Day ten, Forty Days Of Patience (and other good stuff).

Black Friday

I lost another patient today, that's two in a fortnight. The one last week I never met or even spoke to, but with the first issue of an end of life prescription or 'death pack' as I call it (purely to divert the emotion and magnitude) shortly before Christmas, all of us at work became more involved and concerned with the care and wellbeing of this gentleman.
It was a relatively quick decline but a slow fade that was almost excruciating at times to be a part of, mine and my colleague's role in this man's life was simply to ensure he received the medications the Doctors and Nurses prescribed. We spoke to his family, liaised with the relevant people and he, along with everyone else involved were in my prayers daily.
When we got the news he had passed away, I felt a kind of relief for him and his family, it seems wrong to admit that but when you can hear the overwhelming desperation, pain, hopelessness and fear in someone's voice like that of his relatives then yeah, it's a hard reaction. I could see it when they dropped off his old medications for destruction (another stark reality of working in this gig). I gave condolences from all of us and said we're here if they need anything, there was sadness but a little spark of hope and for the life of me I really regret not giving that poor woman a hug.
I hope she takes comfort in knowing he's somewhere SO cool right now and that he's thankful he raised such an amazing woman.

My second patient, a lady this time, was the kind of old dear that has you bamboozled, she must have been approaching, or in her 90's yet she was still pin sharp.
Quick witted, funny and kind and I had the pleasure of talking with her quite a bit over the last few months. Her passing came totally out of the blue, yes, she was admitted into hospital briefly last week but we see this a lot and the majority of our patients will return home and get back to normal straight away.
This one made me cry in a different way, not relief, but sadness. I will miss her. If I ever have a baby girl (I really want all boys because girls are generally a pain in the arse) this woman's name is definitely a front runner.
I got a phonecall from her daughter in-law later in the afternoon and when I told her how much we all loved her mother in-law and that she will be greatly missed, she sounded pretty surprised and almost proud. I'm not sure how I picked that up but yeah, it's funny how you can leave such an impact that even those closest to you know nothing about. I can only hope that one day I can do the same, although I doubt it as I'm a bit of a recluse but at least I'm always nice to the guys at the Post Office.

Cripes. This is a very woeful post today isn't it?
I guess the overall message is we will all have an impact on someone. I'm 100% sure my patient from last week had absolutely no clue I was praying for both strength for his loved ones and peace & comfort for him. I even prayed that we'd have no trouble getting his medications to the house.
We'll never know who we affect so I suppose we should just be nice to everyone (even the mean ones) or just turn the other cheek & that. Or actually, maybe when we get to Heaven we'll have the option of watching our 'life ripples', a sort of Netflix type thing where it will just keep on constantly playing episode after episode with different people's reaction on hearing the news of our deaths.


Rating ~ Sleep tight sweet souls