In a 2006 episode of Scrubs (which is tied for the highest-rated episode of the series), Dr. Cox makes a decision that appears to save the day, and then backfires horribly.

Three patients need new organs, and two of them will die within a few hours if they don’t get transplants. Dr. Cox is doing everything he can to find the organs he needs, and he finally gets them when another patient dies of an apparent drug overdose. But after the transplants are made, he learns that the donor actually died of rabies. This means that all three patients are now infected, and the race is on to save them.

Then this happened: (warning – really sad!)

(This episode was based on the true story of three American patients who died in 2004 after receiving transplants from a donor with rabies. The donor died of a brain hemorrhage after smoking crack cocaine, so that was assumed to be the cause of death. Only later was he found to have rabies, which would produce similar symptoms.)

How would you feel if you made the call that caused someone to die? Would you completely shut down, turn to destructive behavior, and let it take over your life? Or would you be able to effectively work through the crisis in the healthiest way possible?

Mary Jaksch explains how to successfully emerge from the darkest moments in her ebook From Tragedy to Triumph: Winning Through a Life Crisis. Unfortunately, bad things can happen when we least expect them. If you haven’t yet, be sure to check out my review of her ebook (the previous link) and see if you think it would be helpful to you, now or in the future.

As for Dr. Cox, let’s hear your thoughts. Did he make the right call by ordering the transplants without waiting for an autopsy? Should he have first ordered transplants for the two patients who were about to die, but waited on the third one? If he made the wrong call, is it forgivable? The third patient was his friend. Does this make a difference, or is a life a life? When deciding whether to quit practicing medicine, is it more important to consider his past mistake or the good he could do in the future?