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Latest Voices
The Grim Loneliness of Being Left Behind
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.
One More
He sits on a stool in his office, scrolling quickly through hundreds of images, slowing briefly to scrutinize one. Those of us walking by and looking over his shoulder are awed: His practiced eye knows exactly what to look for after more than 30 years doing this.
No watch discloses how many hours he’s been reading mammography images—his unconscious goal being to avoid missing even one anomaly before he moves on to the next image. His coffee cup sits empty by his elbow, next to his long-forgotten breakfast sandwich.
It’s Okay to Fall or Fail
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.”
The First Scar
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.
Symphony of Silence
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.
Finding Strength in Caring
Harper Lee taught me so much in To Kill a Mockingbird, including the definition of real courage: “It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.” Through caregiving, I found that I am a woman of such courage.
March More Voices: Courage
Bystander
I stare straight ahead at the computer screen, trying to blend in with the other medical tools in the room: IV drips, ventilator, feeding pump, chest tube canisters, nurse. I listen to my patient’s mother read to him.
She’s reading from a book my mother read to me many times. Listening to the story sends me back to my childhood. I’m cuddled up in my mom’s arms, in my pink flannel pajamas, in my parents’ warm, familiar bed.
Succumbed
It started with a raging sore throat in the middle of the night. I rarely wake once I fall asleep, but on that particular night, I opened my eyes at 1:00 a.m. and it hurt badly to swallow my own saliva. I rolled over, took a dose of ibuprofen with water, and returned to sleep.
