heavy

There have been so many things that have weighed heavily on me:

The young man with a curable cancer, dying because he did not have health insurance, and his cancer grew and metastasized so fast that the two-month delay in filling out charity paperwork was too much.

The prisoner who drank drain cleaner because he wanted to die, and then was terrified that he would no longer be able to eat because it scarred the exit to his stomach.

The woman who used IV drugs and had endocarditis, an infection of a heart valve, and was going blind and likely would die in a few months.

The drug user who came back repeatedly with diabetic foot infections.

The girl with Crohn's disease whose family specifically requested I not be her doctor because I refused to give her opiates to dull the pain because gastroenterology said I should not.  Through no fault of her own she lost insurance and now is suffering terribly.

The other man with Crohn's whose insurance refused him the first-line treatment (vancomycin) for a C. diff infection, and he was re-hospitalized three days later.

The young woman who fled a South American country because of her abusive husband, who now had nightmares and landed in the ER for anxiety attacks.

The rural patients who worked three jobs and had no insurance, and now were sick.

The employed patient who, after being sick for three months, found her insurance had lapsed so she had neither job nor insurance.

Watching prisoners be shackled each day, and their hunger to be treated with just a little bit of humanity and respect.


I hate my job so much sometimes.  I witness a lot of suffering, some of it from disease, some of it from the choices our society makes about disease.  When I leave the hospital, I want to leave all the suffering behind, spend my money going somewhere sunny and happy, and leave all this.

It weighs on me very much, and sometimes I feel I will never shed the stories, the tragedies we witness.  I feel so helpless to do anything to prevent these tragedies because we, as a country, as a state, as a city, as individuals decided that these are the choices we will make in taking care - or not take care - of the people in our communities.