Lady MacBeth

I'm trying to lay out my thoughts but having significant trouble doing so. Maybe I'm not ready to talk about it. Or I've talked too much about it. I don't know which. There are so many questions in my head. Could I have done better? If so, what could I have done differently? And still there aren't any answers.

I watched him die feeling helpless and unable to help him in any way. His wife wanted him resuscitated even though he was frail and old and riddled with cancer. And it went badly. It went badly and he ended up dying. I think what I can't shake most of all is that look on his face. He didn't die easily. He died hard and it was a horrible, messy, ugly death and it was so very chaotic. I felt the situation was not in my control and yet at the same time that it should be, because - after all - wasn't I the attending physician now?

In the end, all I could do was wash the blood off my hands - I hadn't had time to slip on gloves - and go out and talk to his wife. I know it will happen again. It will happen over and over as part of my work. I need to figure out my way to get around it, to get back in the saddle, to keep pressing on. I guess it will just take some time before it fades.

Meanwhile, I just have to suck it up and soldier on.