The night that

4/23/06 -

The night that the 96-year-old lady is my patient.  She's dying and kind of knows it.  She is in the last stages of heart failure.  On this night, about every 4 hours, her blood glucose level drops so low that she becomes either almost comatose, or confused and combative.  I give her an IV dose of glucose and about five minutes later, she is her old, adorable self again, until the next time.  During her lucid periods, she tells me about her life as a girl and shares some good gossip about the local townspeople. 

She tells me about her beloved Chihuahua, a notorious ankle-biter, who used to terrify the other residents of the senior center she lived in, and about the old man down the hall who grouched at everyone, including the dog, but cried when she had to have it put to sleep. 

She tells me about a poor man who worked for her when she was a young mother.  When his baby died at home during childbirth, he called her to come help his wife.   She tells how he kissed each one of the infants tiny fingers and toes and the top of its head before he put it in the box he had made for a coffin.

She tells me about her daughter in New York who had horses and how one winter her favorite horse went out on the ice on the pond and fell through.   Only the horse's head was above the ice and there was no way to get it out.  So she sat with the horse's head on her lap until it died.  After that, her daughter got rid of all things to do with horses and turned her barn into an art studio.  One day, though, she saw and fell in love with miniature horses.  She wanted some but now there was nowhere to keep them, so her husband got a dozer and dug a large shelter under her studio to create a place.  Then, whenever anyone visited, the tiny horses would come out from under the porch like dogs to greet them.

She tells me about her 102-year-old boyfriend who died last year.  They had in common a fondness for liver and onions and would go to Lubys Cafeteria every Wednesday in her car because it was on the buffet.  He would bring plastic bags in his pockets to take some home, not because they needed the food but because it was the best in town.

Then she offers me her gold chain necklace, saying she would rather I had it than anyone else even though she will always think of me as "the torturer" because I had to insert a catheter into her bladder and an IV into her hand an hour earlier.  Of course I can't take it, and I would rather have the memory of how sweet and soft she looked in it, with her hair like white silk around her head.

The night that the 94-year-old lady is brought in after a fall at her home.  She has broken her neck at such a point where, if she turns her head either way, she will stop breathing. She is fully aware of her injury, talking to all of us clearly. 

It takes six of us to transfer her from the stretcher to the bed.  None of the neurologists would consult on her case because of her age and the extent of the injury.  She, too, was brought to our unit to die.  She knows this.  All she has to do is turn her head.

4/24/06

My night off.