The first time walking into a patient room in a hospital as a hospice volunteer, I didn’t expect to feel as helpless with my patient as I did. Perhaps it was because as a college student, I hadn’t yet fully grasped the concept of death. Being young with dreams of a long and successful future, I regularly dismissed death as something tragic. At the same time, I remained ignorant to the fact that life was always finite. After introducing myself to my patient and his family, I asked him, “How are you feeling today?” After a long pause with silence, he responded, “I’m not sure. I’m having trouble with taking everything in and I need some time to think and speak with my family on my own.” I obliged and left the room. He had just received a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.
As a regular EMT and volunteering in the oncology department, I had become accustomed to communicating with, treating, and even holding small talk with patients. However, I quickly learned how different hospice volunteering was in comparison to treating and helping regular patients. After seeing many acute patients come and go inside the hospital, I decided I wanted to see more non-acute patients requesting hospice. Soon after, I began seeing Matthew and his wife, Leah, at their residence. Matthew had end stage Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and was bedridden. I would regularly stop by to assist them with chores that Leah wouldn’t have time completing due to endlessly caring for Matthew. They told me very much about their lives: their childhoods, careers, hobbies long lost in their past, and their own past triumphs. Over time, I had learned so much about the 1950s and how college at their time was out of the question if you didn’t originate from a family of wealth. The day Leah informed me that Matthew had passed away earlier that week was the same day I felt the true meaning of hospice and palliative care. As he passed, he didn’t feel pain or agony, but rather he felt contentment and peace with his family around him.
I decided to pick up a book recommended by the Athena Hospice Program called When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi, containing an autobiography of his life and career as a neurosurgeon resident before and after being diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer at 34 before passing away just years later. His fascinating story helped me appreciate the similar fear that many people face when thinking about death, as well as obstacles people face when attempting to add meaning to their lives. As one seeks to find their own moral responsibility, Kalanithi states: “You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote towards which you are ceaselessly striving”.
Hospice volunteering has given me not only the chance to better comprehend the concept of death, bereavement, and comfort measures, but also the chance to better value life, finding meaning, and understanding that we all have a limited time. It has given me the perspective of dying being a natural part of life that shouldn’t be ignored, allowing people to come to peaceful terms and acceptance with deaths. As a premedical student striving to be a physician, this program has allowed me to appreciate the concept of a good death: one in which the patient has time to reflect, talk with friends and family, and gain a state of ease, peace, and comfort with everyone supporting them to the very end.