I was listening to "Hotel California" by Eagles as I was reading about different types of vomit. My feet were neatly resting on the red oxide floor that my nearly half a century old house bears.
Do you remember red oxide floors? The flooring that was there in your grandparents' house probably. The ones you wrote all over with tiny pieces of chalks. The very same you rolled all over when you were 3. You'd get chided by your mother for spilling buttermilk on those floors because they left behind a nasty stain that took time to wear off. Those floors you sat on and played board games with your grandmother every summer. Sunny afternoons you spent mindlessly playing with cowries, the clunking noise they made when they kissed the ground. The floor that did bear your first foot steps and saw your shoe size grow from baby size 3 to adult size 6.
Sometimes I wonder if we have lost the ability to see perfection in the little things around us. We have definitely lost the old world charm. And I sorely miss it.
Getting attached emotionally is very necessary. After a while of seeing sick patients. Seeing patients who bluff in the name of pain. You lose the humanity in medicine. You become simple robots who go by the book. Work like a programmed instrument who can only care less of what's going on. But once in a while it's good to actually assure a patient. Lean on the wall and talk to the patient. Seeing you getting relaxed will have the same effect on sick. you might sit for a second but it will feel like an hour to them. All they sometime require is time. It doesn't matter how much poison you push through their veins, a smile, a simple touch of your steth on their chest goes long way.
ReplyDelete