The Other Patient
I was on call yesterday. One of my consults was a man admitted after a fall at home. He had been trying to get out of bed to walk to the bathroom, when he caught the side of the coffee table, lost balance and went down. He suffered a fracture of his right femoral neck. He was diabetic and had severe dementia. He spoke Polish and knew no English.
I met him the morning after his surgery. He was resting in a private room, and his wife was sitting next to him, peering into a novel through thick rimmed glasses. I never did catch the name of the book she was reading, because the moment she saw me walk in, she looked up, slapped it shut and broke into a big smile. She was an elderly lady, about 85 years or so, with shiny white hair cut into a bob, with sprigs of stray hair at the sides. She wore large pearl earrings and her glasses hung from a leash around her neck.
“Helloooo, I’m Mrs. B” she cooed, getting up with her hand extended. I don’t get this from my patients, and I was pleasantly surprised at her initiative. Her grip was warm and strong, and she even motioned for me to sit down.
“Hello mam”, I said and introduced myself, thanking her for inviting me to sit down.
“Hello sweetie how are you, love?” she asked in a thick accent. I smiled and said I was well, then asked about herself and her husband.
He looked frail. He was asleep and stirred only slightly at the sound of my voice. The first thing he did was look at his wife.
“He’s seen better days. The surgery went well, but it was unfortunate that he had the fall” she said.
I agreed and talked more about the circumstances of the fall while I examined him. He seemed to be recovering well but barely spoke.
“Yes, that’s all he speaks” she said. “He speaks only to me, and when he does, he talks about what happened 50 years ago”. She chuckled. “He forgets things, you know, and he cannot take care of himself anymore. He was in the army when he was young- a dashing young man. He looked after us- me, and our two children, very well. Now I need to be by his side all the time.” She looked at him and teased, smiling.
He smiled back.
“He needs help getting up from bed, needs me to help him dress and go to the bathroom. I take care of all his medications. I write them down- the dose and all- and make sure he takes them. I feed him myself, so he doesn’t choke”
I nodded. “Thank you for taking such good care of him. I’m sure you are doing a wonderful job, and I’m sure he appreciates it”.
Get Revati’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
At that, her cheerful demeaner broke, just ever so slightly, and I could see tears in her eyes. “Yes, I do what I can…. Sometime though, it gets a bit difficult for me, you know?” She tried to laugh it away.
“It becomes difficult to do everything when one is my age. I stayed awake all night just to make sure he’d be okay. Sometimes I realize I forgot to give him a medication, and I feel horrible about it. When he got up from his bed yesterday, I should have been there- but I was out getting groceries and thought he would sleep through my errand. It was my fault he fell, and I feel very guilty about it”
I shook my head before she had even finished.
“Please don’t think that- it was not your fault at all. You were doing your chores to keep the household running, and you’ve been doing so much for him. What happened was completely out of your control. I don’t want you to think this was your fault”.
She smiled sadly.
“Mrs. B, would you like to have some help at your home?”
She thought about it for a good two minutes.
“For a long time, I was stubborn. I felt that I should be the one to help him, that I shouldn’t rely on somebody else. But now, I think it might be getting a bit too much for me- not just physically, but mentally, to watch him get worse every day. My children don’t live with us, and I don’t want to burden them with how he is doing. Maybe it’s time to get some help…”
“Yes, and you should not feel guilty about that”
“I won’t” she said and smiled.
This was a very simple interaction, one that we all have many times over as physicians. What we fail to see is that the hardship does not end with the patient. Their family is often going through a harder time. Behind the cheerful exterior of this strong, wonderful woman was someone who was struggling to hold everything together and quietly blaming herself for not being able to care for her husband.
Caring for patients with chronic illness at home can be exhausting, and caregivers carry a weight that stays hidden from the outside world. They struggle silently, unable to voice it, weighed down by guilt for even feeling that way about the people they love.
I see families of patients admitted in the ICU visiting every day, some staying overnight, eating, sleeping and working beside their loved ones. They watch them go through pain, procedures, surgeries, intubations- never sure what the outcome will be, or whether this may be the last day they get to see them.
Caregivers carry a burden far heavier than the one we see. So, this is a shout-out to every family standing beside a loved one, whether chronically ill at home or admitted to the hospital. You are strong, you are capable- and whoever you are sitting beside must be proud and fortunate to have you in their lives.
