Empathy - one more time

In the beginning …

Not married yet. So young ... well, 35. So thin! Same haircut. So in need of braces.

Flesh and muscle on his bones. Strong body. Death isn’t even a word in our vocabulary then.

But now it its. this is what what pouring poison into your body looks like.

The treatment is as deadly as the disease.

A nurse from United Health Care is here right now doing a home health care visit for my husband. She’s pleasant but disengaged. Rather flat. No upbeat adjectives in her responses. Just the facts, Ma’am. Just the facts.

She said she was an oncology nurse for 13 years. Dying is old news for her.

Gary takes 10 meds twice a day attempting to survive plus his insulin for his diabetes. He wants to list the litany of meds looking for a little recognition of what he’s going through. She responds she has the list up on her computer screen right now. No need to go through them. He sounds a little deflated.

She listens to his heart. He explains that his heart skips a beat occasionally, wanting to discuss its history. He wants to be recognized, seen, but she shuts that down telling him she can hear it.

He shrinks a little, gets smaller. I feel for his isolation. He keeps radiating his sunny disposition even though he’s the only one in the room that’s dying. As she’s leaving she compliments him for being in good spirits briefly suggesting that it’s really the only attitude to have under the circumstances. She gets back in her car and moves onto the next patient.

What’s it like to be her? What a draining job to drive from patient to patient, listening to what meds they are taking, listening to their fears about dying, listening to their unspoken plea for help: I don’t want to die. Can you save me?

There is a magic door in the hospital. The sign above the door says Oncology. Once in, there’s no getting back out. A long time ago they too were a young married couple with a future ahead of them. They both wore something fresh and a little sexy when they walked down the aisle.

He’s close to the end. She’s done with the caregiver role that has consumed her daily life since his diagnoses.

She’s not in the best of health herself. Just getting him dressed and into the car takes an hour. She’s soooo done.

But there is little fairy dust here. Down the hall behind this waiting man is the infusion room where people are hooked up to their bags of poison. They hope their bodies can tolerate the medicine long enough for it to suppress the cancer.

At least for this round.

My pessimistic belief is that once cancer enters a body it never really leaves. It lingers, silently, waiting for the time the host has weakened through something else or just plain aging. I do think that this is a highly biased opinion on my part. Maybe because we’ve really been through it.

I remember 8 years ago his eyes turning yellow. A friend who was a nurse told him to go to the hospital immediately. The attending physician did a cat scan. With great sadness he told us that Gary had pancreatic cancer. We were such newbies. We did not know that it was a death sentence - but the doctor did. With downcast eyes he said he would give us a moment alone. I suspected then that pancreatic cancer was not good news. But we didn’t know.

Now we do.

I have decided to start an additional substack devoted to politics. I absolutely love politics. I love reading voraciously about what is going on here and around the world. I have been trying to go back and forth between what is happening in our country and and my personal life. I don’t think it has worked well for you. I have to think of a name for my new substack. Then I’ll begin. You can choose to read either one or both if you just can’t get enough of me.

See you next time.

c