Chapter 75: Connection is it
Fun times filming a short video this week to promote Difficult Gifts, stay tuned for updates :)
To my loyal and new readers alike, I apologize for not posting in a while. I picked up extra shifts at the hospital over the last few weeks to help with increased COVID demands.
While I’m not solely working with COVID patients, they do make up a large proportion of the patients I see. I’ll be honest, it’s hard to talk about this. Seeing patients in the hospital for days on end all struggling to breath, all on oxygen, many needing intubation, without a family member or friend in sight is emotionally exhausting.
Perhaps that’s why the story I’m about to share with you today was all that much more impactful (and inspiring and much, much needed) for me to experience. In addition to all of the disheartening COVID cases I worked with a few weeks ago, I also worked with a patient with a new diagnosis of widely metastatic, aggressive lung cancer. Ok, so this story doesn’t start with an uplifting initial line but bear with me.
The patient was middle-aged, but still fairly young for such a severe diagnosis. He was absolutely heartbroken about it. His family was not allowed to visit him given COVID restrictions and I would often walk into his room in the morning to find him on the phone with his wife, softly crying while trying to reassure her that everything would be fine.
I saw this patient every morning for around one week until it was finally time for him to leave the hospital. On our last encounter together (knowing nothing about my own diagnosis), he looked straight into my eyes and said, “I know I’ll be just fine. I have Him [pointing up towards heaven and God above] watching out for me. I have faith and I will get through this, even if the doctors tell me I only have months to live. I know that’s not true.”
I don’t routinely share the details of my personal life with my patients, but hearing this honesty, this bravery, and this hope inspired me to respond.
Looking back into the eyes of this patient who reminded me so much of myself, I told him, “I don’t tell many of my patients this, but I also have cancer. I understand what you’re going through much more than you realize. I was also told a prognosis that I chose to ignore. No one, not even doctors, know how long we have left to live. Sure, there are averages and statistics and studies, but there is so much else that we cannot measure. Things like faith, hope, prayers, positive thinking, gratitude, and mindfulness. You know what I think? I think we can outlive any of the numbers they tell us. You and me, we can fight this!”
He looked at me for a while with tears in his eyes and I looked at the floor, slightly embarrassed for being so vulnerable with a patient.
A few second later, he literally jumped out of bed, gave me a giant hug and said, “I love you. You are awesome! We WILL fight this. We can do it!”
I discharged him from the hospital later that day, but I will never forget him.
Since then, I’ve told multiple patients with cancer that I share their diagnosis. I sit down in their room and we chat. We talk about fear, about unexpected changes in plans, about support, about faith, and about hope.
Connection is it, people. Vulnerability is it. I have an arsenal of medications at my disposal to give my patients, but honestly, nothing I can give them is more useful than hope.
Happy Holidays, everyone. My Christmas gift this year is the COVID vaccine, which I will be lucky enough to receive early next week. I am SO excited. Thank you to scientists, thank you to Pfizer and Moderna, and thank you to health systems for giving us this gift of hope for a safer and less socially distanced 2021.
Fondly,
Courtney
©CB2020