I wasn’t entirely sure how much I would or would not enjoy volunteering for hospice prior to doing so this academic year. I expected to gain new experiences connecting with older patients nearing the end of life, bed-side manners, and overall ways of managing topics surrounding death. I was pleasantly surprised that there was actually a lot more to not just hospice volunteering, but medicine as a whole, as I began to actually start interacting with hospice patients. Jen was the patient I saw the most over several months, and I am extremely thankful and grateful for the memories I made with her.
She taught me so many lessons and ideas throughout the months without ever explicitly teaching me anything ever. Over time, I came to understand who she was as a person and how she felt. I remember one instance when she explained to me the backstory to all her art around the room, ranging from her journey’s through eastern Asia to Italy and France. She would tell me about how some of the pieces were from street artists in the urban areas of Tokyo and others from local antique shops in Naples. Just the way she spoke of these experiences and her gleeful expression when talking about her passed husband showed me a person who was genuinely satisfied with her life and didn’t take anything for granted.
But it wasn’t just her husband, it was also her love for her three daughters and her several grandchildren who were all around my age. She spoke of them so grandly and told me about how I reminded her of the grandson who was studying nursing. Her appreciation for the simple things of life, and for things many take for granted such as family, helped me realize death didn’t always have to be something to avoid at all costs. She was happy and content with all she did with her life, hence she didn’t see a particular problem if she happened to go any moment. I felt her sense of completeness and acceptance of her eventual future, and because of this mentality, she was able to free herself from most burdens and capture every moment in the present.
Prior to hospice volunteering, I had an idea of how this would add to my medical school applications, in which I would talk about how I gained an understanding for the value of medicine, how to speak with a patient, and how to foster genuine patient interactions that allows you to treat a calm patient. And while all these remain true, I also learned the value of being okay that medicine isn’t the only solution for helping a patient. Sometimes it is better for the patient to not take the extra treatment if it means they are healthier and happy in the moment to take time to spend with their loved ones in their dying moments. I wasn’t aware that I would come with such reconciliations as someone who wants to go into medicine, but it was a necessary aspect of understanding my eventual role as a healer whose role is to cure and help the patient be relieved of suffering and not to solely evade death.
Ultimately, this experience has encouraged me to continue down this path as it taught me that I’m not responsible for every single life that comes into my care. Of course I will do everything in my power to cure the person, but it puts me at ease knowing many will be content with allowing death to take its role when necessary.