Mortality

I layed in bed last night with my mind racing. Planning how I would react if I got in a car accident on my way back to Youngstown this evening. Walking through what I would do and how it would feel to be in a trauma bay with my classmates in the room as I lay on the bed with my clothes cut off and tubing being shoved down my throat. As I was lying there, I remembered my drive home from the hospital on Thursday. How I played through the same scenerio. How I pictured the humiliation of being wheeled into the trauma bay at St. E’s with all the residents and attendings that have been my colleagues and teachers for the last few weeks.

These are new thoughts for me. Working in the ICU with teenage patients, healthy 40-something year olds and college students who have been taken out by a car accident, ATV crash, or any other freak accident you can imagine seems to have brought me to terms with my mortality. Seeing previously healthy people being knocked down by accident and illness with no prior hints has been humbling to me. Who am I to think that I’m above a freak accident? Who am I to think that “this” could never happen to me?

I had my first patient who was actively dying on Friday. It didn’t phase me much at the time. I was engaged and interested, but not really bothered by the idea that this man most likely could be ‘expired’ by morning. But then this morning at church we were singing “Sin has lost its power, death has lost its sting” and it all of a sudden hit me. I wondered if I could really rest in God's assurance that he's bigger than death. While I feel death carries no fear for me, can I say the same thing for my patients? For the human lives that I work with that aren’t walking with Christ? This has the makings for an interesting year.