Trauma Room Two

by Philip Allen Green

I watch their entire universe collapse in on itself. It explodes apart in front of me. Their lives disintegrate and scatter, like dust in the wind, into a thousand pieces, a thousand directions. My three words obliterate everything about who they are, who they were, and who they will be.

If a case is too traumatic, too upsetting, and I close off all emotions, it can be weeks before the feeling part that makes me who I am returns.

It turns out sometimes all a person needs is a chance to prove himself.

This is why I became a doctor. Not because I can stitch a wound, manage a trauma, or splint an arm. No, I became a doctor to be with people when it matters the most. I did it so that I can stand at the edge of the cliff with another human being and we can gaze out together into the night beyond. I did it because I, too, am afraid. I did it because I want to find some way to lessen the fear—not just for me but for all of us.

It is sad and wonderful and terrible and beautiful to hold the hand of a dying person.

First, it is OK to be afraid. That is normal. Second, introduce yourself, use your first name. Third, hold the person’s hand as he or she departs this life. That will be enough.

How many times have promises been made by people who have no way of knowing what it is they promise? Oaths are sworn based on the abstract idea that love and discipline can win out over age and disease. Sometimes love and discipline do. But more often than not, the promises end up being ropes, the same ropes that guilt uses to lasso families into bad choices and decades of pain. Dementia is the worst of all—a disease that seems to feed on promises and guilt. When you find dementia, you find a family haunted by the impossible choices before them.

The end begins with a stomachache.