#HumanStrong
As a concept, death isn't that bad. It's just a marker, noting the end of life.
When you are born, your spirit enters your body and you live. When you die, your spirit leaves your body. And your body rots.
But you, glorious divine you, go on. The whole eternity of you involved just a small little chunk of mortality, a short opportunity to try out flesh and bone.
Imperfect though it may be, life--in a body--is pretty good. Which is exactly why most people avoid death, if possible. Why trade the flawed good of life for an unknown and pretty irreversible death?
You don't, not if you can help it.
Basically that's the whole purpose of the field of medicine [and nursing]. We try to figure out a way to keep you going, if you are willing and we are able.
And that is precisely why two of my patients--one man and one woman--this past week faced death.
My first patient no longer was willing. He'd been in the hospital for a month, and then one day decided enough was enough. He was on a medium-high flow of oxygen, and had slept most of the morning, but right at the start of my lunch break [sorry, Danielle], he very coherently and adamantly declined to use the oxygen any more. He pulled the oxygen tubing off his face and refused to put it back, and demanded to see a priest. I called his nurse practitioner and the chaplain, who both came and talked to him, and then we transitioned efforts to comfort care only. Our supportive care team came to assess his needs/wants, and found him of sound mind and sharp tongue (he kept insulting the supportive care doctor. He's kind of crotchety like that). And just like that, two days later he was gone.
He had astonishing willpower.
My other patient had come from out-of-state for a second opinion on her progressing cancer, and when she got the news that there was nothing the oncologists could do, she rallied amazingly. While her daughter cried silently in the corner, my patient informed me that she knew this would happen eventually, and had already made arrangements for her body.
"There's this great company called medsure--m-e-d-s-u-r-e--and they cremate you for free in exchange for using your body for research or other things. It's just fantastic; you should tell other patients about it--they have 50,000 satisfied customers." [And I'm wondering here--aren't the customers all dead?]
Apparently she has a can-do approach to bad news. She told me that the day after her husband-of-many-years-and-6-kids divorced her, she went out and bought herself a bunch of large-jeweled rings (she had 19 in all, on 3 different fingers. I counted).
People ask me all the time how I can work in a cancer hospital.
I do it for the patients. Most of them are so hopeful, so resilient, and quite frankly sometimes they floor me with the strength of their spirit despite the weakness of their body.
I am left to conclude that circumstances do not dictate your actions or your feelings.
There is always something good to find.
When you are born, your spirit enters your body and you live. When you die, your spirit leaves your body. And your body rots.
But you, glorious divine you, go on. The whole eternity of you involved just a small little chunk of mortality, a short opportunity to try out flesh and bone.
Imperfect though it may be, life--in a body--is pretty good. Which is exactly why most people avoid death, if possible. Why trade the flawed good of life for an unknown and pretty irreversible death?
You don't, not if you can help it.
Basically that's the whole purpose of the field of medicine [and nursing]. We try to figure out a way to keep you going, if you are willing and we are able.
And that is precisely why two of my patients--one man and one woman--this past week faced death.
My first patient no longer was willing. He'd been in the hospital for a month, and then one day decided enough was enough. He was on a medium-high flow of oxygen, and had slept most of the morning, but right at the start of my lunch break [sorry, Danielle], he very coherently and adamantly declined to use the oxygen any more. He pulled the oxygen tubing off his face and refused to put it back, and demanded to see a priest. I called his nurse practitioner and the chaplain, who both came and talked to him, and then we transitioned efforts to comfort care only. Our supportive care team came to assess his needs/wants, and found him of sound mind and sharp tongue (he kept insulting the supportive care doctor. He's kind of crotchety like that). And just like that, two days later he was gone.
He had astonishing willpower.
My other patient had come from out-of-state for a second opinion on her progressing cancer, and when she got the news that there was nothing the oncologists could do, she rallied amazingly. While her daughter cried silently in the corner, my patient informed me that she knew this would happen eventually, and had already made arrangements for her body.
"There's this great company called medsure--m-e-d-s-u-r-e--and they cremate you for free in exchange for using your body for research or other things. It's just fantastic; you should tell other patients about it--they have 50,000 satisfied customers." [And I'm wondering here--aren't the customers all dead?]
Apparently she has a can-do approach to bad news. She told me that the day after her husband-of-many-years-and-6-kids divorced her, she went out and bought herself a bunch of large-jeweled rings (she had 19 in all, on 3 different fingers. I counted).
People ask me all the time how I can work in a cancer hospital.
I do it for the patients. Most of them are so hopeful, so resilient, and quite frankly sometimes they floor me with the strength of their spirit despite the weakness of their body.
I am left to conclude that circumstances do not dictate your actions or your feelings.
There is always something good to find.
Good read. I liked this one.
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