Friday, March 24, 2006
On this day I had an experience like none before. It is almost scary how well I know myself, how well I know what I will like and dislike. Maybe I understand my destiny better than most people.
We are running a study at the PCRC (pain clinical research center, where I work). Without going into too much detail, we dose people with placebo or Morphine, and then we test there reactions to Hot Pain. It is extremely interesting work. There are risks to taking Morphine, however.
A really nice, intelligent guy enrolled in the study. He was a pleasure to talk to, and so we chatted back and forth in the small exam room in which our studies are run. The first injection went fine. The side effects were bearable,--so he said-- spacy, light-headed, dry mouth, sleepy.
The second injection was a vastly different story. About an hour after the dose, during one of the tests, the Morphine hit him like truck. Within 10 seconds he went from sleepy, to nauseous, to vomiting on himself and passing out. Scott, the study Doc and I heaved him onto a gurney; he immediately came to. I had reflexively elevated his legs and now he stared up at me in amazement. Clearly, he was astonished to be lying supine and have someone, who just a moment ago was running a test, now holding his legs up. As for me, I was shaking. I was scared, but another part of me knew that in this moment I had experienced an event that had been previously missing from me. It has physically become a part of me, the moment. The instant when I was lifting this person--helpless and limp-- to the gurney, the decision to rush to his legs and lift them, watching him come to and look up at me for explanation, me reassuringly patting his calf repeating,"It's alright. You're alright. You're fine.", all this is now in me.
This event has it's costs, of course. I feel guilty for learning through suffering, particularly when it is someone else's. The Greeks had this underlying lesson in their Mythologies: "Mathos Pathos", that is, learning through suffering. I suppose it is another of the harsh realities of a life in medicine that I am just not accustom to.
We are running a study at the PCRC (pain clinical research center, where I work). Without going into too much detail, we dose people with placebo or Morphine, and then we test there reactions to Hot Pain. It is extremely interesting work. There are risks to taking Morphine, however.
A really nice, intelligent guy enrolled in the study. He was a pleasure to talk to, and so we chatted back and forth in the small exam room in which our studies are run. The first injection went fine. The side effects were bearable,--so he said-- spacy, light-headed, dry mouth, sleepy.
The second injection was a vastly different story. About an hour after the dose, during one of the tests, the Morphine hit him like truck. Within 10 seconds he went from sleepy, to nauseous, to vomiting on himself and passing out. Scott, the study Doc and I heaved him onto a gurney; he immediately came to. I had reflexively elevated his legs and now he stared up at me in amazement. Clearly, he was astonished to be lying supine and have someone, who just a moment ago was running a test, now holding his legs up. As for me, I was shaking. I was scared, but another part of me knew that in this moment I had experienced an event that had been previously missing from me. It has physically become a part of me, the moment. The instant when I was lifting this person--helpless and limp-- to the gurney, the decision to rush to his legs and lift them, watching him come to and look up at me for explanation, me reassuringly patting his calf repeating,"It's alright. You're alright. You're fine.", all this is now in me.
This event has it's costs, of course. I feel guilty for learning through suffering, particularly when it is someone else's. The Greeks had this underlying lesson in their Mythologies: "Mathos Pathos", that is, learning through suffering. I suppose it is another of the harsh realities of a life in medicine that I am just not accustom to.
