DECISIONS, DECISIONS, DECISIONS.

December 3, 2006

I wrote this one after a call that left me staring straight into the maddening gray area between autonomy and intervention. The patient wasn’t dying, but she was unraveling—and the worst part was, she knew it. She stood there, caught between wanting help and not being able to ask for it, paralyzed by fear, pride, or maybe both. We see it more than people think—patients who can’t decide, even when it’s killing them. I remember leaving that scene with this bitter taste in my mouth, because sometimes you want to fix it, drag them toward safety—but you can’t. This post was my attempt to process the helplessness of watching someone drown with a life raft in front of them and no will to grab it.