The lyrics of the song "A Foggy Day In London Town" by Michael Buble was exactly what happen in Sydney 2 days ago. I woke up and thought there was something wrong with my eyes... Everything was blurry. I have seen fog before in Sydney but not as bad as that morning... It was when I arrived at the station near the hospital where I'm attached to that I realised the extent of the fog.
Follow up:
It seems that the weather was a forewarn of things to come for that day. The team that I'm attached to saw an elderly lady who was basically in a fair bit of pain and there is not much of a possibility that she will be able to survive for much longer. We went to see her on our ward rounds and when asked if there was anything that she want to tell us, the only word that came out from her repeatedly was "Finished!" and her sobbing... We asked her whether if she meant that she wanted the ordeal to be finish (essentially, saying that she want to die). She nodded her head. At this point of time, we were at lost of words...
What do you say to a patient who was obviously in some agony and wanting to end it all? As doctors and medical students, we have been told from day 1 to First Do NO Harm. And yet legally and perhaps to a much greater extent, morally we can't help the patient to die (at least not actively). What does harm mean in this case? Are we doing harm should we fulfill her wishes? Or are we doing more harm by NOT fulfilling her wishes? :-/ In the end, there is no answer. All we can do is to try our best to alleviate her discomfort as much as we can in her remaining days.
We then rounded on another lady who recently suffered a stroke and had some difficulty in her speech. She had problems getting words out and sometimes even when they come out, they don't make any sense. My first impression of her was that despite what she had gone through, she was still pretty chirpy. However, when we rounded on the other patient next to her, we started hearing sniffing sounds coming from her side. Initially, I thought she was having a bit of runny nose and when I peered past the drawn curtains, I realised that she was sobbing uncontrollably. All this time, when we were talking to her, I thought she had a pretty good outlook of her situation but on the contrary, she was probably devastated in her heart. All I could do was to offer her a box of tissue.
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