When you learn about a person ’s story, you can’t ignore it

I had the honor and privilege of rotating for three weeks on the transplant service where I experienced a lot of great medicine, surgery and the ethics that intertwines them.  One late night on service I had the opportunity to travel to a different hospital and help the team harvest a liver and kidneys from a donor.  Never had I seen anything more amazing than what I witnessed that night in my 24 years of life.  When I first met the patient, she was already draped and prepped for surgery, supported by ventilators, and declared brain dead.  I never saw her face.  I said a small, quiet prayer over her body before it all began.  I knew what was coming by the end of the surgery and it just felt like the right thing to do at the time.  The only thing I really could do at the time. The incision was amazing.  It started at the pubic bone, went all the way to the top of the sternum and spanned the full width of the abdomen.  I saw the lungs breathing, the heart beating, and the aorta and all the abdominal organs pulsating within my field of view all at one time.  Seeing living anatomy in situ was nothing short of awe-inducing.  It was a breathing, pulsating anatomy textbook, and I didn’t take lightly how much of a privilege it was to see the human body in that way. She was young.  Aged 45. She had passed away from a drug overdose, another victim of the opioid epidemic taken from this earth too soon.  An interesting perspective I gained while on the transplant service i...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Education Medical school Surgery Source Type: blogs