I just love this season of Grey’s Anatomy! While the plots are still a bit far fetched, I’m willing to “suspend my disbelief” in order to enjoy the clean, crisp writing and the pools of reflection.
During last Thursday’s episode, a tragically disfigured man comes in for a face transplant. The interns refer to him crudely as “blow hole” due to his gaping nasal passage. He has no family or friends to support him except for a group from an online chat room of orchid lovers. He’d taken on the identity of a dark, odd looking variety of orchid and posted a photo of that species instead of his own picture. He’d invited his friends to come to the hospital to see him after his facial graft. His friends wanted him to understand that they accepted him no matter what so they arrived before the procedure. He frantically shooes them away, afraid that they would laugh at him or grimace at his disfigurement.
Izzie Stevens, who has recently discovered that she’s in stage 4 skin cancer which has metastasized to her brain, watches as another doctor comforts the man and helps him realize that he needs the support his friends are offering. Izzie has been pushing her friends away and putting Cristina Yang in a very awkward position by telling her about her problem but forbidding her to tell the rest of their friends and blowing off an oncology appointment that Yang set up for her.
Meanwhile, Dr. Shepherd has retreated to his trailer in the woods, refusing to come back to the hospital to work. He’s heartbroken that he’s botched a simple procedure and killed a pregnant woman who should have lived. He can’t deal with the memory of the look on her husband’s face when he told him she was gone. Dr. Bailey keeps sending emissaries to the woods after Dr. Shepherd and they fall into his drunk pity party with him. Until the chief arrives and gives them all a stern reminder that they save lives too.
Yang can’t focus on a solo surgery until she tells Izzie’s friends, boss and boyfriend about her condition. She does so in one fell swoop in the operating room. Then she and Izzie have a heart to heart where Yang says that she knows Izzie came to her for help and that she needs to fight. Izzie thanks her and there’s a tear jerker scene where all the doctors gather round taking her vitals and such as she makes the transition from being the doctor by the bedside to being the patient in the hospital gown.
Meredith shows up at Shepherd’s trailer holding Izzie’s MRI results. He asks if she would still love him if he weren’t a doctor any more. She matter of factly tells him no, she couldn’t respect someone who would walk away from the unique life-saving ability he has. The episode ends with Dr. Shepherd sadly reviewing Izzie’s MRI film.
I just love how this show juxtaposes emotions. This episode demonstrates how we are afraid to die and how we are also afraid to live life to it’s fullest. We are scared to open up to those around us, afraid to use our god-given abilities to operate to our fullest potential for fear of failure. Most of us don’t have the power and responsibility that a brain surgeon does but even in every day life we so often “play it safe” and stay quiet instead of volunteering to head up a committee, lead a project at work or play a new game with our kids. We should take chances, be vulnerable. Life can be short. Brain tumors do happen. Live life right now. It’s not a dress rehearsal! Go Izzie!!!!
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