As if is not awful enough having to work 24 hours straight on a sunday, the worst things choose to happen.
I haven't spent THAT much time inside a hospital, even if it has been my second home for the last 4 years or so.
But even in that short period of time you see a lot of different things, different people, different reaction and you come to face death it self.
It's not a nice feeling, knowing you hold someone's life in your knowledge. it's way too much responsability, but you learn to live with it, hoping you never get used to have that kind of power. Choosing over people's life and death, even if you swear an oath "to do no harm".
People come and people go, faces change so fast they blur together, diseases so common you lose count of how many times you've seen it. And you get used to things changing, and now when you see someone puking or convulsing like a fish out of the water, it just doesn't shock you like the first time you saw it.
But there're are some things that you can't get used to it.
1. The smell of a fecal vomiting. (google that you tools! xD )
It stays with you forever. Literally....
2. The feeling of snapping bones and joints under your hands when you do a fracture or joint dislocation reduction.
Make you see how frail the human body is. And I can snap someone's shoulder before they can tell!! that has to be cool, xD
3. (and this by far the worst) The sound of a mother's cry when she's lost her child.
It never changes, it still tearing and painful and sad and leaves you wishing you did just a little more, just a little something. Cause no parent should have to bury their child.
I've heard that sound 3 times and it's always the same: it cracks your chest open.
1st was a little kid who had a pulmonar malformation and recurrent pneumonia. He died over night cause his lungs couldn't function anymore. The mom arreived next morning and the pediatrician told her. She yelled and fell on her knees crying. The boy was 6 years old.
2nd was a 16 years old kid, who decided to steal her mom's car, grab a couple of beers and race said car down a road. A tree ended up with the ride and since he wasn't wearing the seat belt, his head collided with the windshield and shattered into pieces. I saw him come to the hospital and every single bone on his face was fractured. He was still alive, but nothing we did could keep him alive. The bleeding inside his brain was too much. The surgeon came out and told the mom and she looked at him silently for 2 seconds, like she didn't quite catch what the doctor said. Then she yelled and fell to the side, where the boy's aunt caught her before she hit the ground.
3rd... was yesterday. A little boy came to the ER, not breahting, heart barely beating. The supposed dad said that he woke up and the kid wasn't breathing. Later we'd find out that he wasn't actually the boy's dad and when the nurses called the mom, she asked to keep the guy in custody. The boy was intubated and with a dozen drugs to keep his heart working and still doctors didn't know what was wrong. Then, the mom came... yelling at this guy, asking what had he done to her son. And he admitted he wasn't the dad and he was just taking care of the kid while the mom was out. A moment later, I wasn't in the room, but I heard that yell, the mom yelling and it froze my bone marrow. I knew right away the kid was dead. This guy who wasn't even a relative, apparently tired of the kid screaming/crying, shook him so hard he snapped the little boy's neck and killed him. The boy was 2 years old.
If I was the mom, I would've killed the guy right there.
I get that some people die, cause they're old, cause they have diseases that we can't treat, cause they do stupid things and harm themselves. But this... this wasn't fair. All things happen for a reason, what was that reason in this case? Why a 2 years old had to die in the hands of a neardenthal? The kid wasn't sick, the kid wasn't old and he wasn't the one who did something stupid. It's just not fair.
I know I'm not supposed to dwell on it, but I can't just stare like it doesn't matter.
But another day starts, another monday and life must go on for the rest of us as many horrible things we see.
I'll never get used to dealing this. And I'm rather thankful for it.
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