In my experience with this volunteer program, I have had the pleasure to meet three different patients. The first was a woman with Dementia who only spoke Korean. This meant we communicated instead in smiles, laughs, and gestures. She taught me that joy and connection doesn’t have a language. The second was another woman with Dementia. She spoke English, but often mumbled or communicated in phrases that I couldn’t understand. She was my most formative patient because she was often scared and I had to put in the most work to understand and connect with her. I was given advice by our Chaplain that I didn’t need to communicate clearly with her in order to provide a grounding presence. If I brought hope and calm to the situation, she told me that it would probably rub off in my patient. This was a relief to me since I often felt that while we were both speaking the same language, we were often having two different conversations with each other.
However, this welcome advice wasn’t as useful with my next patient. She is a smiley woman with Alzheimer’s, who is very curious and giggly. When I ask her questions about herself, or make conversation, she often reciprocates and asks me questions back. This is a new experience for me and I often don’t know what to say. The most challenging part is when she asks me why I’m sitting with her, and I explain that I’m volunteering with a program and would like to keep her company. I’ve had to brainstorm how to stay honest with my intentions without implying that her situation evokes pity or that she is “just a patient” I was assigned to.
Throughout my experiences with these three women, I’ve learned that aging and death and dying isn’t a process that should necessarily be feared. The Being Mortal documentary explains that doctors often approach death and dying as the enemy, but I would now argue that pain and suffering is the enemy. Without palliative care, these women would be fighting against disease that would cause them more pain than the graceful process they have decided to pursue. This has changed my sense of vocation because now when I think of medicine I think of giving patients dignity and respect, instead of just “saving lives” which doesn’t recognize how our patients are human beyond the fact that they have lives. I have grown because the context of “patients” and “medicine” have expanded to portray real lives and real stories, instead of vague ideas about illness and bodies.
This program is valuable because I now have first hand experience with getting on a patient’s level and meeting them where they’re at. I’ve learned how to communicate with three different types of people that I haven’t before, and I’ve learned how to communicate beyond language on a human level. For a medical school application and the rest of my career, I think this experience has made me a more empathetic person, and so I will be a more compassionate, understanding, and considerate doctor.