breathe.
everyone is so sick, very sick. i look at them through the glass sliding doors of the icu, surrounded by their families, and i wonder how i can possibly do enough, how i can reverse the dying their bodies are trying to complete. i am the doctor to these families, the representative for the team of us making decisions about how fast the patient will be allowed to breathe, how much their heart will be allowed to beat, how hard, how fast, how long. but i don't know, and sometimes none of us know. it's all such a delicate balance of fluids and breath, of hope and medicine and prayers silently mouthed in the stairwells.
breathe.
so many of them can't breathe. i find myself holding my own breath as we approach each room on rounds, preparing myself to get out the important things first, to ask the questions i am longing to have answers to. sometimes there are no answers, though; this is the worst part. i have never been very good at not having answers.
breathe.
there are five that are mine at the moment. two, maybe three will eventually go home - at least, that's how things look today. i watch the final two, a man and a woman, more closely, endlessly looking over lab work, blood gasses, chest xrays, sometimes just standing in the space made by the glass sliding panels that separate each room from the nursing station. i blankly stare down the monitor from the doorway, watching the pulse and blood pressure and respirations change like numbers on a slot machine. will you get lucky today? i wonder, but then again, i know better. God is here, even in the MICU. He sees us even here.
everyone is so sick, very sick. i look at them through the glass sliding doors of the icu, surrounded by their families, and i wonder how i can possibly do enough, how i can reverse the dying their bodies are trying to complete. i am the doctor to these families, the representative for the team of us making decisions about how fast the patient will be allowed to breathe, how much their heart will be allowed to beat, how hard, how fast, how long. but i don't know, and sometimes none of us know. it's all such a delicate balance of fluids and breath, of hope and medicine and prayers silently mouthed in the stairwells.
breathe.
so many of them can't breathe. i find myself holding my own breath as we approach each room on rounds, preparing myself to get out the important things first, to ask the questions i am longing to have answers to. sometimes there are no answers, though; this is the worst part. i have never been very good at not having answers.
breathe.
there are five that are mine at the moment. two, maybe three will eventually go home - at least, that's how things look today. i watch the final two, a man and a woman, more closely, endlessly looking over lab work, blood gasses, chest xrays, sometimes just standing in the space made by the glass sliding panels that separate each room from the nursing station. i blankly stare down the monitor from the doorway, watching the pulse and blood pressure and respirations change like numbers on a slot machine. will you get lucky today? i wonder, but then again, i know better. God is here, even in the MICU. He sees us even here.
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