As many of you know by now, I'm a med student. I love studying what I'm studying with a passion only comparable with a profound and deep love for someone else. This semester, as many of my teachers have called it, is a transition between pretending to be a med student and really being a med student. With subjects such as Microbiology, Pathology and Molecular Biomedicine, things are getting complicated and easier at the same time. We're talking now about diagnoses, pathogenic mechanisms, medical treatment, pathophysiological causes of disease and metabolic alterations, and many other things which truly can get on your hysterical side if you're not careful enough. One of those things is my practice at hospital for Pathology.
For my Pathology practices, I have to go once a month (or maybe earlier) to a hospital and work on the Pathology lab. Don't get me wrong, I love doing it. We've seen so much on my first practice that I was shocked and awed and amazed at the same time. Everything was going smoothly... until something happened.
The door behind us opened suddenly, but we didn't turn. We were in the middle of getting some samples of tissue for analysis, so we were quite focused. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a nurse pushing a hospital bed with what looked to be a blue bag, labeled with some tape on the front. Then, I heard someone else speak.
-"Male patient, 91 years old. Cause of death: pneumonia."
They left the bed right next to us and walked out of the autopsy room, leaving my classmates, the doctor, and me with the body. That's when I started thinking about what had just happened. It was the first time I had a "face to face" encounter with Death itself, and my mind immediately started flying. I knew that, somewhere around the hospital, there was a family mourning a loss while we were working in the lab, laughing and having a pretty good time right next to the deceased person. This got me thinking a lot.
Is this how we lose, bit by bit, our sense of humanity? Or is it just something that happens when you really, really meet Death face to face?
