Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

- Steve Jobs

My friends say I am obsessed with death. Not really, I just have a healthy appreciation for it. It’s all true anyway. We’ll all die someday.

I know I’m being clinical talking about death, but really, when you’re a doctor death is as real as it gets. It’s around me everyday. You get to deal with the death of patients.

I don’t mind the elderly dying. It’s inevitable for them anyway. With their death, there is a certain quiet dignity, a knowing that they’ll have eternal rest at last. But when it’s someone young or a child, I feel so much regret and anger. Sometimes you ask yourself whether you’ve done the best you could. So much youth wasted, nipped in the bud early.

The worse end of this deal is letting their relatives know about it. Telling them that their loved one is dead is not a task you’d want to do but someone has to.  They either hate you or cry on your shoulder but it’s all a part of it. Sometimes comforting others is the hardest thing to do.

I’ve been running ER at the city hospital for 3 years now. Has it really been 3 years since I finished med school? It felt like ages already. Residency is killing me.

I looked up from my seat by the nurse station watching the ER floor. It was a slow day today. We only have a whole family with food poisoning and an asthmatic in exacerbation right now.  So far I have only had 4 admissions since I took post at 8 this morning and it was about lunch time, usually we would have admitted 10 by now.

We’ve admitted a case of acute MI at the ICU, a GSW which went straight to the OR, a post-eclamptic patient who was now taken care of by the OB-ROD, and an elderly with lower GI bleeding from hemorrhoids.

I was counting time until I get my lunchbreak when the doors opened with an unconscious blonde young man on a stretcher, pale and bleeding profusely from cut wrists.

“Male, suicide by the looks of it, found in a restroom” the paramedic said.

I immediately stood up, all thoughts of food forgotten, and ordered everyone to do their jobs.

“VS now. I want a double line G18 and fluids running. Cut his clothes and get me a catheter. Clean those wounds and pack them with gauze. Put a torniquet on his arms to lessen the bleed. Call the lab for CBC plt, bloodtyping stat. We might need to transfuse blood” I hollered.

“Dr he’s crashing. BP is 0 and Cardiac rate is slowing down.” The nurse said

“1 amp epi now then every 3 minutes until I say so and start CPR. Give me the intubation set” I instructed as I got ready to intubate him. Nobody died in my watch. Not if I could help it.

We continued CPR and ambubagging for the next 10 minutes until we got him back. Bp however was palpatory. So we started dopamine drip and blood transfusion. I called the OR and had him scheduled for surgery.

In 30 minutes, he was called to the OR and I was praying that he’d make it okay. I gathered his personal effects to check who he was and to notify his relatives.

I didn’t think I would get the biggest shock of my life when I saw his ID in his wallet.

Kwon Jiyong.