Tuesday, March 28, 2017
When You Send Someone Home to Die
Many hospitals have little cards they send home to patients after
they’re discharged, where everyone on the unit or anyone providing care
signs with little things like “Good luck!” or “Take care!” Or, a lot of
the time, they just write their name and call it good.
But what do you write on the card of the patient that you’re sending home to die?
You
spent hours talking with him at 3am while he told you how he nearly
became a professional boxer before a car crash took out his shoulder and
forced him into trucking, and about the love of his life, a feisty
little Dachshund named Jasmine who was a “one man kinda woman”, and
wouldn’t hesitate to serve him divorce papers, if she got the chance.
You
chased his blood pressure at 1am with Dopamine, watching like a hawk as
it ever so slowly crept back up, watching everything about him even
when he was too tired to sit up and stay awake and keep an eye on
himself.
You noticed that the as needed Roxicodone made
him super drowsy, so initially you considered only the 5mg, but he
hadn’t slept in three days because of the pain in his lungs from the
cancer, so you gave him the full 10mg when he can have it and listened
to him snore the night away.
He offered you his apple and
orange when his appetite for dinner never really came, because he
noticed you sitting the other night charting without food, and wanted
you to have food while you had to be stuck in front of the computer.
He
told you a few times that your husband was a lucky man, and spent the
night ending every thank you with very genuine “darling”, “dear”,
and “sweetheart”.
You know he’s going home with hospice
care to a house with no family, his neighbors are his power of attorney
because he doesn’t have family, and he’ll barely have enough money to
get his new prescriptions for Oxycontin IR. The discharge papers given
him less than six months to live, if that.
You’re happy,
in a way, knowing he’ll be able to go home, in his own bed, with his
best girl at his side, and not have to die alone surrounded by cold
machinery at the hospital. You’re relieved, knowing he won’t have to
suffer that.
But you still don’t know what to write on that card, how to sum up a lifetime and no time at all within four white corners.
And really, you probably never will.
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