Bienvenidos!

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Fallen giant

I signed my first death certificate today. It was simultaneously terrifying, mundane and saddening. Terrifying because this was what the family would take away from this patient's stay in hospital, and it was my name and squiggle on the form; mundane because it involved a lot of form-filling and duplication; and saddening because it was a life lost and I couldn't even remember what the guy looked like.

When I was still a med student I used to be quietly pleased that I could usually fit a face to each of my case histories. Now it seems like there are so many patients and I get so little time with each one that I have trouble remembering who is who from one day to the next. I remember this guy's bandages, and I even took blood from him (for some reason not looking at his face, just concentrating on the crook of his elbow and wondering whether the funny smell was from his leg wound or his catheter), but when I learned that he had died there was just a big blank space in my memory where his face should have been. Even when they rolled him out of the cold store for me to confirm it was him the face seemed unfamiliar. I checked his wristband: it was him.

The consolation/lesson I can take from this is that it was the first, that the next won't seem so bad, and that I should make more of an effort to get to know my patients, even if that makes it sad in a different way if they don't walk out of hospital.

6:52 p.m. - 2008-08-18

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