on call

because Dr. Transue puts in words how I feel sometimes better than I could ever say it : )

"I feel less hurt, less vulnerable after seeing him, knowing that he's okay. So often, trying to envision things through my patients' eyes, I simply can't imagine how they cope. I think that if someone gave me the news that I give them, I would simply perish, explode, cease to exist. I cannot imagine how my chronic pain patients live with their pain, how my sexual abuse survivors live with their memories, how my mentally ill patients can navigate their chaotic, shifting worlds. I don't know how someone gets through the first night of knowing they're going to die. But I'm endlessly amazed to discover, over and over, the strength that people have; their ability to muster coping mechanisms, their ways of managing and going on, surviving the moment, surviving the night."

" I am just embarking, full of uncertainty, into my own adult life, trying to forge the world in which I will live. I am trying to create my life, while he is looking back at his; and I would love to learn his lessons, to be able to feel when I am dying as fulfilled in what I have done as he is."