After an ED shift
Well, I just finished another night shift and am sitting in front of the computer drinking a nice merlot...lots of sick folks, there are some bad GI bugs going around San Diego right now...had two ladies with PID (unhappy not just from pain but from the news of infidelity with spouses) and child with seizures, a man who went to bed without a care and awoke with the sensation of drowning who likely...a new pulmonary effusion (fluid around the lung) that is most likely cancer related (yes, he had the biggest risk factor, he was a nice guy)...and tons of others...one of my patients was a Marine who rolled his ATV and broke his ankle...turns out he was in Fallujah with 1/5 when I was there...we played a little name game and it just felt good to be with him...
Alek greeted me with a "Hope you had a nice shift!" as I woke him up on my return...
For some reason I have been thinking of one of my favorite poems by WH Auden lately...it runs over and over in my mind...here are the last two stanzas from the poem "September 1, 1939"...written about the Nazi invasion of Poland, but apropos of the post September 11 world....
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
I just love the line "We must love one another or die" and somehow LJ comes to mind in that last stanza....if interested the entire poem is at: http://www.gametec.com/poemdujour/Sept1.1939.html
ECM
Alek greeted me with a "Hope you had a nice shift!" as I woke him up on my return...
For some reason I have been thinking of one of my favorite poems by WH Auden lately...it runs over and over in my mind...here are the last two stanzas from the poem "September 1, 1939"...written about the Nazi invasion of Poland, but apropos of the post September 11 world....
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
I just love the line "We must love one another or die" and somehow LJ comes to mind in that last stanza....if interested the entire poem is at: http://www.gametec.com/poemdujour/Sept1.1939.html
ECM