I am the uptight, anal-retentive member of the pharmacy team, because I cringe at the use of “speciate” to mean “identify to the species level”, and I am sort of dubious on the whole notion of prokaryota having actual species groups.
I also took the initiative to estimate the morphine equivalent of how much our $200/day heroin addict was blowing through when she acquired her MRSA infection. Motivation, yo. I haz it.
“So, where are you in your educational life cycle?”
“Oh, I’m a pupating pharmacist.”
Working on a hematology/oncology service has confirmed, like nothing else, my suspicions on the state of natural justice. Namely: there is none.
Most of my patients are going to die of their cancers, somewhere between tomorrow and about forty-six months from now. I realise that because this month is inpatient oncology at a major teaching hospital/research institution, I see some unusually grave cases, but I think the issue remains. Cancer is not dealt out fairly; if there were not these patients on service we would have someone else’s teenage marine biology major; someone else’s beloved young papa, someone else’s Anabaptist father of nine.
Neither is there justice in the cures. The patients who achieve and maintain remission are not consistently those who wanted it more, who kept up a smile and good spirits, whose chemotherapy was brutal and almost killed them. There is no rule of exclusion for the thin ones, the pretty ones, the young ones, the ones who had better support, the ones whose families needed them more. The patients the medical team is pulling extra hard for may, actually, be the ones who had a graver prognosis in the first place.
There are only the mechanisms of the malignant cells, and how well they die under the broad killing waves of chemotherapy.
We—I—will do the best I can, and it may well not be good enough. It’s not fair, and I’m sorry.