同情的罪 A CRIME OF COMPASSION.doc

A CRIME OF COMPASSION Barbara Huttman ??? “Murderer,” a man shouted. “God help patients who get?you?for a nurse.”??? “What gives you the right to play God?” another one asked.????? It was the Phil Donahue show where the guest is a fatted calf and the audience a?200-strong flock of vultures hungering to pick at the bones. I had told them about Mac,?one of my favorite cancer patients. “We resuscitated him 52 times in just one month. I?refused to resuscitate him again. I simply sat there and held his hand while he died.”????? There wasnt time to explain that Mac was a young, witty, macho cop who walked?into the hospital with 32 pounds of attack equipment, looking as if he could?singlehandedly protect the whole city, if not the entire state. “Cant get rid of this?cough,” he said. Otherwise he felt great.????? Before the day was over, tests confirmed that he had lung cancer. And before the?year was over, I loved him, his wife, Maura, and their three kids as if they were my own.?All the nurses loved him. And we all battled his disease for six months without ever?giving death a thought. Six months isnt such a long time in the whole scheme of things,?but it was long enough to see him lose his youth, his wit, his macho, his hair, his bowel?and bladder control, his sense of taste and smell and his ability to do the slightest thing?for himself. It was also long enough to watch Maura’s transformation from a young?woman into a haggard, beaten old lady.????? When Mac had wasted away to a 60 pound skeleton kept alive by liquid food we?poured down a tube, i.v. solutions, we dripped into his veins and oxygen we piped to a?mask on his face, he begged us: “Mercy . . . for Gods sake, please just let me go.”????? The first time he stopped breathing, the nurse pushed the button that calls a “code?blue” throughout the hospital and sends a team rushing to resuscitate the patient. Each?time he stopped breathing, sometimes two or three times a day, the code team came?again. The doctors