Could you miss the cow?

Today I told about it to someone for the second time. It's like I am kind of embarrassed even when I think about it. And much harder to talk. Decided to write it down not to vanish over the time.

Happened that I somehow have missed a patient. I noticed his tired body laying in the bed, obvious physical changes, saw the colour of his skin, his gray hair falling over a half shut eyes trying to follow what the nurse was doing, the head dropping on his chest under it's heaviness. I saw a man dying. But didn't see him. I didn't feel like working with a person, with someone alive and sensitive. I didn't say a word approaching him. I was so preoccupied with his phlebocatheter just inserted, talking with a nurse who did it... Amazed by a stupid tube in his vein going directly to his thorax, I have fixated it in the right position...
In the moment nurses have taken him to drive away I wished him luck and to be strong. Then it punched me like from the sky: 'you actualy didn't turn to this man until he has been leaving, Emina.' Never happened before.

Thought about it a lot. And I still am. Observing and slowly discovering that it is just the way most of the people work in our health system. It's easier. It's easier to just do your job than to recognize someones suffering and emotional distress or to even pay attention on it. To turn away not even knowing how someone feels it's the easiest thing to do. I am very aware of that.

But I don't want to become like the most of 'them'. I hope I never will. I cherish my sense of empathy, hidden deep in me, taking me to the hardest battles. And through them. My empathy, which was lost for a moment - to remind me how important and precious it is.


One special person, who I greatly admire and was speaking with about it today, said to me: You know what I wish to you? To never forget what you have just told me.

For me and my patients, I wish for myself just the same.