"I regret my regrets..."

I just started on internal medicine 2 days ago and already I love it. Doing the medicine and thinking
through/learning the pathophysiology of everything is really cool but it would eventually get boring 
without the occasional patient that brings you back to reality. I def don't know even nearly all there is to
know at this point...but I know enough to get into a dangerous "routine" as some docs call it. It's really
easy in medicine, once you do it for long enough to reflux orders, tests, and treatments...to become
somewhat detached. Sometimes on a rotation that is really fast paced (like this internal medicine one right now) I catch myself getting bogged down with the routine. Most of the time I can realize it and take a 
step back and remind myself that the little things matter just as much to people as the big things.  


We had a patient today who, in short, asked us if we could give her a "shot" so she didn't wake up. She
later told us that she wanted to go home and drink all the beer in her house to just end everything. While I def can't understand what she is going through, I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that she was so sad and hopeless about her condition, but the only thing she wanted to do was the one thing that 
seemed to primarily lead to her current state.  She went back and forth between crying and joking, but it was clear that was how she dealt with knowing she was at the beginning of the downward spiral that is Hep C, cirrhosis, end stage renal disease, lung cancer, and many more health problems. She definitely
snapped me back to reality and made me think about the choices we make.


My most memorable patient so far, a guy in his late 50's, dying from pretty much failure of every system in his body because of drug/alcohol use in his past once told me, "I regret my regrets". You'd think he was miserable, crochity old man who just was better of dead...right?? Wrong, this guy was the happiest,
most peaceful, and one of the most inspiring people I've met. Not because of his past, but 
because of his outlook on the choices he made in life. At first I wasn't really understanding what he 
meant by regretting his regrets. I've always been torn. Am I of perspective that we learn from everything in life, good or bad, so its best not to have regrets...learn the lesson and move on? Or that its ok to regret
things, as long as I regret the right things. But after knowing him
for a short while and having him tell me all the time that life was about choices, the good ones AND the bad ones (and he def made a lot of terrible ones lol), I realized he was the ultimate testament to having no regrets. Riddled with disease, he loved every minute of his life, even at the end. He had choices, he made certain ones that ended a certain way, but he was happy with that. I don't know that I'll ever be able to honestly say that i have no regrets, is that even possible??? But he definitely taught me that life is about
choices, standing by our mistakes, owning up to them, and not letting them bring you down.


So today I was definitely brought back to reality to say the least. It's not everyday that I have a patient 
politely ask to die. Are we making the choices today that we're going to be able to accept
tomorrow?? Maybe we'll never know until we're there. So for now, I'll just try to only regret my 
regrets...