The Cost of Your Compassion

I was covering an extra shift for a colleague in the ER when I saw his chart.

According to the electronic records, he had been admitted to the emergency room nearly a hundred times over the past year for acute cat dander allergies. Thirty-eight of those visits had ended with him in the respiratory ICU.

"Don't you know you have severe, life-threatening asthma?" I asked, keeping my voice low, almost a whisper. "Sustained exposure to cat dander is going to kill you."

He didn't recognize me behind my surgical mask. Between a grueling twelve-hour shift and training the incoming residents the…