What does the word "peasant" bring to mind? Castles, kings and moats.... Just wrote the word over the occupation line of a death certificate.
Sometime this morning a 50 year old man found himself under an overturned oxcart. He was transported to the nearest hospital where note was made of decreased breath sounds in the left chest and air in the skin(it feels crackly for lack of a better descriptive term). Transport was then arranged to BMC. An official stamped referral letter accompanied the patient.
On a stretcher in casualty with two 14 gauge angiocaths in his chest wall and a blood filled endotracheal tube in his trachea, he died.
It is the 21st century and we still write peasant on a death certificate. The life and death for a peasant has probably varied little between the centuries.
In the twenty first century it means your baby dies of malaria and your dad dies in the afternoon when the oxcart falls on him in the morning. It was probably much like that inside and outside the castles in the middle ages. It is still happening outside the castles today.
2 comments:
Dear Steve, thank you for taking the time to write these posts! For a man of few words, you are doing a great job of sharing what is happening there, so well I feel I'm watching over your shoulder. I have particularly appreciated the use of images such as "peasant" and "captain" of a ship. Keep up the posts!
May God continue to give you the strength and compassion to serve others in such a powerful way. We miss you, . . . and pray that you are taking good care of yourself in the midst of so much death and sickness.
Love and Shalom!
Dick
Dr. Justus,
Thank you so much for sharing what your eyes are seeing and your heart is experiencing! I meet with new ED RNs tomorrow and I've been struggling on what to say to them that will motivate and give them direction- now I know. They will hear your postings! May God continue to watch over and protect you- Phil 4:6. Greta
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