Scrubs

Death - Does it scare you?

Death scares me out of my skin! As much as I believe that in death I will be reunited with my Father Almighty, my creator, I can't help but be afraid. I mean how must it feel to be in a place where some of those you love so dearly are not in? The question is: would you even remember them?

A wise person once told me that seeing God fills you with such happiness that it feel like an eternal orgasm (no offence meant)! To avoid confusion, he meant this: You see, when you are on earth, there is always a constant need to fill up a missing part of our heart: we will never feel complete. Thus, no man is an island.

However, in the presence of God, we would feel complete. So somplete we would stop searching for things to fill out hearts, for we would be full of Christ.

It is a beautiful meaning but I do not want to not be able to share taht joy with all those who have helped me get there, like my family and friends.

Maybe there is a deeper meaning to what I see, there should be and I guess it will only make sense when I see God. My human brain capacity is too small to fathom his theory of death. So I take comfort in the fact that God would never do anything to hurt his children and thus he would know how death should be for us to feel comfortable.

But none the less, death is something that I'll neve be able to escape from. Not in the sense of my final passing but rather it is that of an almost everyday occurence. Why?

As most of you would know I am an aspiring Speech Pathologist and in my time at the hospital, I have realized that Death is part of the job. You see speech pathologists see patients of various disease ranging from motor nuero disease, stroke, parkinsons, etc. They do see children with developmental disorders too such as autism and language delay however, most start off their career with adults.

Thus, some of our patients would eventually die, such as those with muscle degenerative diseases like motor neuro and parkinsons. Although medical advancement have helped in controlling the degeneration of parkinsons. Sometimes, some of our patients die of complications, it is quite hard to say what will our patients eventually die of.

In such a situation, one has to professional and detach from ones emotions, but, we are human and we would inevitably be affected by it especially when it happens for the first time or even the first few times.

I remember the first time i knew a patient was going to die, she was a jovial old lady with motor neuro diesease and she was at the point she was choking on her on saliva. My supervisor told me she was going downhill fast and I felt my heart drop and at an impulse I so wanted to help make he last leg happy. Thus, I asked for permission to give out some advice on food she can take since I have a diploma in nutrition (I didn't quite agree with my supervisor's recommendations of blending everything together...eww!). That impulse of course got me in trouble as it is not very nice for my supervisor ( I realised I had crossed the line).

Things didn't get any better as I went home and started bawling my eyes out!

Please bear in mind this isn't even my patient (I am not qualified yet!)

This incident naturally got me thinking: How am I going to detach myself from such a situation?! I guess it comes with experience.

Initially, i thought only doctors, nurses, dietitians and surgeons would have to face such things! I was obviously naive and wrong: as long you are in a medical profession, you will face death.

So I choose to face this with a little lesson I learnt from watching scrubs: With each death, we take away a valuble lesson!

Sorry for the morbid entry guys...