purple fish guts

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Posts on my mind...

There are several posts out in the blogosphere that have been rattling around in my mind lately, and I thought I would share them with you.

Maria at intueri has a great post about empathy. It is easy when working with patients to become detached and not see them as people with feelings. This is a great reminder to put ourselves in other's shoes before laughing at someone.

On the other hand, it can be very difficult when you do see a patient as a peer. D Bunny at the Drunken Lagomorph has a post about responding to a call as a paramedic of a police officer that had been shot. I made the mistake of reading it at work during breaktime. (I recently added her to my list of websites I download onto my palm every morning.) Unfortunately it did not have a warning "THIS IS LIKELY TO MAKE YOU CRY!" Don't say I didn't warn you.

It reminded me of a night when I was working graveyard shift in a small hospital laboratory. The lab had been very quiet all night, so I was helping the OB nurses by answering call lights. I had just given a patient socks to warm her feet when I got called to the emergency department STAT. I arrived to draw blood and saw the staff trying to save the life of a local nurse whose husband had cut her and her son's throats. Her son was pronounced dead at the scene, but she ended up surviving to see her husband put behind bars. D Bunny's post reminded me of the horror being multiplied with the thought "She is one of us."

On a lighter note, Sheila at The Sheila Variations has a post with an ode to the movie The Breakfast Club. I love that movie. I was a teenager when it came out, and it spoke to me in so many ways. I have a tape of it, and can still quote the script. Sheila pays tribute much more eloquently than I can, so I will just say ditto. Be sure to read the comments. One thing I love about Sheila's blog is the comments. They read like a chat room, and it makes you feel like you are hanging out in a cool crowd, even if you don't comment yourself.

Enjoy!