“…just as we know our walking to be only a constantly prevented falling, so is the life of our body only a constantly prevented dying, an ever deferred death.” Schopenhauer
I first read these words two years after I had qualified as a doctor. On reading them I felt a jolt: a reawakening of a feeling that I had buried. A feeling that I ran and hid from as I spent my days, and many nights, beside people on the brink of death. Schopenhauer’s words forced me to confront the fact that I felt threatened, fearful, temporary. I felt mortal.
Those of us who work in hospitals are witnesses to ‘a constantly prevented dying’. We react in different ways, and we rarely talk about it, but I have recognised more than once after a cardiac arrest call that has ended in death, a fleeting flash in the eyes of a colleague that screams “that could be us, we all die!’
drlj 