Monthly Archives: May 2022

The Moments We Have Together

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I would think of her often after we met as I hurried down the hospital walls. I always hurry down the hospital halls…rarely because I needed to hurry, usually just because it’s nice to stretch my legs. Sometimes the memory of her bright eyes would shoot across my mind as I opened the electronic health record system to work on different patients.

She had come to the hospital with a stroke. I followed her during the few weeks after she was diagnosed, during her acute recovery in the hospital. I met her on the medicine floor and then wandered the hospital until I found the rehabilitation center wing where she was moved one night.

After the first day when I conducted a thorough history and assessment of the patient, my visits were just “social visits” – the term for checking in with a patient or their family for the singular purpose of offering support rather than providing a medical update. She hated the hospital and visiting hours started late in the morning. I’d visit her before her family could be with her to help pass some time until they came.

Strokes cause a range of outcomes. Her outcome was good; long-term she was a little weak and a little off balance but still sharp as a tack. Strokes are injuries to the brain. In the first week I followed her, she was very depressed. Strokes can do that. I sat with her in the morning as she described her terrible dreams. Flashbacks to her childhood. She had been a Jewish child in Nazi territory. She described hard times. Her husband had also been in that situation – he had lost his whole family in the concentration camps.

As our days together continued, the patient talked less about WWII and more about her family in the US. She talked about how wonderful her children were. How hard it was now that she was old and her friends were dying. When you get old and people start dying, she told me through her stories, there are fewer people who remember your life experiences. Fewer people who truly know the world you knew.

We chatted about the hospital food. The boredom of sitting in a hospital bed. How playing cards with her children was nice, but barely passed the time. As I got up to go, she’d say, “Come back tomorrow.”

I went back until my school schedule sent me to clinics rather than the hospital. Medicine and the hospital are busy. Healthcare is frustrating and terrible sometimes, even often. When I find myself falling into the pit of work that is any job but especially a job that involves dealing with people and clunky systems all day, I push myself to pause and remember why I went into medicine. The weeks this patient was in the hospital she was my light. I like to think I also helped take the edge off her hospital stay. Seeing patients through sickness is the highlight of medicine in my opinion. Not all stories end as well as hers, but all hospital stays can be made better by our shared moments.   

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Remembering Her This Mother’s Day

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This week I lost a kindred spirit. I met her in college, over 10 years ago now, when I visited a college friend’s home over winter break. She was his mom. And in the decade since I graduated, I lost touch with the friend but never his mother. It was her efforts that kept us connected. In my life she was a cheerleader, frequently offering support and sending messages of encouragement.

In the last decade, she was brave – divorcing, taking on new jobs, moving across the country, and entering seminary – all while being a mom and a middle-aged woman with all the challenges that come with those realities. She was a loud advocate for many people including women and people with disabilities. She was a staunch supporter of her sports teams.

Her death was unexpected. This week my thoughts have been with her children who are without her this Mother’s Day. I have also spent the week reflecting on the positive force she was in my life. I admired her for her fiery spirit and her devotion to the people she loved. As she was a dedicated reader of my blog, I wanted to write a post in her honor.

She believed strongly in God. If the world is what we believe it to be, then she is with her God watching over her children and the others she took under her wing from a new vantage point. May she rest in peace.

The Night Chef

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Overnight, the hospital halls are quiet; all the administrative areas are closed. There seems to be endless dark ends of corridors where no one is. There is the constant beeping of heart monitors and other hospital machines. The night shift’s laugher periodically fills the space – the nurses and others making sure patients get what they need overnight. Of course, if you’re a patient and trying to sleep it seems loud and it’s annoying because you’re woken frequently for vital signs checks and other things.

Some folks chose night shift. Some folks like the autonomy that a less full hospital affords. Some do nights so they can be with their kids during the day. Some do it for the higher pay. Others are just night owls. I do night shift out of necessity – either when the budget requires it or there’s no way out of it. And that is how I found myself in the hospital when I met the night chef. I was on a rotation that had a week of night shifts.

The night chef is the man who runs the grill of the only cafeteria open overnight at the hospital where I train. When your shift is overnight there’s not much to be done but have lunch at midnight. If you’re like me and prefer to be asleep well before midnight, midnight lunch is daunting. On my first night of nights, one of the residents I was working with reassured me that the night chef was one of the best things about night shift. I was curious what she meant.

The night chef can make anything. He’s gregarious and happy despite working at odd hours of the morning. When I met him, I could not understand why he was working in the cafeteria. He is one of those people who could sell anything. You know, one of those lively talkers who connects with anyone. Why had he chosen to be a hospital chef at night?

He welcomed me and the resident I was with when we entered the cafeteria. He listed the delicacies he had imagined that evening. And despite the terrible hour of day, I found myself smiling and feeling only a little guilty for turning down the pizza with gobs of meat he gloated about for a different option.

During my first week of nights, it became routine to visit the night chef at some point. I never bought his most creative dishes, but I did enjoy his cheer.

Eventually my stretch of nights ended. On my last night, I stopped by the cafeteria on my way home. “Will I see you again tomorrow?” the night chef asked.

“No, I’m going back to days.”

“Ugh, too bad,” he said. “But… I understand.”

I went on my merry way wondering if I’d see him again. And, of course, I did soon thereafter because I started my day shift before his night shift ended. He was jolly as ever, even at 6 in the morning after having cooked all night. “Where have you been?” he said the first time I saw him again. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you again too!” I said. I meant it. It doesn’t take much to make someone’s day and his happy greeting made mine that day. The night chef is a master at brightening his customers’ shifts. Perhaps that is why he had chosen to be the hospital night chef. Night shift at the hospital needs him most.