What We Get Wrong About Dying - Issue 55: Trust
▻http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/what-we-get-wrong-about-dying
My first exposure to the death of a patient came during my third year of medical school, in Israel. It was my first clinical rotation, which happened to be in internal medicine. Tagging along with my mentor, a senior physician to whom I had been assigned, on his morning rounds, we entered the room of an elderly woman who was critically ill with an antibiotic-resistant bacteria in her urinary system. The infection had spread throughout her frail body and was now wreaking havoc on most of her vital organs. Observing her for a few moments as she lay there unconscious, he said, “She’s almost at the end.” I scrutinized the woman’s face, her breathing, the digital readouts of the instruments, trying to understand what signs he was so brilliantly interpreting. To me it seemed like voodoo, as (...)