Comforting the Dying / Radiation Therapy

COMFORTING THE DYING

Over the past month, I have followed a number of terminal patients.  As excited we are in medicine about healing others and curing disease, death and terminal conditions can be a part of your every day life in the hospital.

I think one of the most important things anyone can learn regardless of specialty is how to comfort the dying how to speak to families about it, and how to deliver bad news.

I've had to tell people they were dying.  I had to tell them we can't cure them, that medicine and the human body have limits, that we have to change the focus and the goals of our treatment.  That we're there to keep them comfortable and make sure they get everything they need.

I've treated every patient equally and never given my terminal patients less time than I give patients with higher likelihoods of leaving the hospital alive.  The most healing thing you can do is listen, talk to the patient, about their day, about how they feel, like any other conversation.

Dying patients who are alone need someone there to be human to them.  I struggled this month with the sadness of seeing my terminal, actively dying patients, but I visited them every day and asked how they felt, how they were eating and how they felt physically.

It's almost a rule that the good die young, that the nicest, most selfless patients with children and warm, extended families die from incurable cancer.  I wish I could change that, and I feel like I will struggle with it for a long time.  I'll struggle with it even though I know I can't cure that stage IV lung cancer eroding bones and metastases nested in brain parenchyma.

I'll struggle because I it's hard for me to accept the death of others, even though I understand it's inevitable and there are limits to what we can do and how much the body can bear.  I'll struggle because death is emotionally painful.  I'll struggle because patients are special to me, they're people who are afraid and nervous.  People who try to be brave and appear comfortable to their loved ones when they're so afraid of passing away.

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RADIATION THERAPY

This entire week I've spent a long time in the Radiation Therapy part of the hospital, mainly walking through the long, yellow-painted wing with gently angled corners.  The cold temperature of the wing seems to be a physical representation of all the sadness and gravity of my encounters with the dying have been like.


In Radiation Therapy, you see so many patients sitting in waiting rooms and some waiting in seats out in the hallway.  Some look lost in thought, very rarely one will tell you "Good morning, sir."

I can still feel the cold of the place, a dense, cold air seems to fill the entire wing.  It feels similar to the cold of poorly perfused hands from a heart failing and slowing down more and more everyday.

It'll take me a long time to get used to death and terminal aspect of a hospitalization.

But one thing I'm able to do is be a warm spirit to my patients, someone who journeys with them during their stay.  I'm glad I've got that down.