She Cut Her Throat

Finding My Humanity

“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
— George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma

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Part One: A Young Doctor’s View 1970s to 1990s

What follows is something I wrote many years ago, as a young front-line doctor. Edited a fair bit, tightened. Some of it is harsh, confronting, and callous, even. From emotional shutdown to a more thoughtful, generous place.

"She’s cut her throat."

This was the message I received while having a cup of coffee in the mess. As I arrived at her side in casualty, so did the rest of the team. I was the gas man. It was my job to look after her airway and breathe for her if she couldn’t.

She had a bulky bandage around her neck, soaked bright red. Blood covered her face, clothes, hair. She was making bubbling noises — she was unconscious. We assumed from blood loss. I put the laryngoscope in her mouth — had a good view of her vocal cords, placed an endotracheal tube, attached the ventilator, turned on the oxygen. But something was wrong. Each time the machine pumped, it showed high resistance. Her colour was not improving.

"Look at the colour of her blood," someone shouted. "She’s not getting oxygenated!"

I already knew. Another shouted, "Will you bloody well do something about it!"

"I know. Hang on a f'ing minute."

"We haven’t got time to mince about, for God’s sake!"

He was flowing along nicely with his lines and his plasma. My end wasn’t going so well.

I checked again. The tube was between the cords, as it should be. But with my stethoscope, I couldn’t hear air moving into her chest. Something was wrong.

"Help me rip these fucking bandages off her neck," I shouted. The layers were stuck together with coagulated blood.

We tore them away. Underneath, to my surprise, I saw the endotracheal tube — poking out through her neck. It had gone in her mouth, through her voice box, and out through a self-inflicted hole in her windpipe.

There was something comical about it.

I pushed a new tube straight through the gash into her trachea, connected it to a bag, pumped it, and her colour started to improve.

But there was still too much resistance. Another problem. Another panic. Eventually, whatever was wrong corrected itself. She stabilised. The surgical and anaesthetic teams took over.

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Weeks later, I asked the surgical registrar, "Whatever happened to that lady who cut her throat?"

"We discharged her to psych. Her notes are a mile thick. Ten suicide attempts, I think. Appalling social history. Two kids in care. An alcoholic husband who beats her regularly. Half the notes are suicide attempts, the other half are fractures and wounds."

I said something like, "Well, no doubt she’ll be back again. What the hell can psych do for someone like that?"

And I remember thinking:

"Maybe she’d be better off dead."

Maybe I even believed that.

Overdoses were a constant feature. It was hard to stay compassionate when it was someone’s fifth attempt. Or when I’d be called out at 3 a.m. for someone who clearly didn’t intend to die, just wanted something else — attention, relief, control?

I became cynical.

I thought:
If they really wanted to do it, they’d succeed.
If you want to die, don’t leave a mess for others to clean up.
This is manipulative. Punishing.

When I was a family doctor, a man blew his brains out not far from where I lived. Blood and brains all over the wall and a face blown out of shape. His daughter arrived as we put him in the ambulance. She demanded to see him. We tried to discourage her. She was relentless. Jim unzipped the body bag. She attacked her dad’s body with gusto — thumping, punching and cursing for many minutes. What mess to leave for others. What a gift for his daughter.

Two kids found their dad hanging in the hallway when they came home early in the morning having stayed the night with friends. Hard not to feel/think, what a bastard. He must have known they would find him hanging as they opened the front door. What a sight — with his bulging eyes, his swollen cyanotic face and lips.

An eighteen-year-old boy hung himself from a backyard oak tree. He and his solo mum had different shelves in the fridge. His mum had asked him not to eat her yoghurt. He had his. He ate hers. She found the carton crushed on the floor. She saw his dangling legs through the kitchen window. Did he think of how she’d find him? Hard not to think this was a punishing "fuck you" to his mum.

As a young doctor I became cynical of the suicide business. I often thought of these people as a nuisance and wondered why the hell they did not make a better job of it. Most attempted suicides, I thought, are sad, destructive, hostile and punishing acts.

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Part Two: Now — What I See Differently

Reading the above I see someone out of their depth. Reacting to powerlessness, an inability to respond to his feelings, to even know what his feelings are. Suicide wasn’t just tragic — it was offensive. It disrupted his day. It made him feel useless. And so he judged and condemned.

I no longer see suicide as a "game," or a nuisance, or even a failure. I see it now as a symptom of something unknown to me, maybe of an unfaceable reality, or a pain so thick and tangled the person can’t see another way out. It’s not about death. It’s about a need to escape.

And when you’re a young, front-line, emotionally immature doctor, involved with a lot of desperate and hopeless situations, delivering bad news — gallows humour helps to blow off steam, and judgement helps to numb the feelings — to point the finger away from oneself.

There’s a story behind every suicide attempt.

Judging someone’s darkness doesn’t bring light.

Compassion doesn’t mean sentimentality — it means staying present, even when it’s messy, even when it’s the fifth attempt.

I wrote this back then:

“So many wounding hurts over the years, maybe many small ones, sort of unnoticed, laughed off, minimised, which over time lead a person into a deep dark hole where they don’t see the light above and just keep digging.”

That still feels true. And I’d add: many don’t even know they’re digging. It’s just the only thing they were ever shown.

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Epilogue — A Letter to the One Who Tried

You don’t know me. I don’t know your name.

But I’ve been the one standing over your body — your neck sliced, your lips blue, your pulse slipping away. I’ve been the one jamming tubes down your throat, swearing under my breath, sweating, frustrated, scared. I’ve been the one thinking terrible thoughts. I’ve been the one who, once, believed you were just wasting my time.

I want to say something now that I didn’t know how to say then.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry that when I looked at you, I saw a problem to fix, not a person who was drowning. I’m sorry I called it “attention-seeking,” when really, it was connection-seeking. I’m sorry I met your pain with guidelines instead of presence. I’m sorry that I measured the seriousness of your suffering by the neatness of your wounds.

I didn’t understand.

I didn’t know that pain could curl so deep into the bones that even breathing feels like a betrayal. I didn’t know that the silence in your home growing up could echo louder than any scream. I didn’t know that the yoghurt in the fridge could be the last thread holding together a fragile sense of fairness, control, identity, something.

You weren’t weak. You were overloaded. You didn’t want to die — you just couldn’t hold the weight anymore. And I — well, I couldn’t hold it either. Not yours. Not mine. So I did what I was trained to do. I shut down. I got the job done.

But years later, your story still lives in me.

You were the woman with blood in her hair and kids in care.
You were the boy who hung from the oak tree.
You were the daughter who opened the body bag and screamed.
You were human.

And I was too. But I had to forget that for a while, just to survive.

If I met you now, I’d sit beside you quietly, not needing to fix anything. I’d say, "I can’t take the pain away, but I can help you carry it for a bit." I’d tell you that your pain makes sense. That you are not alone in it. That you are not beyond repair. That the way you feel now isn’t how it will always feel. That you matter. That you don’t have to disappear to be heard.

And if you didn’t believe me, that would be okay.
I’d believe it for you, until you could.

If you are out there, reading this — hurting, hopeless, hanging by threads — I see you now.

And I care.

Not because I’m a doctor.
Not because it’s my job.
Because I’m human.
And so are you.

Well that was a bit much for me - what about you.