weird in between places

there is a john mayer song called "wheel." it's pretty much his view that everything in the world revolves back to where it started, and he paints this picture of the airport.....where (loosely quoting him) there are goodbyes and greetings going on simultaneously.

i think hospitals are like that too. there are the people who have a bout of illness, only to get to back home better than how they arrived. which is always exciting.

and then there are those who enter.....never to return, or to depart in a condition that neither they nor their family anticipated.

it's hard.

to be an onlooker and not get sad. to not carry this weight around.

on rounds today, we (the students) had to sit in on a family meeting for a middle-aged man with a massive stroke. all the fear and pain in the room was overwhelming. i felt so bad for them, and as we left the waiting room, i just started crying.

the attending doctor (who is one of the sweetest and smartest i've met) put her arm around my shoulders and said, "now britt, you're going to see lots of patients like this. it IS sad, but you're going to have to learn how to see it, but not internalize it."

it's just hard. especially when you imagine how it must feel to be the family of a patient like this.

but this is what i signed up for i guess.....

and i know that my being affected by their pain is probably one of the attributes that will make me a good doctor.