Organized chaos lies just behind the emergency department doors. Comical, entertaining, bizarre, inspiring, outrageous, heroic, organized chaos. There was an elderly patient that came in with the chief complaint of, “vision loss.” The patient said that she had awoken from her nap and wasn’t able to see. Eventually, her son came in and told the doctor that she has dementia and occasionally forgets that she’s blind at baseline. Emergency medicine attracts people that have the bravery, fortitude, and compassion to endure extraordinary successes followed by extraordinary heart breaks daily. It also requires patience and empathy for the many times when you’re unable to help. Emergency medicine faces inevitable death and still the hope to live. It is an exemplar of medicine being practiced at the intersection of science and humanity.
