Realisation

I realised, as I watched the petite female registrar stick her finger up the rectum of a particularly flatulent patient - the 6th consecutive one this morning in clinic -, why colorectal surgery had never crossed my mind as a potential career path.

And never will.

How to save a life

It is a memory that will stay in my mind forever.

A teenager, just a few years younger than me, sitting between his parents as my consultant calmly explained what had already been explained to them countless times, by different people.

"I'm sorry, there's nothing more we can offer."

It's like a death sentence, being told that there is nothing left that medicine can do. No more surgery. No more chemotherapy. Nothing.

"So am I meant to just sit here and wait until I die?"

Silence.

He didn't cry then, but after the consultant had gone, he cried in his hospital bed.

I had been asked to take some blood from him - more blood tests, more investigations, more hospital appointments. His arms and hands were full of puncture wounds, his veins were thin and fragile from all the previous attempts.

How do you speak to someone you had just witnessed being told that he will die?

He looked at me and mumbled.

"You were in the room too, right? You heard what he said. Do you think I'm going to die?"

How do you tell someone that death is inevitable, as for everyone, but that they would have to face it sooner than others?

"Do you?"

And all I could muster to say was I don't know. Because I didn't. Because nobody knew. Maybe he won't make it to see next week. Maybe he'd live to be a hundred. We don't know.

I watched as he left the hospital, to go for his appointment with the oncologist. He was determined to seek second opinions, different opinions, as many opinions.

And the sad truth behind all the supposed life saving medicine they teach us at medical school is, in the end, we don't know anything. We can't do everything and save everyone.

Nobody can.