Departure

DEPARTURE

‘The best way to predict your future is to create it.’ I found this amazing quote and thought that hard work, careful planning and ‘seizing the right moment’ is the key to success. But there is something called destiny or fate which cannot be altered. Ultimately it is ‘Man proposes and God disposes’ dictum which we should live by.

Our time on earth is all marked and fixed. Still we forget and become emotionally attached to a lot of situations and things. In the medical institute where I work, I heard this touching story about a case which occurred in the ward for terminally ill patients. 

A post graduate student was about to declare the death of a patient who was dying due to cancer. She had been with this patient during the last many days when he had been dying slowly but certainly. Being a medic, she was well aware of the prognosis of the disease and knew that there in fact was no remedy and it was just a matter of time before the final moment came.  

When the soul leaves the body, its physical abode on earth, the pang of separation is most felt by the living relatives left behind. But when the illness has been chronic and the patient has been suffering with every breath that he takes, then, this fear of loss is overshadowed by the goodwill that he should not suffer anymore but must   transcend to a realm which is free of pain, which we utopianly call the heavenly abode.

At the final moment of farewell all the concerned people i.e., the medics, paramedics and relatives stood at the bedside of the patient. When the eyes closed for the last time and the pupil did not react anymore to light, when the heart and the breath sounds could not be heard anymore and the ECG and the EEG became flat, the young post graduate student, the one person who had been holding his hand for all the period of his suffering, could not contain her sadness anymore and tears welled up in her eyes and kept rolling down her face like torrential rain.

From the early part of a doctor’s training, clinical detachment is emphasised. Objectivity is a must.   But the heart of a human being is a feeling beating heart and not a chunk of lead. The human mind is full of emotions and sentiments. That’s why we are humans and not robots. And so, the breakdown despite years of training in detachment.

She let her tears flow. Seeing this, the family members of the deceased were quite at a loss wondering about what to do. Finally, the daughter of the deceased consoled her forgetting her own sorrow. 

So, such things happen in the ward of the terminally ill patients. The doctors themselves are so involved in their love and care for the patients that some of them are deeply affected when the patients die. 

It does not happen often but this time, the bereaved becomes braver and consoles the doctor. On instrospection, I wonder whether the family feels grief or relief at the departure of a chronically and terminally ill relative who was not enjoying life anymore. I guess it’s the second emotion that takes over after the momentary grief.