Tagged: icu
Death and Resurrection
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting away from cancer, and the infections that had crept into his...
In Its Time
[The third post in a series on becoming a Christian physician, originally written for the ESN blog. Earlier posts are Do You Want to Be a Doctor? and Helping People Is Not Enough]. After working 24 hours on call in the pediatric ICU, I was exhausted. I wanted to sleep, but friends had...
Leave It There
[I originally wrote this as a medical student working in the ICU. It’s one of my most haunting memories and comes to mind every time I work in the intensive care unit.] “I thought I could beat the ICU, you know?” My resident looked into the distance abstractly as he...
Leave It There
“I thought I could beat the ICU, you know?” My resident looked into the distance abstractly as he spoke, talking more to himself than to me. “Sometimes you think you won’t let it get you down, but you can’t. It always wins.” I wondered what he meant by winning. Did...