TheBanyanTree: Today's Hospice Story

[Pam Lawley]

Somehow I just don't believe that anything you did with Agnes can be
described as "simple".

You my dear friend, are an angel.

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 6:35 PM, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com>wrote:

> Also found on my various blogs
>
>      “Bedpan,” she croaks out, barely intelligibly, and her right hand, the
> only one that still works, flutters on the covering sheet before grasping
> and pushing it down.
>
>                “I’m sorry,” I tell her, “But I can’t, they told me not to.”
> Besides that, I think but don’t say, I’m spectacularly unqualified to lift
> you, and if I move you I’m likely to hurt you, I’m an accountant, and we
> don’t know how to do these things. Got any numbers you’d like me to add up?
>
>                But she’s insistent. “Go potty,” she says, again, and so I
> make a half-hearted stab at it, which is what I do when people want things,
> getting the bedpan, rolling her slightly, but I see she is heavily diapered
> and double diapered, so there’s no chance.
>
>                I tell her I know it’s hard, but if she really must go, to
> go ahead and go. They told me they’d clean her up when they got home so it
> “may be stinky,” they’d said. I’m not so much worried about being offended
> by smells as I am by Agnes’s reluctance. She looks at me uncomprehendingly,
> as if I’ve suggested she climb a try and shit on innocent passers-by.
>
>                “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, because I really don’t.
> “Someone will be here soon to help with this.”
>
>                The phone rings repeatedly this morning, between the hours
> of 8:30 and noon. Hospice, the physical therapist is coming between 1 and
> 2.
>
>                Hospice, again, the aide is coming for a bath and such
> between 11 and 12.
>
>                The pharmacy, they have something in that someone wanted for
> Agnes.
>
>                A salesman. I don’t care.
>
>                Hospice, again, for the third time, the RN, and she’ll be by
> between 3:30 and 5:00.
>
>                I hope that’s everyone. Dying takes a village.
>
>                But hey, someone’s going to be here between 11:00 and 11:30,
> giving me and Agnes hope for a future potty break.
>
>                Agnes does not want to wait, and again, for the third time,
> she pulls down the sheet and tries to turn, saying, “potty,” and gesturing
> at me to do something about it. I do something about it all right. I lean
> in
> close to her and say, “Someone will be here soon from hospice,” and I pull
> the sheet back up so she won’t get cold.
>
>                Helpful I am.
>
>                Water. Ice. Water. Ice. Agnes is insatiable today. I give
> her teaspoons of water and ice, one after the other, and she keeps asking
> for more. “Thirsty, today, aren’t you?” I ask her, and she smiles at me. I
> wouldn’t really know if she’s thirstier today than usual. This is my first
> day with Agnes.
>
>                She gets me to come over again and move her forward, and she
> indicates she wants her back scratched, so I do, over the thin nightie, and
> I feel all her bones, as if she’s barely anything else at all, nothing more
> than bones anymore.
>
>                There are a profusion of kitties living here, but I don’t
> remember all the details. Two kittens locked in one bedroom, but if they
> come out another cat can’t be in. A cat in another room, and she can’t go
> outside. And another cat, a Siamese, who can’t come in except under certain
> circumstances that escape me (maybe when the kittens are in hiding?). It’s
> okay though, for none of them make any pretense of being present and if I
> didn’t know better they wouldn’t even exist.
>
>                Water. Ice. Bed up. Agnes likes to sit up, and then I prop
> her up with pillows. But then she removes the one on the side holding her
> head up, so her head falls forward when she starts dozing. She looks
> uncomfortable, but last time I attempted to make her more comfortable her
> eyes popped open and she said something that could have been, “water.” Or
> it
> could have been “who are you and what have you done with my daughters?” It
> could have been, “get me out of this hell hole,” but I doubt it. But when I
> offered her water from a teaspoon her eyes lit up, faded blue, the only
> spots of color left in her, and she opened her mouth wide.
>
>                The aide comes and takes care of the potty issue, and she
> gives Agnes a partial, which I suppose means a partial bath, and she makes
> Agnes comfortable again. The aide is efficient and kind and beautiful, she
> speaks loudly enough that Agnes can understand what’s being done, and
> before
> she leaves she bends down close to Agnes and says, “Thank you for letting
> me
> take care of you today.” Agnes smiles at her, beatifically, from her
> horizontal position, drifting off to sleep. On Friday the aide will return
> for a full bath.
>
>                I think Agnes might sleep now, she must be exhausted, and
> the physical therapist is coming in an hour, but no, it was an act for the
> aide, and as soon as she’s gone Agnes wants to sit up, she wants water, she
> wants the bed this way and that.
>
>                I’m not allowed to give meds, so I hope Agnes’s pain holds
> off for a bit longer. I’m not allowed to do much of anything but spoon feed
> water, adjust the bed and pillows, answer the phone, talk to Agnes, and
> help
> myself to anything in the kitchen.
>
>                I don’t, I never, except once when I was starving at Fred’s
> and decided one piece of toast would be okay, eat at a patient’s house.
>
>                I hold Agnes’s hand, and I look at our hands together. At
> 93, Agnes has a few years on me, so suddenly my middle-aged hand looks
> younger. Want to shave years off your appearance? Hang around old people. I
> tell Agnes her ring is pretty and she smiles, and it’s a pretty good smile
> for someone who has cancer and had a stroke two weeks ago.
>
>                I know so little about Agnes, except her name, and that she
> has two twin daughters who are taking care of her. I know what’s killing
> her, and it’s the same thing that killed my friend Stew, and my mom, and I
> wonder if she said everything she had to say before the stroke happened. I
> hope she didn’t wait too long to say anything that needed to be said.
>
>                Agnes’s grandson comes home, and tells me he’s not usually
> back from work so soon, but his mom, one of the daughters, called him and
> said she needs a couple more tests and so they’ll be later than they’d
> planned. I’d told them that was okay, I could hang around until . . .
> whenever they got back, and I tell him the same thing. He’d watch her, if I
> needed to leave, but Agnes doesn’t like him to watch her because he’s a man
> with important things to do. Her daughter tells me later that when Agnes
> was
> still getting around she didn’t like her grandson to take her to the store,
> because it’s not right to expect a man to wait around while one goes
> shopping. I tell him not to worry about it, I’ll just keep hanging out with
> Agnes, and he goes to his room. At least if Agnes needs something for the
> pain he’s there now, so I can say, “Look, let’s give her something for the
> pain,” and I won’t be overstepping my bounds.
>
>                Agnes does start to drift off then, sitting up, her head
> slumped forward a bit, sleeping, finally, and when her daughters get home
> she’s still asleep, and I leave her like that. I tell them I’ll come back
> next week, and at first the daughter I’m talking to doesn’t understand that
> they don’t need to have doctor’s appointments, they don’t need to have an
> urgent task to attend to, if all they want is a couple of free hours to
> take
> a break from the 24 hour responsibility I can fill in, providing water and
> ice and the occasional back rub, and all they have to do is tell me what
> time they want me there.
>
>                Volunteers just do the simple things, like give people a
> little bit of time.
>
> --
> Monique Colver
>