, I am no more superstitious than the next person but come on, if you give heparin and your ACT reads….

….isn’t that kind of spooky?

The case was rocky but we got the patient to the unit in one piece.

I have always been very impressed by the strength of people with deep religious beliefs – my dad, Tony Dungy, Joe Gibbs etc. There are those who don’t see the place of religion in medicine and they have a point. A physician needs to be objective in managing a sick patient.

Patients on the other hand seem to benefit from  strong faith. One may argue that it makes them accept whatever come their way without question. Somehow, this argument makes such patients seem infantile. I argue that the opposite is true. The deeply religious patient is extremely confident and very helpful in decision-making. They sometimes push physicians to consider aspects of the case that may seem esoteric.

Jen is 20-years-old. At age 15, she was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. With chemotherapy, the disease went into remission. She married when she was 20 and a year later, they had a wonderful baby girl. She was also diagnosed 6 months later with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. I met her when we gave her anesthesia for several procedures. She is the nicest person with a great husband.

On one of the walls in her room, she had several posters with Bible verses on them. One poster though really stuck with me. It was handwritten and a picture of it is below:

In spite of all she has and is going through, there was a sense of hope and confidence about her that was just extraordinary. Her level of maturity was noteworthy.

Does faith and medicine work together? In this case, I sure hope it does.