I’ve noticed a number of other students are posting and commenting about having to deal with death and disease in our line of work (placement, at the moment), and finding a balance between emotional attachment and detachment. I’d also like to mention that my placement is making me think a whole lot more about the value of life, and figuring out when enough’s enough..
I’m on a post-acute/long term rehab neurosurgery ward where there are numerous cases of patients with head injuries who have hugely varied impairments and level of dependency. I’m finding it intriguing the way patients who have experienced similar motor vehicle/bike accidents, can recover at completely different rates – some with simply a few scratches, and some that can’t even hold the weight of their own head. I saw a patient last week who has no voluntary movement, contractures so extreme that a bone in his foot is almost breaking through the skin, and he can only communicate occasionally via eye blinking ‘yes’ and ‘no’ in response to pain. This patient has been in this condition for eight years.
What surprises me in this situation is that this patient’s parents are present at just about every physio session and are always in a bright and happy mood, and discuss their son’s condition openly and with no hint of sadness. Obviously, the couple have had eight years to come to terms with their son’s condition and have learnt to manage and care for him and I think it’s really encouraging the way they handle the situation. I’ve not come to any conclusions about these issues, but I’m certainly wondering about the quality of life these patients and their family have. Of course, if something similar happened to one of my family members, I would not think twice about caring for them in the same way, but this prac has certainly made me ponder whether, say, if I was in the same situation, I would want to be kept going if I was living life completely dependent on others and unable to communicate or get my personality across in any way. I do not want to sound pessimistic or discouraging, simply putting down some thoughts that this placement has evoked in me…
I think people who have had something life threatening happen to them or their family members are generally just happy that they(or their family members) have survived. I have noticed that amputees are often so much more happy and optimistic than you would expect, which i guess could be due to the fact that they have probably faced something life threatening that was serious enough for them to need an amputation
ReplyDelete