When I was a sophomore in high school, I went with the band director’s son and wife to a weekend band clinic a couple of hours away from my South Carolina home. This was the 1950s, when bench seats in cars were common, so we all rode in the front seat. On the way home, Mrs. Mills suggested we stop in a town forty minutes from home to attend church—not an unexpected suggestion in that Bible Belt place and time.
As my parents aged, accidents became an integral part of their lives—and mine, as their caregiver. These accidents ranged from falling to losing bladder and bowel control. Each time something happened beyond my parents’ control, they lost a part of themselves—of their sense of independence and adulthood. Perhaps Jacques said it best in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night with the final lines of his “All the world’s a stage” soliloquy: “Last scene of all,/That ends this strange eventful history,/Is second childishness and mere oblivion.”
Dear Pulse readers,
When I was a college sophomore, my mother called me in tears to tell me that one of my Canadian cousins had died in a car accident. A bright, vivacious university student, Orianne had been dozing in the back seat of a Volkswagen beetle driven by a friend, who’d apparently lost control of the car. It swerved off the road and rolled over, killing her.
No one else in the car was injured.
“How do you do it?” my dear friend asks me. A marriage and family therapist, she finds it hard to hear about the physical ailments of my senior patients—all of them over sixty-five, all homebound due to mobility impairment from a serious illness or injury. “I could never do it,” she says. “With my patients, I help them create new beginnings. For yours, there are none.”
John was sitting up in bed as I approached his room. “Come on in, Sister. Father has just left.”
Somewhat hesitant, I entered the room aware that his wife and daughter were in tears. I asked John if there was anything I could do for him. “Sing for me” he replied, and I began singing the words to YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE. John immediately bellowed out the song, and his wife and daughter joined in. Through their tears they gave me the courage to enjoy a heartwarming visit with John.
When Omicron hit, we were planning my father’s eighty-fifth birthday celebration. We were vaccinated and boosted, so it wasn’t Dad we were worried about. It was my brother Jeff who needed extra consideration.
Few individuals are called upon to be heroes like Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy who, in choosing to stay and fight a massive, invading army, faces a real possibility of imprisonment and death. This is true courage.
Within the medical profession, there are also wars to be fought that require true courage. One thinks of the late Dr. Paul Farmer, who worked tirelessly throughout his career to bring high-quality health care to Haiti, Rwanda, and other resource-poor nations around the world.
My senior year in college, I took a course called Women and Radicalism. It was an exciting class. We studied radical movements on the left and right, with a focus on women’s participation. The course featured a weekend retreat with women activists. For two days, women took the stage to describe their causes and advocacy roles. I attended many sessions, in awe of these phenomenal women who were making a difference in the world. I noted that most of them had been thrust into their cause by a personal adverse event, such as gun violence or an environmental catastrophe.
Rosie is in the hospital, alone. She is alone because she has survived the deaths of a child, two husbands, and five siblings. “They left me behind,” she laments. “All I have are flimsy memories and yellowed obituaries.” She plucks several photos from a bedside table and stares at them, as if in pilgrimage.
Sara looked me up and down when I walked into the exam room. Her diabetes and hypertension were uncontrolled, and her PCP had asked me to counsel her.
I introduced myself as an RN and asked Sara to tell me about herself. She launched into her medical history, but I stopped her. “Tell me about Sara,” I said, “and what she likes.”
She looked startled. “Well, I’m a proud grandmother of a four-year-old,” she said. “Her name is Amy.”
In the early 1980s, I considered everyone at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia to be my friend. As a volunteer and a vestry member at the nearby Episcopal church, I would often arrive at the ER with a homeless person who had come to the church for help after being badly injured. I was so impressed with how the doctors and nurses treated these patients that I developed a real affinity for the hospital.
I remember the curtains like a mantle enfolding us, protecting us from the darkness of the night. Only a dim light glowed in the room. The thrum of the oxygen machine—dedoov … dedoov … dedoov—made it hard to sit comfortably in my recliner.
I watched his face, his hands, his upper body slowly going up and down in their own rhythm. I recalled how privileged I’d felt when his relatives asked me to watch over him in his last stage of life.
