A story of old...
Amidst the craziness of the past few weeks, I have been looking after an elderly patient Mr A.
Mr A is a Swedish ex-navy officer who presented to ED with symptoms of chronic liver disease due to alcoholism. Your typical drunk old guy with liver problems... or so I thought.
Turns out Mr A has been hitting the grog hard for the last 5 years after his wife died. She was the love of his life.
They initially met in the United States when he was posted in the navy there. She was married at the time and he was a dashing young sailor. They hit it off well but since she was married they parted as friends.
It wasn't till 20 years later when he was in Australia that they met again by chance. In that time her husband had died from cancer. He had never forgotten her though and took the chance to find happiness with her. They were soon married and lived together in Sydney until she was taken from him by emphysema.
Since then he has lost his will to live. He doesn't care if he wakes up each day. He sees no point in living without her. It's so sad.
Whilst my ward rounds are pressing, I still find myself drawn to spend a little bit of time each day just talking to Mr A. Just to be there and listen to him talk about the love he once had and be there for him. I see a sadness in his eyes that haunts me. There's no sparkle there. Just a void of loneliness.
Tomorrow we are going to ship him off to a nursing home. His bed will be filled quickly with another patient with vague abdominal pain. And he will be lost to a world that has nothing of value for him.
Amidst the indifference I have towards most of my pateints, this guy has stood out as the one excpetion that shows somewhere underneath all the pounding of internship there is astill some shred of humanity left in me. Some piece of connectedness to the shared common experience that we all have that makes us relate to each other.
And so although he leaves our dreary ward, his memory will be a temporary reminder to me, that people are humans first... and patients second.
posted by J @ 8:51 PM
1 Comments:
Wow... that's really sad but very touching at the same time.
Hrm... sometimes it makes me wonder if it's bad when I feel sad. Christians are suposed to have the joy of God's salvation & I know that doesn't mean we should go around wearing plastic smiles. But I feel guilty sometimes when I feel sad because somehow it makes me feel like I don't trust God enough.
I guess ultimately it's really about where our hope lies, isn't it? But sometimes life can throw things at you which are really hard to handle & it's hard to focus on the joy of salvation. But it's through those times that God moulds us to be more like Christ. Praise God for the hope that we have!
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