Today was a sad day for me... because of confidentiality I cannot share anything other than: couple, plane crash, and burn survivors. I've learned a lot working as an assistant to the surgeon on all of these cases doing excision and debridement of wounds and then doing skin grafting. I am seeing how laborious the work is in caring burn patients.
The surgeries consisted of: taking a patient back into repeated surgeries to remove eschars and to keep the wounds fresh and viable for healing and growth; harvesting skin grafts, using allografts (from another human), using xenografts (from another species, usually a pig); doing the grafting; changing the dressings; maintaining the patients' vital needs (nutrition, respiration, etc...); tubes in, tubes out; releasing of contractures when wounds heal; escharotomies when eschars form during healing... the work goes on and on.
I am thinking, I have never seen patients as sick appearing and as acute as the patients I've seen in the burn unit. If you can be trained to help these patients, you can treat anyone!
When I was in the OR doing the surgery on one spouse today, I thought to myself, how can anyone sustain this much injuries? Then, when we finished her surgery and went to her husband's room, I saw all the pictures of them together and their beautiful family, it hit me. I, then suddenly felt really sad. They will never be the same, if they can make it out of the unit!
There is a dear friend who recently lost a grand-baby to an automobile accident, and their kids were very seriously and traumatically injured... my heart goes out to you and to my patients and their families!
Then, finally, my mind took me to how amazing everything is. Think about it, as doctors and surgeons, we can do our best, everything we can, and be as proactive in treatment as we can, most people will live, but some will die. But, there is something else that is governing the healing of the body. We can give the necessary nutritions and the body will heal. We can give it the right environments, and the 'missing' pieces will attempt to grow back! ISN'T THAT AMAZING?! I think many of us in the health care field get so compartamentalized that we take the whole 'healing' process for granted. We doctors only attempt to put things back, but God had designed our bodies to do all the rest! Doctors are like good stewards of what's been given to them, and God is the one that heals.
Like the surgeon, Dr. Gawande, who I did a book review ("Better") on earlier, shared: as we enjoy medical and surgical advances, we are able to save many more lives. However, we haven't yet learn how to deal with the incredible kinds of disabilities by simply saving people out of their traumatic injuries. People who are missing all limbs, or missing a face, or permanently disfigured... how do we help them to function? When should we stop fighting for our patients and just let them go? How far do we go to save someone? Do we ever think about what they have to do if they do survive? I think, as a doctor, we always have to do our best as our profession prescribed.
Dear Father in Heaven, holloweth be Thy Name. Thank You for every blessings of a new day. Thank You for giving us health and providing for us. Thank You for always being Faithful and Loyal and loving. Thank You for always giving us HOPE for eternity. Thank You for Your PROMISE of an eternity in Your LOVE, without sorrows, disabilities, disfigurements, and disappointments. Thank You for Jesus Christ's death of atonement to redeem us from our sins so we can worship You in Your Holy presence. Thank You for blessing us with all Your beloved on this Earth as we walk this pilgrimage together. Father, please take special care for those who are in physical suffering. Please be their Comforter and their Peace. Give them strength to live through and face their future. Give them courage to face themselves and to share their incredible story to further glorify Your Name. May all your saints say... Amen.
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