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And now, for some good tears: "A Wedding in Intensive Care"
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/19/a-wedding-in-intensive-care/?_php=true&_type=blogs&hp&rref=opinion&_r=0BOSTON — There wasn’t going to be a happy ending. The patient had metastatic cancer and had just gone through her third unsuccessful regimen of chemotherapy. Now it seemed that everywhere we looked, we found disease. An X-ray of her belly revealed an obstruction in her intestines. A CT scan of her chest uncovered a pulmonary embolism. Her labs demonstrated that she had almost no white blood cells left with which to defend herself.
When she arrived in the intensive care unit, she was delirious. I asked her the usual questions, about her medical history, and whether she wanted us to do CPR if her heart were to stop beating, but she didn’t answer. I was just setting the clipboard aside when she raised a hand and told me, in a moment of lucidity: “Doc, do everything you can. I need to make it to my daughter’s wedding.”
SNIP
