The hospital room is nearly silent, the only sounds are the sniffles of the family members and the hiss of the oxygen escaping from the nasal cannula on the patient.
My patient.
I entered the room with my partner and felt like I was walking into a Church.
Reverence. Devotion. Veneration.
This family adored the frail woman laying in the bed before me. And that woman was dying. They all knew it. We knew it. She knew it.
She had been in the hospital for two weeks. Cancer. I can’t remember what type, but it doesn’t really matter. It seemed as though her entire family had shown up for the trip home.
Her last trip outside. Her last time feeling the warm sunshine on her skin, smelling the blooming flowers. In a little more than an hour the four white walls of the hospital room (complete with Crucifix and wipe off board letting her know what her Nurses names were for the day) would be replaced by the warmly colored walls of her own bedroom. Pictures of Grandchildren and Great-Grandchildren.
She was going home.
I greeted and shook hands with her family while my partner went to collect the paperwork. I assured them that we would take fantastic care of her. Her daughters would ride along with us.
Hospice runs are nothing new to EMT’s who work primarily on a transfer truck. Some dread doing them. I was never one of them. It was a lecture by Steve Berry during my first EMS Conference that really got to me. I truly believe that it’s a privilege to do these runs. My heart goes out to the family and the patient.
We packaged her up with extra blankets, even though the temperature was topping 90 degrees outside. She would be cold, her daughter’s insisted.
We moved her easily to the stretcher, her emaciated body weighed less than 80 pounds at our best guess.
In the back of the ambulance I watched her closely. I knew from her paperwork that she was on a pretty high dose of morphine and that could effect her respiratory rate. It gave me something to focus on other than her daughters who were just despondent. If I allowed my mind to wander I would be crying along with them.
Breathe, Ma’am, just breathe. Please. Please don’t die right here in front of your babies.
As soon as I’d become a practicing Catholic once again, once I’d start praying, she’d start breathing again.
I’m sure it was just coincidence, but still. I willed my partner to drive faster. Not something I’d normally do.
We arrived at the house in record time. I opened the back doors of the ambulance and stepped out into the sunshine. Her daughters followed closely behind me, watching every move that we made as we carefully pulled the stretcher from the back of the truck.
My patient never opened her eyes. She never spoke. She didn’t even moan. Not one time from the moment I walked into her hospital room until we carried her to her bedroom where she’d die the next day. Some would say she had no idea what was going on, but I have to believe that she did.
I have to believe she felt the sun on her face one last time.
I have been on many runs like this. I agree that it is an honor to be the last ride the patient will ever get. While it is sad, it really means something to me to be able to share this moment with the patient and the family. This is a great story and you tell it so well. I wish I had the gift for writing like you do. My blog reads like a run report. lol. JS
Made many of those runs in my younger days at the private. All ages, old…and sometimes young. Too young (little kids) was difficult enough, but I think the hardest (and most rewarding) was a girl I took home. She was my age at the time (so 19, maybe 20). Bone cancer. She’d been sick for a long, long time. Now she was going home to die.
Despite weighing maybe 80 pounds, she was stunningly beautiful, and yet, had been sick so long, she’d never had a boyfriend, or drove a car, or did much of what teenagers did.
“Home” was some 30-40 miles away. For the most part, we didn’t talk. What she asked for; was for me to hold her hand, which I did for the better part of an hour. She was pretty uncomfortable (no implanted pain pumps then, and we were a BLS unit). I willed my partner to slow down and take it easy on the bumps and curves. All the while she held my hand, stroked it, traced my fingers.
When we reached her home, she lifted my hand up, kissed it, looked at me, and simply said, “thank you”. We gently carried her into her room and tucked her into bed. She died the next week.
Yep…those calls are not only the worst emotionally…I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Thanks Epi
I consider myself incredibly privileged every time I get called for hospice. My patients and their families are letting me a part of an incredibly intimate moment…one that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Yeah, it’s difficult to deal with sometimes, but it’s all SO worth it.
Thank you for seeing beyond the’they’re dying, get them out of my ambulance’ mentality. You’re a rare gem, Epi. Don’t forget that.
By the way, have you thought about volunteering some time for a hospice? I think you’d be fantastic at it…
Thank you, JS…
And for the record your blog doesn’t read like a run report :P