EMERGENCY NYC (or "For Your Viewing Pleasure)
I don't think we have a comparable thread to "What are you Reading" for TV watching, so will make a new thread and let this one just sink into oblivion and reappear when/if.
If you get Netflix I sure do recommend "Emergency NYC" which follows EMS crews and ER personnel as they battle for the lives of patients.
To see one young man, surrounded by about 20 machines and as many ER personnel, battling for life is an amazing thing.
Follows many patients, everything from a premmie in need of surgery to a young woman whose kidney transplant results in an immune response that means she needs a liver transplant ASAP to a cop secretly donating a kidney to his co-worker.
This program reflects what I know/knew of medicine, and why I loved it. Seeing this made me wish I was young again in a whole new way I haven't felt since retirement.
We are often angry at medical practitioners (and you can count me in. I find them all too human in their limitations). And as with ANY profession, there are mistakes. And mistakes in medicine isn't quite the same as putting the carburator in backwards. And it IS an inexact science which knows all too little about all too much. But having spent my life on working in it I believe in us overall, on how hard we try. And on what a gift it is to do this work.
Dr. Henry Marsh's new memoir, And Finally, tells what it is to be a neurosurgeon who gets stage IV cancer, the difference from being a patient, an MD, and an MD with cancer. Great book I already put under "What are you Reading".
Not everyone wants to take in surgeries, but if you can, this one is for your consideration.
Amazon has put on Tender Mercies on prime for free. It is in my top five movies. A beautiful story of faith, love, perseverance and redemption.
I will have to check it out. Sounds very interesting.
I don’t hate all doctors. It’s like any other profession. There are good and bad people in all fields of work.
Many years ago, I attended an ‘end of life’ seminar.
The person leading the discussion was a priest who was also a psychiatrist/chaplain at a major hospital in Chicago before coming to our area. He’s retired now but is very active volunteering in the community.
He’s highly educated and has a wonderful sense of humor. Instead of wearing his religious vestments he wore his medical coat that he wore when he was a psychiatrist. He also served on the board of the hospital where he worked.
This priest grew up in New York and didn’t pull any punches describing how he felt about his experiences within the medical community.
He went on to speak about hospice care and how we should choose carefully because if it isn’t a nonprofit organization, the organization will be run like any other business that is intended to make money.
He explained that research of hospice organizations is needed before selecting a hospice provider.
He was extremely honest and helpful in his assessment of the church and medical care.
I truly appreciated his general outlook on life. He said that no one, not even the church should expect others to be a martyr by suffering and to take advantage of the drugs that are available through hospice care to relieve any pain.
He also said that he found many doctors to be pompous and arrogant and that they didn’t know as much as they thought they knew.
He told us that he admired and respected all of the nurses that he worked with for their dedication to their patients needs.
He felt that nurses working in hospitals were the patients best friends and advocates.
Medicine is fascinating! We must be careful who we trust to care for us and our loved ones. We don’t owe anyone our loyalty if we aren’t satisfied with our care.
We should seek out second opinions when needed. I respect a doctor who knows his limitations and will send us to a specialist to evaluate our particular medical needs.
I wasn’t feeling well this weekend, and watched the whole series.
Fascinating.
Especially towards the end, when the care focuses around a specific patient. That’s all I’ll say about that! 🤣
Thanks for the recommendation!
"Call the Midwife" (PBS or Netflix) is one of my favorites. I discovered it just last year, so I was able to binge 11 seasons straight. Season 12 came out last week, I believe.
Unlike a lot of "reality shows" this isn't that. It was a film made by two men, with the agreement of four hospitals, and permission of the folks films. So not like the cop ride alongs or the Texas swamp cops or whatever. I don't really "do " them at all. I mean I do Survivor, Mole, and so on, but understand they are VERY SCRIPTED.
"Emergency NYC" sounds pretty good, but I am too cheap to pay for streaming. At one time I could watch "Emergency Boston" without streaming and that show was interesting.