When signing up to be a hospice volunteer, I thought I would be helping others. However, there are many ways that the pre-med hospice volunteer program has helped me. I have worked in several patient care settings, including a personal care facility and an oncology unit in a hospital. In these settings, I have been surrounded by people that are, by the nature of it, dying. However, I have never been encouraged to talk to people about their life and death in a job setting. In fact, it would probably be discouraged. The hospice volunteer program has opened up a new door for me when it comes to my view of death as a health care provider. I am less discouraged by it and more willing to discuss it. In my personal life, I feel less afraid of it.
One particular experience that stands out to me is my experience with a patient who, for the sake of privacy, I will call Karen. I only visited with Karen one time at the hospital. Like this patient, I often only was able to visit with a patient one time before they passed on or were transferred home. However, the experience with Karen was different than many other experiences. Karen was unable to communicate with me. She was unresponsive to verbal queues. Karen seemed to be struggling, and close to death. This was sad for me considering that I could not converse with Karen and make sure she was okay as she passed on. I talked to Karen and made sure she knew I was there for her. The experience changed course when a volunteer chaplain came in and started to pray for the patient. The chaplain changed my view of death with her prayers to the patient. She spoke of death as a rebirth into the afterlife. She compared death to the experience we had in birth. Although the journey would be unknown, it is beautiful. The chaplain and I sat with Karen to comfort her. I felt at peace knowing that Karen would go to a place that could be even better than the life we know on Earth.
With this experience, I have gained an understanding that sometimes keeping someone alive is not the only goal in medicine. I feel it is also very important to know a human beings limits and to know the difference between living and being alive. Many of the patients I interacted with this year would not have done well with more treatment. It would have possibly put their life in more danger, decreasing the quality or quantity that they had left.
The quote I enjoyed from the article, “The Lesson of Impermanence,” is “It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not,” from Nhat Hanh. This quote really had me thinking because I believe it applies directly to my own life. I am a culprit of wanting things to last forever. When I think about the sun going down, it makes me sad because I want good things to be permanent. However, I have learned through the hospice program that there is beauty in all things. After a day of sunshine, we have a sunset and a starry sky to look forward too. Like life, there is beauty in death.