Unsung Heroes

We stood in a line and palpated his thyroid. We then reformed the line and asked him to follow our fingers with his eyes. One last time we formed a line and listened to his irregular heartbeat. As we left his room, we each shook his hand and thanked him. I was the last to exit, and as I walked out, I heard him let out a long sigh. I turned around and saw him sink into his bed.

The phone rings. “Can I see a doctor?”

“We’re fully booked three months out, I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing?”

Anger builds.

Being a caregiver is one of the noblest and most challenging roles a person can take on. It requires compassion, patience, dedication and sacrifice. As a medical doctor, I have observed how caregivers make a huge difference in the lives of my patients, and I always try to take time to listen to their struggle.

Dear Veterinary Technician,

It’s been thirty years, but I remember how softly you entered the exam room, holding Marmaduke’s leash. I remember your porcelain skin and beautiful long hair framing your young face. I dabbed my tears with a Kleenex. I didn’t want Marmaduke to think I was upset with her. She’d endured surgery and four months of chemo, but now it wasn’t working. I’d viewed the X-ray of her lungs dotted with metastatic tumors. Hope had turned to cold fear and despair.

On my first day at nursing college, everything was a blur. When I came home, my sister asked if I knew the name of the security guard at the college gate. I looked at her like she had two heads! Why on earth would I need that information?

“Trust me!” she said. “It will come handy!”

I rolled my eyes and sighed. But I knew my sister, and she always had a method to her madness.

Times were uncertain. It was World War II, and Dad was overseas, serving in the U.S Navy. Mom and I lived with my Polish grandparents, but she kept their apartment so we would have a place of our own when Dad returned. She worked long hours in a local laundry to make that dream come true.

Giving ninety days’ notice to leave a job as a family physician at a community health center provided ample opportunity for me to say goodbye to patients. I listened carefully at farewell visits. A Black patient minced no words as she proclaimed to me, a White woman, “I will tell you what I like most about you. You listen and you don’t act like you know more about my body just because you’re a doctor.” Her words made a profound impact on me.

I recently had open heart surgery. A highly skilled surgeon replaced my leaky mitral valve, and I’ll be forever indebted to him.

But my surgeon was only one of member of the team that got me through a challenging, frightening, painful experience. Behind him were a legion of unsung heroes, without whom I never could’ve endured. Uppermost in my mind are the nursing assistants.

She was twenty-three years old and had four children. She lived in a small town, and her husband used their one vehicle to get to work each day. She had loads of diapers to wash and put through the wringer, then hang on the line to dry. She had meals to make, a lawn to mow, a garden to tend, a house to clean, and a husband who expected meat and potatoes for supper every day.

Decades ago, I worked with hospitalized children and their families as a child life specialist on the pediatric unit of a local hospital. We cared for kids from birth through age 18.

While some elderly people, either by choice or illness, have “retired” from community activities, a vast number of older individuals fuel the world through volunteering, continuing education, mentoring and role modeling. We deliver Meals on Wheels, stock food banks and care for neighbors who cannot fend for themselves. Many of us usher at local theatres, reminding patrons that theatre is an essential part of life, nourishing the soul and mind.  

Dear Pulse readers,

During my first year of medical school, I came down with type 1 diabetes–the kind that requires insulin, the kind they used to call “juvenile onset,” even though I was thirty years old.

The symptoms were classic–raging thirst and a constant need to pee–but as a first-year student I hadn’t learned that yet, and as a previously healthy adult I couldn’t believe that my body would be so underhanded as to betray me.