Grey's Anatomy Season 15 quotes

Meredith (voice-over): Too often, trauma gets dismissed as "just in our head". But the pain is real. We feel it in our muscles, our cells, our hearts, our heads. And while there is no magic fix, no pill to make it disappear, we can ask for help. And we can tell our truth whenever we are ready.

Meredith (voice-over): If the option, we prep our surgery for days - we study, we practice, we run through it over and over again in our minds. Taking on a patient's case is not unlike a marriage. We get to know you inside and out. You trust us with your lives and we promise to protect and care for you. In sickness and health. For better or worse.

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.

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.

Meredith (voice over):

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.

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.

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.