Well, I guess we've gotta keep it

Tapes of Richard Nixon discussing his views on abortion were released today. Here's one of his opinions:

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding, “Or a rape.”

Only 36 years ago, an American president said this... amazing. Since I'm only "a brown", not "a black," I guess we'll have to keep my unborn child (which, by the way will - hopefully - be born late Dec or early Jan... I'm glad my tough med school rotations will be out of the way by then).

Death comes easy

I've seen patients whom I knew were going to die and I've seen patients who died after I was in contact with them, but recently, I saw, for the first time, a patient die in front of me. I'm not much of an emotional person, but I thought that it would affect me more. Instead, it felt like nothing. I suppose it could have been the fact that I never got to know the patient (she had been in cardiac arrest for a while before I saw her) or that it was pretty busy in the room with people performing multiple procedures and shouting various orders or that no one else seemed especially moved. Maybe I was too concerned with not messing up the small part I was given to save this person's life. Either way, I suppose a certain amount of detachment is necessary to efficiently (and rationally) treat the patient. I just didn't think that I would reach that state of detachment without even trying.