Unaccompanied Minor (Season 7, Episode 22)

I always said I'd be happier alone.  I'd have my work, my friends, but, someone in your life all the time?  More trouble than it's worth.  Apparently, I got over it. 

There's a reason I said I'd be happy alone.  It wasn't 'cause I thought I'd be happy alone.  It was because I thought if I loved someone, and then it fell apart, I might not make it.  It's easier to be alone, because what if you learn that you need love, and then you don't have it?  What if you like it, and lean on it; what if you shape your life around it, and then, it falls apart.  Can you even survive that kind of pain?  Losing love is like organ damage.  It's like dying.  The only difference is, death ends.  This, it could go on forever.

I Will Survive (Season 7, Episode 21)

We've all heard the saying.  It's one of those things we learn in seventh grade science class - adapt, or die.  Adapting isn't easy, though, you have to fight your competition, fend off their attacks, and sometimes, you have to kill.  You do what you need to do to survive. 

Adapt, or die.  As many times as we've heard it, the lesson doesn't get easier.  Problem is, we're human.  We want more than just to survive.  We want love.  We want success.  We want to be the best that we can be.  So we fight like hell to get those things.  Anything else feels, like death.

White Wedding (Season 7, Episode 20)

Germs. Disease.  Toxins.  Our bodies encounter dangers all the time.  Just beneath the surface.  Hidden.  Whether you realize it or not, your body is constantly protecting itself.  The body knows when it's encountered something that doesn't belong.  The body detects the invader, it releases its white blood cells, and it attacks.

Just when we think we've figured things out, the universe throws us a curve ball.  So we have to improvise.  We find happiness in unexpected places.  We find our way back to the things that matter the most.  The universe is funny that way.  Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong.

It's a Long Way Back (Season 2, Episode 19)

After a trauma, your body is at it's most vulnerable.  Response time is critical, so you're suddenly surrounded by people - doctors, nurses, specialists, technicians.  Surgery is a team sport - everyone pushing for the finish line, putting you back together again.  But surgery is a trauma in and of itself and once it's over, the real healing begins.  We call it recovery.  Recovery is not a team sport.  It's a solitary distance run.  It's long, it's exhausting, and it's lonely as hell.

The length of your recovery is determined by the extent of your injuries.  And it's not always successful.  No matter how hard we work at it, some wounds might never fully heal.  You might have to adjust to a whole new way of living.  Things may have changed too rapidly to ever go back to what they were.  You might not even recognize yourself.  It's like you haven't recovered anything at all.  You're a whole new person, with a whole new life.

Song Beneath the Song (Season 7, Episode 18)

(The Music Episode)

Callie speaking:

The brain is the human body's most mysterious organ.  It learns.  It changes.  It adapts.  It tells us what we see.  What we hear.  It lets us feel love.  I think it holds our soul.  But no matter how much research we do, no one can really say how all of that delicate grey matter inside our skull works.  And when it's hurt, when the human brain is traumatized, well, that's when it gets even more mysterious.

This is How We Do It (Season 7, Episode 17)

Renegades. Rule-breakers. Gangsters with scalpels.  This is the way we like to think of ourselves.  It makes us feel bad-ass.  Sexy.

Problem is, it's not  exactly true.  At heart, we're rule followers.  Sheep.  We don't break protocol - we follow it to a "T".  Because if we don't follow protocol, our patients die, and then we're no longer bad-ass, we're just bad. 

It's every doctor's dilemma.  Do you play it safe and follow protocol? Or take a risk and invent a new one? There can be reward in risk.  There can also be fallout.

Still, you need to buck the system every once in a while.  Big.  And when you get the results you want, there's no better feeling in the world.  But when you don't....

Not Responsible (Season 7, Episode 16)

Everyone figures doctors are the most responsible people they know.  They hold lives in their hands.  They're not flakes.  They don't lose track of important details or make stunningly bad judgment calls, 'cause that would be bad, right?

We are responsible with our patients.  Problem is, we blow it all out at work.  In our own lives, we can't think it through, we don't make a sound choice.  We did that all day at the hospital.  When it comes to ourselves, we've got nothing left.  And is it worth it? Being responsible?  'Cause if you take your vitamins, and pay your taxes, and never cut the line, the universe still gives you people to love, and then lets them slip through your fingers like water.  And then what have you got?  Vitamins, and nothing.

Golden Hour (Season 7, Episode 15)

How much can you actually accomplish in an hour?  Run an errand, maybe? Sit in traffic.  Get an oil change.  When you think about it, an hour isn't very long.  60 minutes.  3600 seconds.  That's it. 

In medicine, though, an hour is often everything.  We call it the golden hour - that magical window of time that can determine whether a patient lives, or dies. 

An hour - one hour - can change everything.  Forever.  An hour can save your life.  An hour can change your mind.  Sometimes an hour is just a gift we give ourselves.  For some, an hour can mean almost nothing.  For others, an hour makes all the difference in the world.  But in the end, it's still just an hour.  One of many, many more to come.  60 minutes.  3600 seconds.  That's it. And it starts all over again. And who knows what the next hour might hold?

P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) (Season 7, Episode 14)

One of the hardest lessons as a doctor is learning to prioritize.  We're trained to do all we can to save life and limb, but, if cutting off a limb means saving a life, we learn to do it.  Without hesitation.  It's not an easy lesson to learn, and it always comes down to one question, "What are the stakes?"  What do we stand to gain or lose?  At the end of the day, we're just gamblers, trying not to bet the farm.

Surgery is a high stakes game.  But, no matter how high the stakes, sooner or later you're just going to have to go with your gut.  And maybe, just maybe, that'll take you right where you were meant to be in the first place.

Don't Deceive Me (Please Don't Go) (Season 7, Episode 13)

Doctors practice deception all the time.  We give vague answers to hard questions.  We don't talk about post-op pain.  We say "you'll experience some discomfort."  If you didn't die, we tell you the surgery went well.  But the placebo has to be the doctor's greatest deception.  Half of our patients we tell the truth.  The other half - we pray the placebo effect's real, and we tell ourselves that they'll feel better anyhow, believing help's on the way, when in fact, we're leaving them to die.

Doctors practice deception every day.  On our patients.  On their families.  But the worst deception we practice is on ourselves.  Which is why sometimes it takes us a while to realize that the truth has been in front of us the whole time.

Start Me Up (Season 7, Episode 12)

People are really romantic about the beginnings of things.  Fresh start.  Clean slate.  A world of possibility.  But, no matter what new adventure you're embarking on, you're still you.  You bring you into every new beginning in your life, so how different can it possibly be? 

It's all anybody wants, right?  Clean slate.  A new beginning.  Like that's going to be any easier.  Ask the guy pushing the boulder up the hill.  Nothing's easy about starting over. 

Disarm (Season 7, Episode 11)

To a degree, medicine is a science, but I would argue that it's also an art.  The doctor's who see medicine as science only?  You don't want them by your side when your bleeding won't stop, or when your child is screaming in pain.  The clinicians go by the book.  The artists follow their guts.  The artists feel your pain, and they go to extremes to make it stop.  Extreme measures.  That's where science ends, and art begins. 

Surgery is extreme.  We cut into your body, take out pieces, put what's left, back together. 

Good thing life doesn't come with a scalpel, because if it did, when things started to hurt, we would just cut and cut and cut.  The thing is, what we take away with a scalpel, we can't ever get back.  So... like I said... good thing.

Adrift and at Peace (Season 7, Episode 10)

The first twenty-four hours after surgery are critical.  Every breath you take, every fluid you make is meticulously reported and analyzed.  Celebrated or mourned.  But what about the next 24 hours?  What happens when that first day turns to two, and weeks turn into months?  What happens when the immediate danger has passed, when the machines are disconnected, and the teams of doctors and nurses are gone?  Surgery is when you get saved, but post-op, after surgery, is when you heal.  But, what if you don't?

The goal of any surgery is total recovery.  To come out better than you were before.  Some patients heal quickly and feel immediate relief.  For others, the healing happens gradually, and it's not until months, or even years later that you realize you don't hurt anymore.  So, the challenge after any surgery is to be patient.  But if you can make it through the first weeks and months - if you believe that healing is possible - than you can get your life back.  But that's a big if.

Slow Night, So Long (Season 7, Episode 9)

We doctors take pride in the fact that we can basically sleep standing up.  Anytime.  Anywhere.  But, it's a false pride, because the truth is, after about twenty hours hours without sleep, we might as well just come to work drunk, doctor, or not.  So, it's no wonder that fatal medical errors increase at night, when we doctors are, proudly, sleeping on our feet.  Recently, our communal pride has been shattered, and our egos have been wounded by new laws that require that we sleep all day before we work all night.  We're not happy about it, but, as someone who may one day need medical care, you really should be. 

Under the cover of darkness, people do things they'd never do under the harsh glare of day.  Decisions feel wiser.  People feel older.  But when the sun rises, you have to take responsibility for what you did in the dark, and face yourself under the cold, harsh light of day.

Something's Gotta Give (Season 7, Episode 8)

The human body is a highly pressurized system.  The blood pressure measures the force of blood pulsating through the arteries.  It's important to keep this pressure regulated.  Low or inadequate pressure can cause weakness or failure.  It's when the pressure gets too high that problems really occur.  If the pressure continues to increase, a closer examination is called for because it's the best indicator that something is going terribly wrong. 

Every pressurized system needs a relief valve.  There has to be a way to reduce the stress, the tension, before it becomes too much to bear.  There has to be a way to find relief, because if the pressure doesn't find a way out, it'll make one.  It will explode.  It's the pressure we put on ourselves that's the hardest to bear.  The pressure to be better than we are.  The pressure to be better than we think we can be.  It never, ever lets up.  It just builds and builds and builds.

That's Me Trying (Season 7, Episode 7)

Question: When was the last time a complete stranger took off her clothes in front of you, pointed to a big purple splotch on her back, and asked, "What the hell is this thing?"  If you're a normal person, the answer is, hopefully, never.  If you're a doctor, the answer is probably, "about five minutes ago."  People expect doctors to have all of the answers.  The truth is, we love to think that we have all of the answers too.  Basically, doctors are know-it-alls, until something comes along that reminds us we're not.

We're all looking for answers.  In medicine.  In life.  In everything.  Sometimes, the answers we're looking for have been hiding just below the surface.  Other times, we find answers when we didn't even realize we were asking the question.  Sometimes, the answers can catch us completely by surprise.  And sometimes, even when we find the answer we've been looking for, we're still left with a whole hell of a lot of questions.

These Arms of Mine (Season 7, Episode 6)

This was the "documentary" style episode, and there was no monologue for this episode.

Almost Grown (Season 7, Episode 5)

They train doctors.  Slowly.  They watch us practice on frogs and pigs and dead people and then live people.  They grill us relentlessly.  They raise us, like children.  And eventually, they take a cold hard boot, and they kick us out of the nest. 

We all want to grow up.  We're desperate to get there.  Grab all the opportunities we can to live.  We're so busy trying to get out of that nest, we don't think about the fact that it's going to be cold out there.  Really freakin' cold.  Because growing up sometimes means leaving people behind.  And by the time we stand on our own two feet, we're standing there alone.

Can't Fight Biology (Season 7, Episode 4)

Biology determines much of the way we live.  From the moment we're born, we know how to breathe and eat.  As we grow older, new instincts kick in.  We become territorial.  We learn to compete.  We seek shelter.  Most important of all, we reproduce.  Sometimes biology can turn on us, though.  Yeah.  Biology sucks sometimes.

Biology says that we are who we are from birth.  That our DNA is set in stone.  Unchangeable.  Our DNA doesn't account for all of us, though.  We're human.  Life changes us.  We develop new traits.  Become less territorial.  We stop competing.  We learn from our mistakes.  We face our greatest fears.  For better or worse, we find ways to become more than our biology.  The risk, of course, is that we can change too much, to the point that we don't recognize ourselves.  Finding our way back can be difficult.  There's no compass.  No map.  We just have to close our eyes, take a step, and hope to God we'll get there.

Superfreak (Season 7, Episode 3)

Most surgeons grew up being freaks.  While other kids played outside, we holed up in our rooms.  Memorizing the periodic table.  Huddling for hours over our junior microscopes.  Dissecting our first frogs.  Imagine how surprised and relieved we were when we grew up and found out there were others out there just as freaky as we were.  Same microscopes.  Same dead frogs.  Same inexplicable urge to take human beings apart.

Nobody chooses to be a freak.  Most people don't even realize they're a freak until it's way too late to change it.  But no matter how much of a freak you end up being, chances are there's still someone out there for you.  Unless, of course, they've already moved on.  Because when it comes to love, even freaks can't wait forever.