Dealing with grief when faced with death
Being a medical student on placement, you come across death most weeks, sometimes peripherally, and sometimes up close. Having nursed my own father through his terminal cancer journey, I was no stranger to dealing with this, and stepped on the wards unafraid of the challenges ahead.
However, what I didn’t expect was the range of reactions I would have to seeing death so often and in such varied circumstances. On one hand, I found that I had become desensitised to the whole process; I grew exasperated at the euphemisms used, as if they made any difference to the reality of the situation, I felt uncomfortable when people asked me if I needed “to take a minute” after witnessing people dying, like I hadn’t already been through much worse, and I felt as though I had to mimic the reactions of my peers, so as not to seem emotionally stunted. That is not to say that each and every death didn’t make an impact, they did, and I am only too aware of the pain their own families would have felt; every one I was involved in brought back tiny memories of my dad, but the emotions associated with that were too painful, too private to express in such a public setting.
On the other hand, every so often, I would meet someone that reminded me so strongly of my dad it was like being hit in the chest by a brick. Whether it was a mannerism they had, or the specific diagnosis, it was like I was transported back to when I watched the man I loved so dearly, and who had been so full of life, quickly become imprisoned by the cancer which would soon become him. In these moments, I seem to become paralysed; stuck between being that terrified teenager, and the person I am now. It is after these interactions that I do need to remind myself to “take a minute”, in order to be fully present for the person in front of me; whether it is to provide care, or simply listen in what may be one of the worst moments of their lives.
With our own experiences dealing with the loss of our loved ones, or working in healthcare, we are all too aware that people’s lives can be changed entirely within seconds, and, having chosen to go into medicine myself, it will become my duty to ensure that whatever journey someone is on, whether to recovery, or in the last stages of their life, it is the best it can be.
People’s first reaction, a lot of the time, to finding out I lost a parent at a young age is “it will make you more empathetic”. This is undoubtedly true. For better or for worse, I do know what it is like to lose a parent, to get an earth-shattering piece of news, to watch someone you love die. However, more importantly, I feel it made me a realist. To know that stories don’t always have happy endings, and that life is unpredictable and can feel impossibly cruel. The result of this is not wholly negative however, despite the slightly cynical phrasing, I find I am a lot more passionate about palliative care, giving people the chance to have comfortable deaths, and a lot more open to discussing the possibility of people dying.
When you lose someone you love, the last thing you want to hear is that there will be any positives out of the situation, but with the benefit of time, I hope I have found at least one, and I think my dad would be proud of that.