by Dr. Pat Rees
September 29, 2015
I stand in the ER at the bedside of a patient with my chief resident. I am watching the small ant run circles on the sheet overlying her frail, emaciated body. She is really not much than the “bag of bones” that my resident described her as. My resident, Fabruce, is talking to that patient’s husband, in French, and the husband in turn, is talking with the patient in another language. At the end of the discussion, we have a heartfelt prayer, check the IV, and leave the room.
Fabruce had not been in the clinic and hadn’t answered my texts. He finally came to my desk and told me he was trying to help a patient he had found just lying on the ground near the parking lot. He had seen her yesterday in clinic, and told her, as he had discussed with her before, that there was nothing we can do for her. She has renal cancer that is widely spread to her stomach, aorta, and other surrounding tissue. She is dying. She came saying that she had 5 people who would give her blood if she needed and would we please do surgery to save her life. Her husband was intoxicated at the time, so the transfer of information was not good. She was not admitted and was sent home, before she died at the hospital. (The transport of a body to a village is very expensive--almost too much for the people to pay, so leaving the hospital before death is preferred). Evidently the van driver refused to take her, or she didn’t have the money or her husband was too drunk to get the arrangements made … but in any case she had stayed the night--maybe there on the ground near the parking lot.
She is now in a clean bed. She has an IV in place. Her now-sober husband has water and bread for her, if she wants it. She looks at Fabruce with hopeful eyes. He again tells her, through her husband, that there is nothing we can do. We pray with her. We will call the chaplain. Fabruce and I go to the parking lot and find the van driver and extract a promise that he will wait and take this woman back to her village.
I don’t know how much she understood of all that was said about her disease. We had to rely on her husband to put it into her own language. I do know that she understood the caring: Fabruce carrying her in from the ground near the parking lot, the clean bed, the IV to keep her alive so she can get home, the gentle hands that touched her as we prayed over her, our efforts to make sure she has a van ride back to her home village.
We pray she knows the Lord of all caring as our caring for her ends.