A Few Days On 'Another Planet'

  This week I’ve spent in a hospice. You know, the place where there are people who have no shelter. Actually there often live people who don’t want to dwell in even much more suitable places, each for his/her own reasons. Many of them are able to get along with their friends or neighbors. What I’ve seen being their therapist really surprised me, sometimes kindly, unpleasantly at times. I’d like to share my tiny observations been noticed for such a short time, but in an amount sufficient for some speculation at least from my side. 

1. Largely the hospice residents are quite sick people. Some of them have lost their limbs (among my six patients there two such persons). Others have health problems that have disabled them for self-service, partly or completely (two of my wards are totally helpless).   

2. Severity of health problems vary widely. There are lots of people with cancer of different localization. One of my patients has thyroid cancer, another woman suffers from a bronchocarcinoma. Others can have such diseases as coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus in quite a severe form with levels of fasting sugar about 20-25 µmol/l (our normal index is 3.3-6.6 µmol/l), consequences of hemorrhage or ischemic stroke, etc.   

3. Lots of patients have mental disorders owing to their age or the specificity of the institution. Anyway, these people are isolated from the world they once belonged to.    

4. The conditions in the hospice are tolerable. Everything is clean, there are most of living things which ease their lives.    

5. As a rule, these patients don’t take extremely useful or serious treatment. More of this they need communication and care.    

Walking along the corridors, running from one floor and aisle to the others, I usually think about the situation. While talking with my patients for a long time I begin to put myself in their place. I often hear claims such as: “I’m waiting for the God to take me there” or “How can I live such a life? You can’t understand”. I wonder with fear in my thoughts: what a cruel thing the fate is. Actually, for a person once dwelling a full life the loss of precious health and capacity must be akin the end of life. Imagine one has to be strong-willed enough not to…  

But among them all there are ones who stay afloat in the river of life, for example this my 94-year old lady who lost her lower limb, but hasn’t lost this astonishing blue glow in her eyes. She welcomes me every time I enter her room (each patient has his/her own apartment, unlike a hospital department where 6 or 8 people share one room). When I’m going to leave her, she invariably asks me to “come again even for three minutes”. This humility in front of the situation infects and fills with the energy. And then I’m ashamed of my small laments for life.  

Every day I do my best encouraging my wards to find something in themselves worth to live for.  

Pictures taken from pixabay.com