One of my more meaningful hospice patient relationships was with a patient that we’ll call Mrs. Lee. I only got the chance to visit Mrs. Lee once, but it was a pleasant visit. Her room was clearly put together with love: there were photos of her and her husband, her family, and some accolades placed around the room. She was nonverbal, but seemed attentive with her eyes, so my co-volunteer and I were a little unsure of how to proceed at first. We tried to strike up an open-ended conversation with her to see how well she could engage with her eyes. We quickly learned that she was able to follow us with her eyes, but she could not respond with blink or directional gazes. Despite that, she seemed to track our conversation fairly well, especially as we made remarks about the family pictures she had around the room. Although she could not speak, I felt like Mrs. Lee and I shared an affinity with each other. She was the only black hospice patient that I had seen through my time with Ascend, so I might have felt hyper-aware of her gaze when our eyes met. However, I also noticed that she received a degree from Spelman College in Atlanta, which struck me because my brother went to Emory and still lives in the Atlanta area. When I began to talk about him and her Spelman degree, I felt like I noticed her eye tracking become more focused.
To our surprise, one of Mrs. Lee’s relatives came by to see her during our visit. She was really excited to see that Mrs. Lee had visitors and expressed her gratitude to us for stopping by, as Mrs. Lee’s health had been declining more rapidly in recent weeks. A week later, my co-volunteer informed me that Mrs. Lee had passed. While I was certainly saddened by the news, I found myself feeling reflective more than any other feeling. I kept thinking back to our conversation with her relative–– I thought about how thankful she was that Mrs. Lee was able to receive stimulation from our visit. Even if only for a brief moment, I was glad to know that we were able to improve her quality of life with our interaction.
Reflecting on the program as a whole, I think I have definitely increased my capacity to handle death, both theoretically and experientially. While I cannot control how I will feel when my time to die comes, I feel like I have a newfound appreciation and curiosity about the end-of-life experience as I’ve been exposed to the immense potential that the process holds. Through all of the visits and group reflections, this program has forced me to pause and center the fact that holding the patient’s quality of life as a central consideration is essential to providing the best treatment. In this era of medicine where there are so many novel drugs and treatments, it can be easy to think that the ultimate goal is to save the patient’s life by “fixing” the problem at all cost. But, as Dr. Atul Gawande noted, the two unfixables are aging and death, so we must have grace for ourselves. I believe that I have cultivated my sense of patience and care for myself and others by participating in this program, and I feel more equipped to enter and effectively engage with patients and caregivers in future medical and clinical spaces with this added experience.