"She Stared Straight Ahead with Fear."
This morning one of the patients looked at me and said, "Such a smile is worth twenty dollars." He had pneumonia and hepatitis; he was an alcoholic. Then an old woman came in, transported from a psychiatric state hospital, with a mass in her
lower lung.
She stared straight ahead with fear. Another patient came in with a severed arm cut to the bone by a buzz saw.
A mass in her lower lung. Her eyes stared straight ahead in fear. She was old and alone.
And still another man came in yelling, "Don't send me to Viet Nam," as he clung to the underside of his gurney. The doctor gave him an intravenous drip of Valium and sadly commented, "Well, we missed sending him to Korea!"
A young girl with epilepsy arrived, looking for help, her mother attempting to demonstrate her daughter's seizures. And then an enormously fat-bellied old woman who was having a hard time breathing was examined. The intern remarked, "If you'd lose
weight, you'd add fifteen years to your life."
She answered, "I'm waiting for the operation to cut out the fat."
Through it all I felt a sense of compassion permeating the atmosphere; the sick were treated kindly.
Department of Emergency Medicine
