Tuesday, December 8

Today, I went to Starbucks and got a coffee… black, of course. As I was sitting, waiting for my order, I saw a man in uniform walk in. I was in my uniform as well so he began to make small talk with me. After introducing himself as Doctor C (his friends jokingly called him “Sir C”), he made a joke about the health care bill “Have you seen the size of that thing? 2,000 sheets later for just one copy and, in 20 years, we will wonder why there are no trees left.” I have actually seen that bill and it is huge. How does someone take the time to read that? And the kicker is that the guys only get about 2 days to read it!

We talked a little more about politics and then the inevitable subject came up… the Vietnam War. He told me he had served in the war as a medical doctor. His story is one of the most touching I have heard in a long time:

“I saw men who were on the fence between this life and the next. They wanted to hang onto the wood, but their hands were slipping and their arms were getting tired. Once they could not hold on any longer, I could see it in their eyes. A sense of acceptance. A knowledge that they could let go of their trivial lives here on Earth and accept something more.

“One man that I was taking care of began to cough. He coughed so hard that he spit blood and vomit on my apron. If I had been in my usual mindset, I would have been disgusted, but I simply wiped it off and continued. It did not phase me in the least. That’s the thing about being a doctor during a crisis such as a war—you have to let all of your emotions go so that your patients can’t see them. We used to say that you have to leave all of your emotions ‘at the door.’ There are two basic reasons for this: 1) I think if anyone had held onto their emotions throughout all of this horror, they would have gone insane and 2) You could not let the patient know that you were giving up on them. If someone was terminally ill or had 32 bullet holes in them and you showed in your eyes that they were not going to make it, they would just let go because they knew that it was not worth it to keep on fighting just to stay alive for another few minutes.

“The men that you are with become closer than your brothers. They are the only ones who know exactly what you are going through. They are the only people who can comfort you after losing a patient.

“As often as I can, I go to the Vietnam Wall in Washington DC. I wonder how many of those men died because I couldn’t save them. I wonder how many would still be alive today if I had worked harder, worked faster, or even given a second of my time to let them know that it was going to be okay.”

That story completely hit home for me. Sir C had it harder than I could ever imagine. I had not thought about the men who actually had to deal with us after we got wounded on the battlefield. It must have been horrible to be around people as they were dying. I bet the entire place reeked of death and disease. Maybe my part in the Vietnam War really wasn’t that bad…

Adapted from the story of Doctor Carey Spearman in Spearman, Carey. “The Tet Offensive.” The Soldier’s Story. Ed. Ron Steinman. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002. 159-162. Book.