"Doctors Laugh Because Sometimes That's All We Can Do"

 "Doctors Laugh Because Sometimes That's All We Can Do"

by:

Virgilio F. De Leon Jr., MD

After facing some serious family troubles recently, I found myself cracking a joke and laughing.

My wife looked at me and asked, “How can you laugh at a time like this?”

My answer was simple.

“I’m a doctor.”

Our humor can be dark. It has to be. The things we encounter don't always allow us the luxury of being intimidated by fear, uncertainty, or even the gravity of what is happening around us.

We often face death. We also meet people who have survived it, but now have to live with the consequences of what happened or the choices they made. We learn to take these things in stride because, sometimes, if you can't laugh at the absurdity of it all, you might just lose your mind.

Doctors are built differently. Or perhaps more accurately, we are trained differently.

When faced with overwhelming odds, we learn to compartmentalize. We push aside the things that don't need our attention right now and focus on the things we can—and need to—do.

We put our worries into little boxes and shove those boxes somewhere deep inside ourselves.

We'll deal with them later.

Sometimes, there simply isn't a later.

In some fields of medicine, there is no time to grieve. There is no time to process what you have just witnessed or even what is still happening right in front of you. You go into automatic mode.

Diagnose.

Repair.

Anticipate.

Think three or four steps ahead, preparing for consequences that may or may not ever happen.

You keep moving because someone needs you to keep moving.

And so doctors still smile.

We still laugh.

Sometimes because the situation is genuinely funny. Sometimes because the absurdity of it all is overwhelming. And sometimes because laughter is simply the only thing you have left to give yourself in a terrible situation.

You take a breath.

You look at the life you have chosen.

And you laugh.

Not because you don't care.

Not because you don't understand the seriousness of what is happening.

But because sometimes the joke is hidden somewhere in the choices we made, the situations we find ourselves in, and the strange road that brought us here.

And sometimes, after everything we've seen, all you can really do is laugh...

take another breath...

and get back to work.