Gone but not forgotten

Apologies to my regular reader(s) for my recent lack of posting. I've been suffering from bloggers' block. If I was more organised I'd have a small stash of pre-written and uploaded drafts so all I had to do was log in and hit the 'publish' button and nobody would know the difference.

What are the causes of bloggers' block? Well in my case it's partly down to a bout of illness compounded by some bad news.

During the week I heard that an old colleague who I used to work with and chatted to sporadically since, is no longer with us. I wish I'd spoken to him more often.

It's made me think about two things. One is the the effect that the sudden death of a colleague has, creating shockwaves through the hospital. It's something I've observed after the sudden death of senior doctor in my hospital a few years ago and the suicide of a fellow house officer a few years before that. The second thing is that we have to carry on. Death and disease carry on in the hospital and the world and we must carry on too. We have a quick cry into a coffee in the hospital canteen and then get on with the ward round. We all look normal and the patients, and sometimes our other colleagues, can't tell the difference but inside we're weeping.