heartless doctor?

ever since the resus episode, been wondering if i've become too heartless.
funny, because some time ago, i wouldn't even have thought about it.
i guess this reflective mood is coming about because this resus has come after a long gap.
time was, in medicine wards, when we used to be resuscitating day in and day out.
i even started my internship with a resus.
and we all know the success rate for resus is quite low, more so considering most of the patients i crossed by were extremely ill to begin with, when a sudden new problem hits them. as the expression goes around here "cooked and booked cases".
is that crude?
i guess it is.
but tell me, how does one survive in an atmosphere where people die every day?
one does not have the time to sit and reflect and let the emotions out. one has to get to the next patient and do whatever they need, whether it is a blood test, any other investigation, or a first dose of antibiotic, etc. if one stops to reflect on every death, the work will never get done.
i remember days when people used to arrest in rapid succession. what do you do? just try and resuscitate as fast as you can. you can't stop to think.
what else does one do to survive in such a morbid environment?
one of the most important things, i think, was humour.
we managed to find humour even in such surroundings because if you didn't laugh at something, the whole place would soon get to you, you would not be able to function.
we could laugh at the absolute nonsense someone wrote on a chart because they were so sleepy they could not keep their eyelids apart or their head up;
we could laugh at the outrageous diagnosis or treatment suggestions of colleagues;
we could laugh when someone fell asleep on their h.o.d's shoulder while the h.o.d. was operating and they were retracting
we could laugh at the terribly explicit description the patient gave of their stools
we could mimic a patient's accent
we could laugh at all this and so much more
we could and we did
because it was the only way to keep going.