Ramblings of a doctor in the intensive care unit (ICU)

Exhausted, discouraged, demoralized I feel

As I sit at the end of the day, rubbing my aching heels

Life and death in all their unpredictability

Get in the way of caring for patients, inevitably

And I question myself, that though my team strives

To make every single sick patient survive

Our efforts turn out to be exercises in futility

Sometimes, making me question the utility

Of using fancy drugs, gadgets, machines and more

All these resources without a second thought we pour

Into treating our patients, yet often we fail

On days like this, a sense of failure prevails

Over me- I keep trying to second guess

Myself, I try to find errors in my care- I confess

Sometimes I pick up some, myself I remind

Next time, to keep these mistakes in mind

Though I feel bad, I am satisfied too

To know that there is something better I can do

But more often than not, no flaw I can seem

To find in the care delivered by my team

Then I am conflicted- I cannot decide

Whether to trust a higher power- I do confide

That not getting answers makes me uneasy

My analytical mind is skeptical, naturally

To believe in something that cannot be explained

By scientific principles goes against the way I’ve been trained..

 

In lamenting all the things that go wrong, I forget

That there are days when this pessimism is reset

By miraculous recoveries, inexplicable turns

That are equally hard to explain in rational terms

 

Then I remind myself that I am merely an instrument

That gets used in fulfilling the destiny of my patients!