Earlier this week I went through a phase where I radiated sex appeal like a beacon. I don't have these phases often, since I'm usually too caught up in what's going on in my head to focus energy outward. I was catching the stares of men everywhere, extricating myself from ubiquitous conversations with men behind counters and on the street who wanted to chat me up. I felt almost like Chris in that Northern Exposure 3rd season episode, Only You, who goes through an annual phase where he is ravaged by virtually all women due to his unusually potent pheromones (I recently purchased the Northern Exposure third season DVD's and have watched them voraciously, so everything in my life is referenced to those episodes right now.) I wasn't sure how it happened, and consulted with Joe for ideas. His simple suggestion: maybe you're happy with what you're doing. Hmm. Maybe I am.

I lost a patient the day before my birthday. He was the patient whose wife I have written about in past posts. He was doing really well, and we had planned to send him home in the next day or two. Then, unexpectedly, he crashed during the night I was on call. I fought so hard to get everything done for him--ABG's, ECHO, CT, and so on. I wasn't ready to let him go. But when I looked at him in the early afternoon the next day, I just knew that it was too late, that he had already edged over the line between life and death. People on the verge of death have a certain look, a certain manner about them, which I now recognize after seeing it multiple times during the last month. Before I left, I embraced his wife and whispered in her ear, "I'm so glad I met you and all your family. I just wish the circumstances could be better." And she held me tight as she replied, in that thick raspy Southern drawl, "Ah know, honey, ah know." I was devastated. After I went home, I promptly ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's while watching Sex and the City episodes. (Such a cliche!) Yet another Northern Exposure reference: the episode A Hunting We Will Go, when Dr. Joel Fleishmann falls into depression after failing to save a grouse he shot while on a hunting expedition. (You have to watch the whole episode to really get it.) There's a scene at the end where he's crying in front of the TV with multiple open cartons of ice cream. Yup. That was me a couple of weeks ago.

Despite our differences in politics, I had grown very close to his family. A few days before he passed, his wife said to me, "Elizabeth, you have a good soul, and you're going to be a wonderful doctor some day. I can just tell how much you care by the way you smile, the way you listen, the way you are with us. And I can also tell that you don't realize how good-hearted you really are. Embrace it, and treasure it." Of course I began to cry. I haven't lost my emotions yet, although I'm sure desensitization will come with time and experience.