The END Part of Life

It was a good windy day yesterday (a Monday) as I was on my way to work via 10W to Santa Monica. The traffic, like always, a horrible. Nevertheless, I made it to work on time and luckily found a prized spot to park my car right near the entrance of the hospital. And so I started the shift with Gustavo, 30 minutes behind the schedule.

It's the same old grind. You introduce yourself and your partner to the patient in bed, telling them them the reason you are there and so on. Mostly, you'll always find a "dear-on-the-headlight" type of face in most of them. No matter how sick they are, they'd still get surprised, wondered and scared sometimes seeing two men in scrubs on both sides of their bed. Real scary sights for patients,.. more so to geriatrics. More than half of them are just passive. They just let you do your job and just sleep on it.

I've been doing this job for several months now. And I learned so many valuable things about life, maybe on the end-of-life for that matter. An in-your-face reality that you can never run away from. One way or another, it will happen to all of us: the old age and death.

One lady in her early senior years had been confine for weeks now. Her name is Beatrice M. When I saw her name in my list of patients to check the first time, I thought she was a hispanic. She's from my home country. Not so often have I seen patients from my country. It seems natural to see them as my own. Like a family.

She's been sickly. The first time I saw her some weeks ago, she was alert and got some strength to tell us what she wanted, how she wanted, and so on. Yet the other day when I saw her again, life somehow is wanting to go away from her. She's just passive and in pain even in the slightest movement of her body. Yet she comprehend every thing that's going on around her.

Last night, as me and Gustavo were doing our first round, there was no good spirit in room 817. When we saw Beatrice M. laboring to breath, I asked her how she was.

"Shortness of breath,... help me", weakly yet very articulately said to us. Immediately, I stepped out of the room and looked for a nurse. "SOB on 17!" I said.

A couple of staff jumped from their seat and went. I felt so horrible on that moment because I know, and I have an inkling of what's gonna happen next.

That's the last time I saw her with life.

And my thoughts were everything about that aspect of life, the whole night of the shift,.. and the day followed. As I was driving my way home the morning after, my mind were tired yet the thought of that part of life,... the end part of life is still haunting on me. Life can be cruel sometimes. And then I remember that little "thought of the day" thing poster posted inside the Metro bus. It said:

"birthing is hard.

dying is mean.

give yourself a little

loving in between."

That's right. Gotta have 'em.

That loving in between.