| | 2 Old Men
I've got a new man in my life. Two, actually. And both are well over 80. I really often feel that I was born in the wrong century. Underneath the thinning white hair, the sagging pale skin, the wheezing cough of a too-many pack-year tobacco history, I can sometimes glimpse the strapping young men these two octogenarians used to be. I can almost picture them boarding the ship in their crisp uniforms, off to join their comrades on the front lines of WWII. It's such a tragedy that time makes a mockery of our youth.
One of these gentlemen I've known since I moved to Houston. He parks his old green Ford Taurus in the parking space next to mine. When he first crossed the parking line to say hello, his hair was gray, his walk was steady, and his handshake was strong. He was a retired high school teacher, recently divorced. He liked driving down to Galveston to walk the beaches at sunset. I think he was a little lonely, but otherwise living a peaceful retirement. Then he disappeared for a few months. I thought nothing of it, since I was too busy with school to really notice. One day though, I noticed the Taurus back in its spot, and there was a stooping figure next to it. The change over my friend was staggering. His neat gray hair had become a disheveled shock of white. His cheeks and eyes had sunk into his face, and he walked with a telltale shuffle. Where had he been? In the hospital, he said, for depression. Over the next few months, I watched sadly as he gained weight, shrunk in stature, and developed the purposeless tongue movements of tardive dyskinesia. For Easter two years ago, I left a card and a Tea Forte teabag on his Taurus window. I don't know... maybe I was hoping he'd feel a little less alone. Last night, I stopped at CVS for some shampoo and accidentally stole a parking spot from a car that was trying to back in. In the dark, I didn't notice the dark green Taurus, but a few minutes inside CVS, a familiar figure came shuffling down the aisle towards me. My friend was actually headed for the burger joint next door, but he had seen me get out of my car, and he came in to find me. Turns out he remembers the Easter card and tea... he actually quoted to me word-for-word what I had jotted on the card. He asked for a hug before leaving for his burger. It wrings my heart to think of how lonely he must be.
The 2nd gentleman was a patient of mine. An old Navy vet who smoked for too long and has a horrid infection in his tobacco-destroyed lungs. The bug is related to TB. It will probably claim his life. But we still want to treat it with 3 different intravenous antibiotics for a total of a month. Maybe it'll buy him a good year... he's otherwise pretty healthy. Here's the rub: IV drugs can only be given in the hospital, unless we get the interventional radiologists to place a PICC line, but in a socialized system like the VA the wait for a PICC is several days/weeks, by that time he'll have finished his course of antibiotics. But this man wanted to go home, so desperately that he stopped eating. Every morning, I'd walk into his room to see him curled miserably in bed, his wife of 63 years standing by his side, tears running down her face. "We've lived a good life, can't I just take him home, I think I could get him to eat at home..." She has stage II cancer herself, but refuses to start radiation while her husband's still in the hospital. Oh for the love of all-things-sacred. I spent my mornings cajoling him to eat a corner of toast, my afternoons hounding the social workers/surgeons/radiologists for a PICC, my evenings on the phone with both his daughters and a smattering of grandchildren trying to explain why their father/granddad could not yet go home. The man was a pleasant guy (if you made allowances for his frustrations), and his wife was a sweetheart. But 3 weeks at the VA would try anyone's patience, especially if the night float occasionally orders you to be put into restraints for tugging on your (understandably uncomfortable) Foley. When I rotated off the service last week, he was still there, faithful wife by his side. I went in to say good-bye. He shook my hand and held it, thanking me for what I had done for him. I felt like I hadn't done anything helpful and wished with all my might that our healthcare system wasn't so daggone uncompassionate.
These 2 men haunt my thoughts. Why do we condemn our elderly to loneliness, to the indignities of useless hospital stays? Why are our youth so darn eager to journey to faraway places and "underserved nations," but unwilling to pay attention to the quiet man in the parking spot next door? Why are we so damn busy that we can't have a burger with an old man, and so scared that the thought actually crosses my mind that this would be an imprudent thing for a single woman to do? Why do I only care about these 2 men because they were literally thrown into my path, to be forgotten by the time next week rolls around?
The more I think about it, the more vivid my hypocrisy stands out, the more shallow the American Christian church seems. Simon, son of John, do you love me? Feed my sheep.
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| | Posted 3/31/2008 12:30 AM - 198 Views - 10 eProps - 5 comments
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