INDEXING TITLE: RSMUJER’S Medical Anecdotal Report (05- 09)

MAR Title: Braving the Odds

 Date of Medical Observation: September, 2005

 Narration:

            Broken pale rays of sunlight shone through the clouds that early damp morning. The scent of the sleepy night was slowly being replaced by the bustle of the city becoming alive. The zest of life was blooming … except for a man lying on a hospital bed at the surgery ward.

             Inside the dark gloomy room of 307, a 72-year-old man was gasping. Every breath seemed to be his last. It took every ounce of effort of his frail body just to breathe.  He had been battling lung cancer for the past year. He knew that he was losing.  The tumor was already at the stage of being inoperable. But he could not accept it, surgery had to be done.

             His daughter stood by his bed, holding his hand, with her eyes starting to swell with tears. She knew that her father was dying right in front of her. Why didn’t they perform surgery? Her heart cried…

             The medical team’s attention was called.  Family members quickly gave way as we assembled around this old man. I ordered that cardiorespiratory resuscitation be done.   His life meter was temporarily boosted with every dose of epinephrine, only to be sucked away by Death. 

             Slowly the minutes passed. The discussion I had with his family flashed inside my head. The entire family was in denial when they were told that the cancer was inoperable. His already old, fragile body would not have withstood the effects of general anesthesia. I tried to envision to them that he would have died on the OR table. Wouldn’t they rather spend his last days with his family by his side? No, they adamantly said. Please, surgery must be done, their loved one must be saved by any means possible…

             But it seemed that his body couldn’t handle the wait for a surgery that would not come.

             In the midst of that dreary morning, the old man’s son became hysterical with pain. He was shouting, with tears streaming down his face. His eyes were blazing with anger. He was yelling with grief that the doctors have failed his father. He could not understand why his father was not operated on. Why did they not remove the cancer that was slowly eating up his father? He had been staying in the hospital for several days now, but it seemed that nothing had been done to prolong his life!  

             …The ECG traced a flat line after 30 minutes of resuscitation. It was time to stop the ambubagging and chest compressions.  We were unsuccessful.  The old man was already lifeless… 

 INSIGHTS:  (stimulus/reinforcement/discovery,physical/psychosocial/ethical)

The ardent desire to live depends on what we have at the present, the people and the things that we most hold dearly.  When there is a threat of separation- especially of the permanent sort- from what we consider to be most precious, we would certainly do anything, and everything to thwart that separation from occurring.  However, as life would have it, we sometimes don’t possess any sense of control… that neither us nor others would have the power to rectify.  The knowledge that one is incapable of shifting the course of one’s lifeline can be unsettling, even terrifying.  The inability of accepting the inevitable drives one to momentarily lose grasp of his sanity.      

             Grief could drive a man into being irrational. Thoughts of ill attempts to save a loved one would certainly drive a man mad with hatred and disgust.  But how could one correct these thoughts when the mind is the one that needs correcting in the first place?

             But then again, do we really need to amend these irrational thoughts? For no amount of explanation could penetrate a mind barricaded by walls built by denial. But these walls would not withstand the test of time. As reality sets in, as rational thinking dawns back, these bricks of denial would rumble into nothingness. The mind is now liberated… acceptance of any depressing reality is now a possibility.