I have a heart!

I would like to think of myself as cynical or hardened I really would like to…most of the time I am.  I started residency in the CCU ( Cardiac Care Unit) and while it wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it would be. I realized that my break from medicine has made me a little soft or maybe just very soft. As a medical student, I saw patients die. When I was an AI,  I signed out a patient when I was done for the day. When I came in the next day he had died. He was 95  and his family seemed to take his death well.  They were  other instances of death in different rotations. I was generally unaffected by them.

Maybe you become a little blunted when death surrounds you.  By generally unaffected I mean empathizing with the family but not getting emotionally entangled with the family.

A really young patient coded and died minutes after she was transferred to the CCU and I was holding back tears. For another patient, I skidalled away as family hugged each other and cried. I did not want to burst into tears. It makes me wonder if I am really cut out for this medicine stuff.

I don’t have any profound answers.

It’s ironic.

I realized I DID have a heart in the unit for bad hearts.