Numb

I forgot her name. We were in the same faculty. She studied psychology, I was told.

When we met, she was on a hospital bed. The 7th bed in the medical triage. The bed reserved for unstable patients in need of close monitoring. When we met, she had an endotracheal tube stuffed down her throat. On the other end of the tube was me, holding a bag full of oxygen to be pumped to her lungs.

Bagging, we conveniently called it.

Her condition was unique. She remains breathing normally when she was awake; And yet the moment she fell asleep, she was no longer breathing. After some reading, I found out that there’s a term for this condition — central hypoventilation.

Human have two kind of control over their breathing; the first one was voluntary, it’s the one at play when you were asked to breathe in and out during yoga. The second one was involuntary, it’s the one that keeps you breathing during your sleep.

She had a tumor in her cerebellum, the tumor probably grew large enough that it compressed the involuntary respiration control in the brainstem. When she was awake, she can breathe voluntarily; but when she fell asleep, there’s no involuntary control to take over her respiration.

And there I was, holding a bag of oxygen to be pumped to her lungs when she fell asleep. Her breath was in my hand, I literally hold her breath.

I have never seen patients intubated while they’re awake before. It was hell. She can no longer speak due to the tube in her throat. She asked for papers to write things. Her friends came and I can clearly see the tears rolling from her eyes.

I have never seen such suffering before. I was horrified. And yet I can’t remember her name.

On that moment, all I can think about was either the pathophysiology of the condition — its neuroanatomy, or how to survive night shift, how to avoid neglecting my duty. I never had the thought to get to know her, or to console her worried family.

There’s that strange thing medical education had done to us. We were told to think logically, to connect the dots and made the correct decision. We were told only to empathize, never taking things too much to the heart.

Sometimes, it’s making us numb. We can list our patient’s problems alphabetically, but fail to grasp the extent of their suffering. We smirk when the patient’s family and relatives comes in droves to visit. We were annoyed when the relatives asked too many questions and worried too much over a relatively benign condition.

Maybe we’ve seen too much suffering, aren’t we? We’re getting burned out.