We has our first PBL patient die today. A lot of us have been looking forward to this day for some time. Not eagerly, but just anticipating that one day our ficticous patient will be incurable.
Our dude had X-linked agammaglobulinemia, and like every other week I made the bold assertion that this was the week where our candidate would die. "One day he'll just get a mean infection, go septic and die."
I was pleased with my balanced immunological assessment, but it didn't feel so good to have boasted it when the slide revealed the guy died three years after a heart lung transplant... and the fictitious character was based on a real person. It's going to be weird when an actual patient dies on me.
I recalled to a colleague today how I just happened to rock up at a crash scene after the ambulance had left. There wasn't much to see except a smashed windscreen and a mangled bicycle. I got home and read on the news that the cyclist had died, and I felt sad about that. A guy going for a ride gets killed by a careless motorist. It seemed genuinely tragic. Unfortunately the person I related this story to was a paramedic and was very meh about the whole ordeal. It made me think though.
The great irony was that I was driving back from a breakfast at church where one of the key points was "You are... going to die." Not to be overly dramatic or anything, just getting one of those certainties of life out there. While a hundred metres away an unwitting man was breathing his last, face up on Unley Road.
What does it all mean?
Forget life - what's the meaning of X-man gammabulimia?
ReplyDeleteIt's how captain stretch gets so thin I think? I'll need to recheck my notes on that one :S
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