MAYBE it’s the fact that in the middle of the cyclone today, my wife a doctor, had to rush to the hospital to save a life that makes me write about ‘Death rage’ today.
We have all seen or experienced this feeling at some time or another. Death rage: When the need to release and vent out an anger at the unquestionable authority and absoluteness of death makes people raise their fists at those who stand vulnerably, close by.
Nowadays more and more often it is the very person who with stethoscope and surgical scalpel has fought assiduously and earnestly to save invalid sufferer from death’s doors but finally beaten by the dark angel, who receives not the thanks of relatives and friends for such valiant attempt, but instead the wrath and vexation of those who waited outside surgical theatre. They seek vengeance the very one who tried to save their dead kith or kin.
Death Rage. It destroys even after death has. For with our lashing out at white coated fraternity, we destroy the very ones who have committed themselves to snatch us from the jaws of death.
We destroy their confidence, their practice, their reputation which with care and skill and utter devotion they have built over long years.
Yet with one raising of the fist or stroke of attorney’s pen we change his or her life forever, for though only less than one in ten are ever proved to have neglected duty, the other nine who walk away, though free, are never ever free again to save lives with the same abandon they once possessed.
Death rage takes its toll, even after death has come and gone. And later when these same shut tight their clinic doors to seriously injured victims who are rushed to them, blame them not, for once when they did stretch out their hands to heal, they found that hands that clasped theirs for help turned to be related to traitorous claws. Death rage. Let us learn not to succumb to it.
Perchance you’ve found me a little serious and I would like to end on a lighter note: A doctor summoned in haste by a woman taken ill suddenly, was somewhat puzzled, for he knew that she was not his patient, though he remembered operating on her husband who passed away on the table.
While he was waiting to be shown into the sick room, he fell to talking to the little girl of the house.
“It is very gratifying to know that your mother thought of calling me in her illness,” he said. “Is your own family doctor away?” “Oh no,” answered the child in a matter of fact tone.
“Mother thinks she’s got something contagious and she felt she should give it to you!” Tut! Tut! Would you really want to add your rage to such vindictive acts the poor docs receive?
