(see previous posts for 1 and 2)
from 11/2011:
I cried at work today. I was working on the discharge of a 45-year-old woman admitted with intractable nausea and vomiting who was found during the admission to have brain metastases (spread) with a lung cancer as the primary tumor (origin). She was talking about how she had hoped to go back to school to show her kids that you can do anything you dream of if you work hard enough for it. She spoke of going back to work to provide for her family, including her youngest child who is eight years old. I thought silently of how with her advanced disease I was pretty sure she won't make it to her 9-year-old's elementary graduation, let alone his high school, short of a miracle. But I didn't say that. Instead, I said, Take lots of pictures. Work on spending as much time as you can in the short term with family as you learn more about and adjust to your new diagnosis, as you figure out what is going to be realistic in the days and weeks ahead. She nodded. Coming out of the room, I stood at the chart to write up the discharge orders and tried to hold myself together as I thought about her situation. Instead, the tears slipped out as I silently grieved her losses - dreams, plans, time with family - until the nurse came up to make sure I didn't need anything further, and I wiped my eyes and wrote the orders for her to go home.
As the second year on ward, I see patients of our residents and faculty who are admitted to other services who need "medical management" for which we follow them while they are in the hospital. Usually this means controlling their blood pressure or blood sugars, but it meant a lot more for one 25 year old woman for whom we were consulted to help deal with her anxiety and depression. I stopped by to see her after rounds, so I had more time than the usual half-frenetic rush through the assigned patients before rounds. I spent the next 1.5 hours of a thankfully slow day hearing her tragic history of abuse as a child; rape as a teenager; and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by her first husband. She now deals with so much anxiety that she literally can't even get out the front door to go see her mother down the street, her only real source of support, without first fortifying herself with anxiety medicines.
"I have no friends," she said. "I know people say that they have no one, but they always have someone. I don't. I have no one." And I believe her as she recounts her story of being imprisoned in her own house by the wounds of her past experiences, trapped in unhealthy patterns and relationships. I sat there on the foot of her bed and patted her foot as she cried in despair, and I prayed. Her emptiness reminded me of an article I read a few years back on having nothing and emptiness and how God can work with that. So I prayed and I pray that like the widow in 2 Kings 4 with her empty jars that this woman would come to the place of giving her emptiness to the One who can fill it to overflowing. I have nothing better to offer.
Another patient I saw recently is a 35 year old female who told me in the course of her appointment about her home situation. She wants out of her relationship with her husband who is having a long-term affair but feels trapped since due to her own health problems she has no way to provide for their six children. She tells me about how she knew about her husband's girlfriend even before she became pregnant with their youngest child, and I wonder what she sees when she looks at herself in the mirror. My heart longs for more for her - she is worth so much more - and I could hear the longing as she told her story, too. But she can't see a way out, a way to live differently.
So often when I am faced with patients' pain, I wish I were artistically gifted or somehow able to use my word to paint a different picture for them. I want to show them another way of living, a way that life can be full of meaning and substance and, yes, even joy. It is a different way of envisioning what it means to be human and what their lives are meant for - so much more than infidelity, abuse, and broken dreams. They and you and I were made for relationships characterized by love and faithfulness, for learning to move past conflict to forgiveness and past broken pasts to restoration, for trusting the Dreamer's visions for us even when it means opening our hands to let the pieces of our plans fall through our fingers. It is my hope and prayer that in my life and actions and sometimes even in words I can communicate to the broken people around me a new vision, a tapestry of what life can be, one aglow with the light and love of the One who makes our lives worthwhile, tinged at the edges with hope, and woven through with growing, stabilizing strands of healing.
from 11/2011:
I cried at work today. I was working on the discharge of a 45-year-old woman admitted with intractable nausea and vomiting who was found during the admission to have brain metastases (spread) with a lung cancer as the primary tumor (origin). She was talking about how she had hoped to go back to school to show her kids that you can do anything you dream of if you work hard enough for it. She spoke of going back to work to provide for her family, including her youngest child who is eight years old. I thought silently of how with her advanced disease I was pretty sure she won't make it to her 9-year-old's elementary graduation, let alone his high school, short of a miracle. But I didn't say that. Instead, I said, Take lots of pictures. Work on spending as much time as you can in the short term with family as you learn more about and adjust to your new diagnosis, as you figure out what is going to be realistic in the days and weeks ahead. She nodded. Coming out of the room, I stood at the chart to write up the discharge orders and tried to hold myself together as I thought about her situation. Instead, the tears slipped out as I silently grieved her losses - dreams, plans, time with family - until the nurse came up to make sure I didn't need anything further, and I wiped my eyes and wrote the orders for her to go home.
As the second year on ward, I see patients of our residents and faculty who are admitted to other services who need "medical management" for which we follow them while they are in the hospital. Usually this means controlling their blood pressure or blood sugars, but it meant a lot more for one 25 year old woman for whom we were consulted to help deal with her anxiety and depression. I stopped by to see her after rounds, so I had more time than the usual half-frenetic rush through the assigned patients before rounds. I spent the next 1.5 hours of a thankfully slow day hearing her tragic history of abuse as a child; rape as a teenager; and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse by her first husband. She now deals with so much anxiety that she literally can't even get out the front door to go see her mother down the street, her only real source of support, without first fortifying herself with anxiety medicines.
"I have no friends," she said. "I know people say that they have no one, but they always have someone. I don't. I have no one." And I believe her as she recounts her story of being imprisoned in her own house by the wounds of her past experiences, trapped in unhealthy patterns and relationships. I sat there on the foot of her bed and patted her foot as she cried in despair, and I prayed. Her emptiness reminded me of an article I read a few years back on having nothing and emptiness and how God can work with that. So I prayed and I pray that like the widow in 2 Kings 4 with her empty jars that this woman would come to the place of giving her emptiness to the One who can fill it to overflowing. I have nothing better to offer.
Another patient I saw recently is a 35 year old female who told me in the course of her appointment about her home situation. She wants out of her relationship with her husband who is having a long-term affair but feels trapped since due to her own health problems she has no way to provide for their six children. She tells me about how she knew about her husband's girlfriend even before she became pregnant with their youngest child, and I wonder what she sees when she looks at herself in the mirror. My heart longs for more for her - she is worth so much more - and I could hear the longing as she told her story, too. But she can't see a way out, a way to live differently.
So often when I am faced with patients' pain, I wish I were artistically gifted or somehow able to use my word to paint a different picture for them. I want to show them another way of living, a way that life can be full of meaning and substance and, yes, even joy. It is a different way of envisioning what it means to be human and what their lives are meant for - so much more than infidelity, abuse, and broken dreams. They and you and I were made for relationships characterized by love and faithfulness, for learning to move past conflict to forgiveness and past broken pasts to restoration, for trusting the Dreamer's visions for us even when it means opening our hands to let the pieces of our plans fall through our fingers. It is my hope and prayer that in my life and actions and sometimes even in words I can communicate to the broken people around me a new vision, a tapestry of what life can be, one aglow with the light and love of the One who makes our lives worthwhile, tinged at the edges with hope, and woven through with growing, stabilizing strands of healing.
These pictures by local Lancaster artist Liz Hess were done to portray the Exodus story for an African context, bearing witness to the truth of the story for all peoples. The sense of release from oppression and joyous abandon in coming home that they so clearly portray is the same feeling I long to be present in the lives with which I come in contact.
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