Meredith (voice-over): "In sickness and in health", they say. That sounds so final, so binding. But it just means you have to be there. You have to really want to be there for whatever is coming. And we don't know - it could be all pan out the way we want, the way it's supposed to be or it could be so much worse.
S15 E20The Whole Package
S15 E21Good Shepherd
Meredith (voice-over): Almost all human cells reproduce on a cycle. Up to 10% of your heart is replaced each year. Red blood cells are replaced every four months. Skin cells - every two weeks. But neurons, the cells that make up the brain and spinal cord, don't regenerate.
Meredith (voice-over): It turns out that, under the right conditions, neurons can recover. If they can break from normal operations, and focus on healing, they have a chance at regrowth. It's human nature to want to fix what's broken. We may not be able to replicate exactly what we lost, but in its place will grow something new. It's a long process but it happens slowly, but surely, until we have what we need.
S15 E22Head Over High Heels
Meredith (voice over):
S15 E23What I Did For Love
Meredith (voice over): Here's a partial list of chemicals that our bodies produce when we're falling in love. P.E.A. is a natural form of amphetamine. It puts us on high alert. Pheromones, produced from DHEA, create an inexplicable sense of well-being and comfort. Oxytocin has been called "the cuddle hormone", and it stimulates the secretin of dopamine, estrogen, and LHRH. This cascade of feel-good hormones and neurotransmitters is also generally accompanied by poor judgment. No wonder they call it "crazy in love".
Meredith (voice over): When we're in love, the prefrontal cortex, where we make most of our good, rational decisions, goes into sleep mode. And the amygdala, which activates our threat response defenses, calls in sick, which leaves us pretty vulnerable to take more risk. And left alone without our normal neurological protections, we might find ourselves in dangerous and unexpected places we normally wouldn't dream of going.
S15 E24Drawn to the Blood
Meredith (voice over): When a patient is dying on the table, the surgeon has to keep going, no matter what. When we have to pee, we hold it. When we're heartbroken, we ignore it. When we're having a miscarriage and our husband just has been shoot, well, you remember. The hope that we can fix this patient is what keeps us going through the worst moments of our lives.
Meredith (voice over): There will be no shortage of times when you feel like giving up. But you can't let that fear or desperation stop you even when you feel trapped, even when it feels like there is no end in sight, even when things are moving faster than you can comprehend, even when every part of you is certain that all is lost.
S15 E25Jump Into The Fog
Meredith (voice over): ...fear, unbearable pain, cruel injustice. As surgeons, we are faced with it every day - impossible diagnosis, family tragedy, looming mortality. We face yours while we face our own. And some days, in the thick of it, in the worst of it, we feel just as lost as you do.
Meredith (voice over): When there is no clear path all we can do is put one foot in front of the other. All we can do is the next right thing. And then the next. In the darkness, in the fog, all we can do is feel our way through. And try to trust that somehow we will come out on the other side.
S16 E13Save the Last Dance for Me
[voice over] 'I needed more time'. I can't tell you how often I've heard surgeons say this after losing a patient. We think in time, we talk in time Doses per day. Life expectancy. Take two and call me in the morning. And what is a heartbeat if not a ticking clock? A clock that's always counting down.
[voice over] Our brains imagine futures we'll never see. We're struggling to overcome a simple, inescapable truth everything ends. But for every clock that counts down, another restarts. Time goes on, and when one thing ends, something new always begins.
S16 E14A Diagnosis
[voice over] We give children stickers and lollipops after they visit the doctor. We congratulate them for putting on a brave face. "Here's some candy, kid. Try to smile". We do it to adults, too. It's considered impolite to discuss your cancer diagnosis at a dinner party. You're supposed to smile, make small talk, suck on the invisible lollipop. Because for some reason, someone decided a long time ago that naming pain is impolite that hiding it and hiding from it makes more sense. It doesn't. It's a lie, a lie that both comforts and destroys us.
S16 E15Snowblind
[voice over] When I was a kid, I would wake up every morning in the winter and immediately open the curtains to see if it was snowing. Where are you, where are you. And it usually was. It was Boston. Everyone loves a snow day. Except for one person. My mother. She always said the same thing 'Meredith, surgeons don't get snow days'. She was right. We don't.
[voice over] Right after a storm, I would run outside. Whether it was the air or the fresh blanket of snow it always felt magical. Or new. But as beautiful as it is, the snow starts to melt. And you're suddenly standing in dirty slush frozen and unable to feel anything at all. But after enough time, even that disappears. The ground thaws, the days get longer, and though you could never imagine it, you start to feel again. It surprises me every time.
These quotes come from Wikiquote's Grey's Anatomy pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.