waiting room

Its a hospital. But its also a waiting room and airport of sorts. People are going places.

Tonight I took out a chest tube (my first time). The old man’s skin hung off his limbs in giant folds, he was wasting away. He told me he was from Western NC , I explained that i too was from the beautiful blue ridge mountains. I made his bandage in the shape of a star (as my favroite surgical attending faitfully taught me) and we both commented on how easy it to see the stars from the tops of our beloved mountains. He looked me straight in the eye at the end of the procedure and said can I go home tomorrow?  His gaze held mine…I’m dying he said and I dont want to die here, I want to see the stars.

She was younger than my mom, she had two kids a teenager and a preschooler, their picture was taped to her hospital bed, its the last thing she sees when she sleeps and the first thing she sees when wakes up. The day I met her it was her 20th wedding anniversary.  I told her congratulations and we offered to bring her a cake. She refused and said that they were going to celebrate when they left the hospital. Her cancer had eaten her spine, into her ribs, she had been ravaged by infection leaving her respiratory muscles atrophied. Each breath required effort.  We did everything we could but it was like holding on to a giant handful of jello, every time we seemed to get a grip on it, it slid from our hands. She had not seen her kids in two months, she had not wanted them to see her like this. I am going to go home from here, I am, she said.  She died yesterday morning.

He looks like Santa Claus. He is wearing Santa PJs that his grandchildren gave him. Out of his hospital gown is a small hose connected to a 1 L bag of bloody fluid flowing from the Man’s pleural cavity. We talk for a while about life, growing up in rural NC, falling in love, having kids, having grandkids. He tells me about his faith, I tell him about mine. He tells me his hope, his peace.  But there is so mcuh to tell, so many stories  to be told, so much to be remermbed and savored about life. I have to go to afternoon rounds, I tell him sad to end our conversation. He is going home in a few mintues. He says good bye and gives me a piercing glance, remmber me, tell my stories when i go home.

All of our protocols, medicines and procedures are familiar to us, it is a language we speak. But what do we do when we lose? We help our patients  live, but how do we help them die? Its more than just a DNR or full code.   I think I am supposed to be memorizing luekemias classifications and chemo protocols.  But what I can’t get past in the waiting, the dying and then living on.   How do we minister to the dying? What is healing to the dying? What is peace? What is faith?

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

Mother Teresa