A staff lost her 34 year old husband this weekend. They were married for less than a year when he was diagnosed with lymphoma, after a bone marrow transplant and then rejection, he died - before he could be evaluated for a lung transplant, and before she was going to quit her job and move with him to Toronto.
A week before Christmas, the mother of a 2 year old girl brings her into the emergency department for feeling unwell, only to be told that she has leukemia and they likely will spend Christmas at the hospital.
A teenage girl comes in for her chemotherapy, which won't lead to a cure, but perhaps some quality of life before she dies.
Parents in the ICU must decide if their baby should undergo more surgery and more tests and more needles or call it quits.
Close friends face loss or the potential of loss, or the loss of a potential.
We saw a video the other day during our resident seminar about a girl who was dying. When asked if she ever thought about how she wanted to die, she said that she'd like to die in the hospice, where nurses and doctors could help her feel comfortable, and where she could be surrounded by her family and friends. After a moment, she says she can think of another way that she's like to die...and that was to be sitting on her porch in a rocking chair, with an Afgan blanket around her, and her husband holding her hand.
I don't know what it's like to lose a parent, a child, or a friend to illness. And sometimes, I think that makes me feel unqualified to empathize, because no matter how much I try to put myself in their shoes, well....I'm not. They are unwell, I am healthy. And at the end of the day, I get to go home, have supper with my husband, take a shower and surf online for nice smelling lotion, put on my robe and watch TV; while they live it every moment.
I never lie and say "I can imagine how hard it must be" because I can't. I can feel sorry, I can feel my heart ache, I can be angry at the injustice, I can shed a tear, say a prayer, be secretly thankful that it wasn't me. But I can care, I can listen, I can grieve with them, and go before God on their behalf...and I do.
2 comments:
A 63 year old man, had neck pain for a few days, then came in because he couldn't move from neck down, found to have an epidural abscess and may be a quadriplegic...
Sad, right? It's almost too painful to imagine... All we can do is be the best doctor to them at the moment...and pray for them...
True Mona. I was thinking about the doc's hushand too as I heard this week, which led to my post. You're right, absolutely right. Very sad.
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