December 22, 2004

• 
  

  Watching my boss, with one of the nurses, I noticed they had that same depth in the eyes, the kind of eyes that have seen a lot of suffering and taken it home.  These are kind, compassionate girls, old beyond their years.

  
  

  I sit and wait while she reads the chart.  We are on the fifth floor, meaning the patients are metastatic.  Normally I visit patients, by myself, on the third floor.  They are usually just there overnight, after a lumpectomy or mastectomy.  The woman I saw today had her husband with her, because she was ready to go home.  It’s rarely a good time to talk when the husband is there.  She was one of those people who will go home and pretend it never happened. With those patients you have about three minutes to make an impact.

  
  

  But back to the patient up on 5.  We came in and she was sitting up in bed eating lunch.  Her back was to us so I took the chair and my boss sat on the window ledge, directly in front of her.  The patient was black, 74, and on oxygen.  She disagreed with her Dr’s diagnosis.  She was sure the cancer in her lung had nothing to do with the breast cancer.  And I could see,  when she said, “a woman knows her own body,” she was in touch with hers.  She was gesturing with the hand, still holding the IV, paying no mind to it.  She had this air about her that was impenetrable.  You know, like she would dismiss information she didn’t want to hear.  She would need to start chemo soon and my boss was trying to get a feel for what kind of support the patient had.  She got cagey with the woman.  People like that don’t want you messin with their lives.  They say they’ve got it all covered, but when it came down to it, she was gonna be all alone.

  
  

  We were on our way back to the office, when we spotted Mr. and Mrs. Clown.  Every year they dress up and hand out little stickers that say free hug or something.  They don’t talk, they mime.  My boss is telling me about Friday night when she got a call asking her to stay late to see this woman’s little boy.  She wasn’t supposed to live much more than a couple weeks, and was real anxious that my boss meet with her boy.  She works with kids, does a family support group.  So she waits for the dad to bring him and finds out the next day that the mom died that night.  She’d just been waiting for her little boy to have someone to talk to.  She’s telling me this as the cart goes by playing jingle bells.  The driver is dressed up in a costume and his cart is decorated for Christmas.  I started to tear up, you know I never cry, and she said, “Oh, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”  I assured her my tears were over witnessing so much beautiful humanity. 

  
  

  It’s what I love about the hospital.  It’s like another world there, everybody taking care of each other.  People are at their worst, that’s why they’re there.  There’s no pretense.  In the rooms, people lay around half-naked.  Orderlies push unconscious patients on stretchers, past people on their way to lunch.  It’s crazy. 

  
  

  I think the reason I am so comfortable is because of the intimacy.  From the moment I step foot in the hospital, I have a big smile on my face.  I love to meet each new woman and hear her story.  It makes me feel so good to be able to put their minds at ease, point them in the right direction.  Breast cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me and I feel so lucky to be able to share what I’ve learned so that the women I meet can use this opportunity to change their lives for the better.

  
  

  The other thing I like is that everything is real there, very matter of fact.  It’s all about solutions.  I went Christmas shopping last night for two of the patient’s families.  I’ve always wanted to adopt a family and just never known how to go about it.  It was so fun picking things out.  I helped this Hispanic boy truck everything out to the van while his mother rested in my boss’s office.  He brings her because she doesn’t speak English.  He is the same age  my oldest daughter was when I did chemo.  I would have liked a chance to talk with him in more depth.  I think I should learn Spanish.

  
  

  You know how I said people were “at their worst.”  Well, I had that backwards.

  
  

   

  • 3:08 am
  • 9 Comments