She is a collector: stamps, coins, wine glasses of various shades and shapes, Donald Duck memorabilia. These are her childhood treasures rediscovered from boxes in the attic. Her mother kept them all, not knowing they would serve a purpose someday. On the nightstand is a recent photograph of this radiant woman with chestnut curls.
The person before me now is an empty vessel and nothing more; her limbs limp, her breaths shallow, her eyes closed, her age: fifty-four. The dressings need to be changed around-the-clock to slow the march of decay. The wound tunnels deep, exposing her sacrum as the soaked gauze is removed. Her body is still. Not yet at peace but near the point of defeat.
It sounded like a simple question. Do I still have cancer, or not?
The surgeon got clear margins, and cancer wasn’t in the lymph nodes. But my oncologists strongly recommended chemotherapy in case microscopic cancer cells remained, undetectable by any test.
She looked at me with desperation in her eyes. “I just don’t know,” she said.
“What’s wrong? What don’t you know?” I asked. With tears in her eyes and increased urgency in her voice, M insisted, “I just don’t know…I don’t know. I don’t know!” Hands turning white from gripping the armrests of her wheelchair, she slumped over, shut her eyes and shook her head in honest confusion and fear.
My Dad is eighty-nine years old and has a glioblastoma, the same as former Sen. John McCain. He’s doing well despite his condition, and my siblings and I are surrounding him with support. Someone lives with him full-time, and we have a weekly check-in meeting so we’re all apprised of his current condition and contributing to his health. Based in our home town, my brother and sister are his primary care team; I live two-and-a-half hours away.
In February I traveled there to work from his home for a week. First thing Monday, I took him to a progress appointment with his neurology team. Coming in from the outside, I had almost no current knowledge of his condition or medications. Because of that, I was unprepared when the staff person at reception handed me a sheaf of paper on a clipboard to fill out by hand. I asked her whether it was necessary since my Dad’s entire medical record is with this one large health system; she confirmed that it was.
But the profound repercussion of four biopsies was the not knowing: waiting a week for the test results to come back.
Not knowing is an uncomfortable state for health professional and patient alike. And it’s striking how often, despite my profession’s reverence for knowledge and certainty, I’m unsure–or simply don’t have the answers.
After a long night, the frigid morning air slapped me awake as I walked out of the hospital from just attending a delivery. Once home, I decided I had enough energy to do a “high intensity” workout and signed myself up to go in an hour.
I made myself a strong cup of coffee and changed into my gym clothes, pretending I was just starting a new day. Back into the cold with the coffee lingering on my breath, I headed out again.
She appeared suddenly in the doorway and hissed, “You’re very rude!”
With her words echoing around the darkened room, the evening nurse stomped off the ward as I went back to assessing my patient.
It was 1966. As a third-year nursing student assigned to the night shift, I shared responsibility for a twenty-bed unit with a nurse’s aide. The evening nurse and I had just finished the two time-honored traditions that occurred with the change of shifts: patient report and counting narcotics.
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