=To All Doctors, Everywhere |
To
you, we are room numbers, symptoms, diagnoses, charts. We're a groupof
scientific names that describe why we have unwillingly entered your lives.
We are an inconvenient page at two in the morning, a nosebleed on your
clean lab coat, a procedure scheduled in for surgery tomorrow morning.
Sometimes we
interrupt you in your leisure time, and sometimes we mean that youspend
less time with your kids.
To you, we are work. Your job. To us, we are so much more. We have names of our own. Our own loves, and fears, and hopes and dreams and personal tragedies. We are someone's daughter, someone's son and grandchild and cousin and sibling. But because of circumstances out of our control, we put our lives in your hands. Please, never lose sight of the faith and trust we put in you. And, as we try to humanize our inhuman situations, please help us. We're not very good at this yet, we're still learning. Sometimes we're cowards. Sometimes, we 're brave. Sometimes, we throw tantrums and sometimes, you may see us cry. We
are giving you a great gift - we
trust you with our lives. And, in return, we are hoping and praying
that you'll be able to give us the greatest
gift of all - our lives back. We thank you for that.
Joan
Fleitas, Ed.D., R.N.
Last updated: November 14, 2004 |