What you won't find in a book

As a friend of mine pointed out in a comment to a recent post, there are a lot of things that don't get taught in any book. The feeling of looking at someone and knowing how little chance they have. The desperation in your heart and hands as family members look on to you pumping oxygen into their loved ones lungs because they stopped breathing on their own. The look of children on their grandmothers face as her 'chest pain' gets worse, isn't responding to the 'nice mans' medication and the ambulance is yet to arrive.

There are a lot of things that can't be taught through any book, partly because they're experiences you simply wouldn't want to share with others, partly because they can't be described in words. These are the quiet moments where you look into your soul and see yourself as a mortal being, rife with fissures and cracks - ready to break at any moment.

These are the moments when people look at you - the medical professional - and expect you to have some miraculous therapy or treatment to help the person they love keep living, and as much as I would love it we usually don't have the answer they would like.

As my friend rightly puts it, "this is definitely going to be one of the hardest things to do..."

Unfortunately it's something we'll have to get used to doing, after all, we all have to die of something - and with modern medicine people are living longer but dying in hospitals as we try to squeeze every last drop of life from their body.

The hospital giveth, the hospital taketh away.