Seven Signs of Life Quotes

“I don't believe the sickest people that I meet throughout my day at work are in the business of having outlandish desires, either. I don't think they are staring at the square-tiled ceiling of the intensive-care unit and dreaming of being an astronaut or an explorer. I don't think they're holding the hand of their wife and thinking, "I hope we win the lottery and become rich." Perhaps I am wrong, but I think they are, for the most part, simply hoping they will get to be a part of life again. They are hoping for all the things we take for granted every day: the ability to breathe by yourself, to get out of bed, to sit on a toilet or lie in a bath. To swallow your food and choose what you want for breakfast. To walk out into the world and appreciate all its beauty, or complain about the weather - but to have that choice.”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

“When relatives and friends grieve for their loved ones, they grieve for that patient: who they were and what they meant to their lives. When doctors find themselves unexpectedly ambushed by grief over the death of a patient, I think it is often for another reason. Yes, it is because that person could be our child, our friend, our brother, but it is often because that life didn't follow the rules of whatever vague, illogical structure we use to hold together our shaky universe. It is because they remind us of how little we can really control.”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

“Sometimes I feel frustration as a doctor when it seems as if people forget that death is not my invention; it is not my puppet or plaything. But there was a second when I wondered: Am I doing the wrong thing? Then the mask came off and Diana’s face lit up. She gave a broad smile and said five words that will for ever be special to me: ‘Ah, that is a relief.”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Unforgettable Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

“Sometimes I feel frustration as a doctor when it seems as if people forget that death is not my invention; it is not my puppet or plaything. But there was a second when I wondered: Am I doing the wrong thing?”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Unforgettable Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

“I think patients under the pressure of unexpected illness are often not the person they would recognise as themselves. The world around them can become unfamiliar and at that time, when they are so vulnerable and exposed, they are reliant on strangers – people who, if they had passed them in the street the day before, they would not have even said hello to. As a doctor in these moments, I think I inevitably become somebody who doesn’t entirely belong to me; somebody I perhaps wouldn’t easily recognise. I become somebody defined by the enormity of what that patient needs.”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Unforgettable Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor

“When one doctor stands at the head of a trolley looking down at a patient who is dying, surviving or still somewhere in between, you would be forgiven for focusing on everything that sets those two people apart in that moment. All of the differences between them are obvious. But isn’t it more likely that we are all exactly the same? What my time as a doctor has taught me so far is that all of the things I most need to come to terms with are the very same things I have been dealing with since the day I was born: those signs of being human. Let me show you what I mean.”
― Aoife Abbey, Seven Signs of Life: Unforgettable Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor