"Your Greatest Gift"
I stood inside the
door of “una chosa”, Spanish for “a hut”- the walls bamboo and sunbaked mud; a broom-swept
dirt floor; two open windows partially covered by tattered cloth; no running
water, no electricity. The acrid smell of smoke from the wood fire in the open
brick oven permeated the air. Then I saw her. Lying on a bed made of wood and rope
was a young woman. To my astonishment, she had a gastric feeding tube and foley
catheter. Her arms and legs atrophied, contracted, her breathing shallow
and rapid. Rivulets of sweat traced down her face. The oppressive heat and
humidity of Honduras in August punctuating the surreal scene in front of me.
Wendy, a third year medical student, and I were doing home
visits as part of a medical team serving in El Triunfo, a village of 5000
people in southern Honduras. We traveled by truck, over rock strewn, dirt
roads, crossing several small streams to a village of 50 families. We did not
know what type patient we would be seeing. Most often, the home patients are elderly
and bedridden by severe arthritis or an incapacitating stroke, but not this
time.
She was 21 and
healthy until the year prior, when she collapsed, never to regain
consciousness. She was carried in the back of a truck, over mountainous, rocky
dirt roads to the hospital in Tegucigalpa, arriving 8 hours later. They
received the news; nothing further could be done. Their hopes shattered, she
returned home the same manner as she had arrived, now with her permanent feeding
tube and foley catheter. To my surprise, the husband handed me the CT scan of
her head done at the hospital. I raised the images to the sunlight, a large
intracerebral bleed readily apparent. I slowly lowered the tell-tale pictures
and looked at Wendy. Her past history now answered.
Clinically she was
infected. She had a fever. The urine was concentrated and cloudy, a recent
change per her husband. I told him we had antibiotics that could be given
through the feeding tube and the importance of keeping her well hydrated. As we
prepared to leave, our hearts heavy, the husband began asking more questions.
Could we not give her something to make her well again? Then I understood. He
believed, that as a doctor from the United States, I could heal her and bring
her back to him. After all, I was from America and it had the best of everything.
Such unrealistic expectations are not uncommon. I explained what the CT showed
and confirmed there was nothing I nor anyone else could do; she would not recover.
He began to sob, head lowered, hands covering his face, as all remaining hope
vanished. We took his hands in ours, sat with him, and prayed. What else could
we do?
You know this pain, the heartbreak, the suffering. It is
part of being a physician. It is part of life. Thinking back on the 30 years I practiced Internal
Medicine, I remember best those patients where everything medically was done, only
to fail. In their moments of deepest despair, all I could do was be present,
hold their hand, listen to them, and cry with them. Words are not always
necessary.
As physicians, we want to heal our patients when possible. However,
maybe your greatest gift to a patent is not healing, for healing is transient. Maybe, instead, your greatest gift is the
ability to be completely present with a patient’s suffering, allowing it to
transform you, and in doing so, transform it for them as well. Your presence
becomes everything to the patient who feels they are losing everything. As you
face what your patient faces, you are better able to bring compassion to them
and, maybe, I believe, better able to extend that compassion to yourself as you
do the hard work of medicine. Thank you for your selfless service to those in
their darkest time of despair.
Andy Lamb, MD
No comments:
Post a Comment