Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Diagnosing Bad News

I am feeling much better. Thanks for all of the comments. It's nice to see that people are still stopping by.

These days I am on a very busy hemepath service where I spend my days looking for leukemic blasts and the other abnormal cells that signal cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Inevitably, we get a horrible case at the end of a long day. It's hard to describe the sinking feeling I get in my stomach when I focus the scope and see blasts everywhere. Their monotony signals badness. Often the clinical team has arrived to see the case and everyone sits silently taking it in.

We apologize. We look around, hoping to see something that might change the diagnosis. But the badness is still there. For that brief moment before they have to run back to the floor we all share a collective sense of grief.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ouch. I'm sorry, Coyote. There are some things you just wish were an 'April Fools'.