The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Notes -
One of my Wife's best friends passed away this last weekend, she was 8 months pregnant, her baby boy was lost as well. She had a 3 year old daughter and husband that survived her. It originally sounded like it might have been a pregnancy complication, but some news stories I found through sleuthing suggest it was a fatal car crash.
It has been rough on my Wife processing it all. She cried the whole night when she found out. And since then I've found her sobbing in the middle of the day as some errant thought or piece of news reminds her of it all.
I knew the woman that passed away. Hung out with her a dozen times. She was in our wedding party. We went to her wedding. She was nice, a bit of a boring conversation partner, but a good friend to my wife.
I feel ... almost nothing. The only time I shed tears was when I had some particularly vivid imagery of this scenario occurring to me. Selfish tears. I do feel a little sad for my wife going through this all, but that is the extent of my emotion.
When my grandfather passed away a month or two ago, I also felt very little, I thought it was cuz his death wasn't very tragic (he was 90 and lived a very long happy life).
Is this normal? I've noticed plenty of guys around me can also be a bit unbothered by death, while most women seem to be physically pained when hearing the circumstances.
Men are largely far more stoic than women, it's a stereotype because it's true.
I pride myself on being quite stoic myself, not that the thought of my family or my dogs passing away doesn't fill me with premature grief. Well, at least it helps me make the most of our time together, until we can finally banish aging and death to the same hell as smallpox.
Much like you, if it's a person I'm not particularly familiar with, it doesn't bother me all that much, and that's a good thing, a surfeit of empathy is a liability for doctors, and we usually learn to compartmentalize pretty quick.
I've only cried once for a "patient", I had never met the man before, and he was already dead and cooling by the time I discovered him on my morning ward round, left to slowly decay on a floor with the flies and cockroaches. It was only the wailing of his daughter when I broke the news that made me cry, and I was fundamentally unsupported by anyone, including my colleagues or seniors, and while that rankled at the time, I've never cried for a patient since, even if I've pitied many.
Death is terrible, but since my day job is preventing it as long as possible, I can't say I'm not helping, and weeping and wailing doesn't by itself. At least nobody I really love has passed away since my grandma two decades back, and even then I was too young to really process things. I think I'm going to breakdown if my elderly German Shepherd passes, as much as I don't give a shit about the rights of animals, dogs have a soft spot in my heart, especially my own.
Medicine in America seems to work a little differently; when tough shit goes down people are at least a little supportive. This goes
doubletriplequadruple on the pediatric oncology unit.I think it would have been different if I was a girl, not that I can tell for sure! Then again, that would have made my life hell if I was one under the sadistic female gyne postgrad trainees lol. Couldn't find a bigger assortment of bitches at the Kennel Club..
At any rate, I'm only slightly bitter about it, they told me to toughen up, and toughen up I did. Not to mention I was responsible for a COVID ICU during the height of the pandemic here, watching people die slow painful deaths is only troubling in passing unless it's someone I love.
Tears are no substitute for normal saline.
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