Spring of 2006 I
2006 was a rough year in a way. In lots of ways. In March and April of that year, I was the second year resident in the MICU, complete with overnight calls, followed by the very dreaded EP/CHF service, which, although didn't have overnight call, was even worse, what with the incredibly long hours, endless rounds, and patients who were so sick, and whose organ systems were so at war with each other, no one knew exactly what to do with them (help one organ, kill the other, type of dilemma) while they waited for a heart transplant.
Around the second week of my MICU rotation, my grandmother got sick. I was on the T around 2 pm on my way home after a sleepless night, dreaming about a hot shower, a soapy scrub, and then crawling inbetween crisp sheets, and passing out until dinner time. My grandmother called me onthe cell phone, and said she had a stomach ache. I was so fatigued, I felt nervous I would have to turn around and go back to her house, but she said she didn't want the hospital, so I sighed with relief and went home to sleep. Because I had to sleep during the day, I turned off all the phones, drew all the shades, plugged up my ears and put on a mask.
When I woke up 3 hours later, I found progressively more panicked messages from Grandma and my mom... I called an ambulance to her house to bring her to the hospital.
And this I will never ever forget: I also called the ER resident, one of ours, to tell her to be on the lookout for grandma, and she coldly told me that it's really busy and she'll have to wait just like everyone else... for the rest of that year until this resident left, I would give her a dirty look every time I saw her, hoping that this passive aggressive childishness would somehow bring around karma?
The ER experience sucked. She was stuck in Obs, and no one saw her for 2 hours, she moaned and puked and my mom paced the floor... When they finally did see her, she was diagnosed with pancreatitis, and admitted. An evil nurse had to follow protocol and wouldn't let my mom interpret for her. Demanded my grandmother put a number on her pain, refusing to take, "It HURTS!" as an answer. Pancreatitis! That shit hurts!!
Anyway, her hospitalization was long, she became septic, went to the ICU, came out of the ICU, developed all kinds of fluid collections and necrosis, and eventually all this led to her being made CMO, and us spending 9 days by her bedside torturing ourselves with doubts about whether we were doing the right thing? There are lots of painful stories there too, like when the asshole radiology resident called me in the middle of rounds and said that if I don't come down to translate, he will not do the procedure, and send her back to the ICU. Why did I not complain about him? Or when, as I was doing chest compressions, and pushing amiodarone on one of those disastrous CHF patients, the nurse would tap me on the shoulder and shove a consent for blood products in my face. Or when instead of calling the resident on call, the nurse from my grandmother's floor called me at night to tell me her blood pressure was 60/palp. I thought I would crack.
One day, we were making rounds in the CCU, literally across from my grandmother's room, and my husband called in distress to tell me that his grandfather fell and broke his hip. I didn't know his grandfather very well, but I did know that he was the favorite grandson, named after him, looked like him, etc... and I felt the vise tighten around me, and evil tears squeeze past all barriers... Like, anything else to go wrong? An 88 year old man breaks a hip. We all know what that means, and I think I even blurted that out to my husband, in the form of "Oh shit, this is it, honey..." My team asked me if I need a minute, but what was there to do?
Anyway, Hubby and I had been planning a trip to Paris that was on the brink of being canceled on account of grandma being sick.
But after getting out of the ICU, she sort of started fading.
One day, I was semi-fighting with my mom on the phone about something, and she pleaded with me (pleaded is the only word I can think of): "Stop it, my mother is dying!" That was, I think the first time anyone said that. I didn't like hearing it. There was a big pause. I said, "She isn't..." But it sounded lame even to me. My mom said, "Yes she is, I didn't think so before, but now I do. She is slipping away from me..." We hung up, and I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I called her back, and apologized. And I never apologize because... I hate it, but more about that in another post. But I did here, because I imagined my mom shrunk against the back of their chenile couch, sitting there, imagining her mom dying, and it broke my heart.
We put grandma on pain medication and that made her fall asleep. She faded and faded, got smaller and smaller, quieter and quieter, and finally, one morning was found pulseless and without respirations.
We went to pick up her stuff at the hospital, and I stayed outside the room and behind the curtain. I didn't want to see her dead body. I was scared. Ironic, no? Medical education starts with a dead body, and you see numbers of dead bodies in training. But... I don't know what about it was so scary to me. Maybe because in this state, just passed, still warm, she looked too much like an alive person, versus when you see her in the coffin, already painted and cold, that it would just drive the knife in deeper? Maybe because without verbalizing it, I felt that I didn't need a body to celebrate her life and mourn her death? I don't know, because none of these thought processes were conscious or coherent in my head. I just know that I got a phone call first thing in the morning, from my mother who sounded hysterical, rushing me to get up and go to the hospital and in my sleepy haze, I asked, what, what's wrong? And she snapped at me, "My mother died, what do you think is wrong!" and that was how I got the news. Interestingly enough, I was mad, and wanted to fight, but somehow, good sense stifled that urge in me.
As Jewish customs have it, the funeral had to happen within 24 hours, so we had a memorial, a graveside service, she was interred next to her sister and that was that. It was all very quick.
We went to her apartment. The association told us we could remove whatever we wanted, the neighbors would take the rest, and whatever was left would go to Goodwill. I thought, less than 2 months ago, I came here after work, after shopping in DownTown crossing, apt 513, surprised her, took a nap on her couch. She covered my feet with a blanket like she always did, couldn't stand someone sleeping whose feet weren't covered. She tried to feed me, but I refused.
We went, and after the initial shock and nausea at seeing her apartment like she had just left it... blue sweater... cane... pair of slippers... after swallowing the initial nausea, we collected the pictures, the family heirlooms in the form of one pair of malachite earrings, 1 antique vodka carafe, 6 bone china cups with saucers and 2 very old jewelry boxes full of loose pills and hairpins, and the few items I wanted to keep that reminded me of her, a scarf, a beret. All that filled a box and a half. 82 years of life, and what was left was a box and a half of pictures and loose items...
After that, she was gone, just like that.
We still wanted to cancel the Paris trip, but my mom announced that grandma would have said, "See?, I died in time for you to go to Paris. You should go."
So we went.
But it wasn't good.
Around the second week of my MICU rotation, my grandmother got sick. I was on the T around 2 pm on my way home after a sleepless night, dreaming about a hot shower, a soapy scrub, and then crawling inbetween crisp sheets, and passing out until dinner time. My grandmother called me onthe cell phone, and said she had a stomach ache. I was so fatigued, I felt nervous I would have to turn around and go back to her house, but she said she didn't want the hospital, so I sighed with relief and went home to sleep. Because I had to sleep during the day, I turned off all the phones, drew all the shades, plugged up my ears and put on a mask.
When I woke up 3 hours later, I found progressively more panicked messages from Grandma and my mom... I called an ambulance to her house to bring her to the hospital.
And this I will never ever forget: I also called the ER resident, one of ours, to tell her to be on the lookout for grandma, and she coldly told me that it's really busy and she'll have to wait just like everyone else... for the rest of that year until this resident left, I would give her a dirty look every time I saw her, hoping that this passive aggressive childishness would somehow bring around karma?
The ER experience sucked. She was stuck in Obs, and no one saw her for 2 hours, she moaned and puked and my mom paced the floor... When they finally did see her, she was diagnosed with pancreatitis, and admitted. An evil nurse had to follow protocol and wouldn't let my mom interpret for her. Demanded my grandmother put a number on her pain, refusing to take, "It HURTS!" as an answer. Pancreatitis! That shit hurts!!
Anyway, her hospitalization was long, she became septic, went to the ICU, came out of the ICU, developed all kinds of fluid collections and necrosis, and eventually all this led to her being made CMO, and us spending 9 days by her bedside torturing ourselves with doubts about whether we were doing the right thing? There are lots of painful stories there too, like when the asshole radiology resident called me in the middle of rounds and said that if I don't come down to translate, he will not do the procedure, and send her back to the ICU. Why did I not complain about him? Or when, as I was doing chest compressions, and pushing amiodarone on one of those disastrous CHF patients, the nurse would tap me on the shoulder and shove a consent for blood products in my face. Or when instead of calling the resident on call, the nurse from my grandmother's floor called me at night to tell me her blood pressure was 60/palp. I thought I would crack.
One day, we were making rounds in the CCU, literally across from my grandmother's room, and my husband called in distress to tell me that his grandfather fell and broke his hip. I didn't know his grandfather very well, but I did know that he was the favorite grandson, named after him, looked like him, etc... and I felt the vise tighten around me, and evil tears squeeze past all barriers... Like, anything else to go wrong? An 88 year old man breaks a hip. We all know what that means, and I think I even blurted that out to my husband, in the form of "Oh shit, this is it, honey..." My team asked me if I need a minute, but what was there to do?
Anyway, Hubby and I had been planning a trip to Paris that was on the brink of being canceled on account of grandma being sick.
But after getting out of the ICU, she sort of started fading.
One day, I was semi-fighting with my mom on the phone about something, and she pleaded with me (pleaded is the only word I can think of): "Stop it, my mother is dying!" That was, I think the first time anyone said that. I didn't like hearing it. There was a big pause. I said, "She isn't..." But it sounded lame even to me. My mom said, "Yes she is, I didn't think so before, but now I do. She is slipping away from me..." We hung up, and I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I called her back, and apologized. And I never apologize because... I hate it, but more about that in another post. But I did here, because I imagined my mom shrunk against the back of their chenile couch, sitting there, imagining her mom dying, and it broke my heart.
We put grandma on pain medication and that made her fall asleep. She faded and faded, got smaller and smaller, quieter and quieter, and finally, one morning was found pulseless and without respirations.
We went to pick up her stuff at the hospital, and I stayed outside the room and behind the curtain. I didn't want to see her dead body. I was scared. Ironic, no? Medical education starts with a dead body, and you see numbers of dead bodies in training. But... I don't know what about it was so scary to me. Maybe because in this state, just passed, still warm, she looked too much like an alive person, versus when you see her in the coffin, already painted and cold, that it would just drive the knife in deeper? Maybe because without verbalizing it, I felt that I didn't need a body to celebrate her life and mourn her death? I don't know, because none of these thought processes were conscious or coherent in my head. I just know that I got a phone call first thing in the morning, from my mother who sounded hysterical, rushing me to get up and go to the hospital and in my sleepy haze, I asked, what, what's wrong? And she snapped at me, "My mother died, what do you think is wrong!" and that was how I got the news. Interestingly enough, I was mad, and wanted to fight, but somehow, good sense stifled that urge in me.
As Jewish customs have it, the funeral had to happen within 24 hours, so we had a memorial, a graveside service, she was interred next to her sister and that was that. It was all very quick.
We went to her apartment. The association told us we could remove whatever we wanted, the neighbors would take the rest, and whatever was left would go to Goodwill. I thought, less than 2 months ago, I came here after work, after shopping in DownTown crossing, apt 513, surprised her, took a nap on her couch. She covered my feet with a blanket like she always did, couldn't stand someone sleeping whose feet weren't covered. She tried to feed me, but I refused.
We went, and after the initial shock and nausea at seeing her apartment like she had just left it... blue sweater... cane... pair of slippers... after swallowing the initial nausea, we collected the pictures, the family heirlooms in the form of one pair of malachite earrings, 1 antique vodka carafe, 6 bone china cups with saucers and 2 very old jewelry boxes full of loose pills and hairpins, and the few items I wanted to keep that reminded me of her, a scarf, a beret. All that filled a box and a half. 82 years of life, and what was left was a box and a half of pictures and loose items...
After that, she was gone, just like that.
We still wanted to cancel the Paris trip, but my mom announced that grandma would have said, "See?, I died in time for you to go to Paris. You should go."
So we went.
But it wasn't good.
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