d.e.a.t.h.

I've encountered a few deaths in my short career as a medical student. I remember the first time was during my first posting. I walked into a room full of people but everybody was very quiet except for the, "one and two and three and....clear....". i was quite stunned then, didn't have any role to play in the resuscitation but i still felt quite useless standing there.

i met a lady during my posting at A&E. She's quite young, probably 30+ years old, with a history of heart disease and has a pacemaker/ defibrillator. She came into the A&E very sick. As the staff were busy resuscitating her with cpr, defibrillator etc, she suddenly defibrillated herself with her own defib. Despite all our efforts and her own defibrillator, she still didn't make it.

Yesterday a patient died in the ward. He was quite young too, probably 50+. The strange thing was during the ward rounds in the morning, the doctors were discussing what to write as the cause of death in case he dies. I thought that was very depressing but i know it's necessary. There is no point waiting until death itself then rush to find a diagnosis. The relatives will be very upset because they will want to know the cause. Once during night call and there was a very sick patient in the ward, the doctor-in-charge of the case was telling the doctor-on-call that in the event that the patient dies, everything was written in the case notes and he just has to follow everything in the notes. I don't know if the patient survived the night. Always be prepared i guess.

Today i found out a patient i saw a few weeks ago died recently. He was a nice guy, i remember him even though i only saw him for a little while.

Today, just before the day ended, another patient died. It was quite unexpected as he seemed quite well this morning. Ok, not well as in walking around-talking-and-laughing kind of well, well as in not febrile, does not seem to be too sick. He was bed-bound with multiple contractures and speaks only malay. Everyday when i have to draw blood from him, i'll ask him with my limited malay," apar kabar?" (dunnoe how to spell, sorry) and he always says baik.

don't get the wrong idea that people drop dead all the time in the hospital. More people die in the hospital than anywhere else because people are sicker there. But there are many more patients who recover well and go home.

i guess the moral of the story is you don't know when you are going to die. Anyone might die anytime due to some freak accident so, we must live life to the fullest. Even though everyday is so busy and there're always so many things to do, stop and take time to smell the roses. Look at the colour of the sky. Taste the sweetness of the ice-cream. Feel the soft and nice smelling pillow.

life is not THAT bad.