jeanne Last night, I found out that my neurology patient, the 35 year-old woman who'd had the massive right-sided stroke, passed away two weeks after we finished our rotation. She had been in the CCU for several days before being moved back to the Neuro unit, after which time she had another massive pulmonary embolus and died. I heard the news from another medical student who picked up the service after I left. They still don't know why all this happened. How can an otherwise healthy 35 year-old woman have such a catastrophic stroke, enter the hospital, and never come out again? These are the kinds of outcomes that are just unthinkable. I lay awake in bed for a long time last night. I remember the way she looked when she was admitted, lying over on the right side of her bed, with flaccid paralysis of her entire left side. I remember how sleepy she always seemed, because of the edema pushing on her brain. I remember calling her home phone in an effort to get in touch with her fiancee, and hearing her voice on the answering machine ("Hi, this is Jeanne, I'm sorry I can't answer the phone right now...") so happy and full of energy and so different from the patient lying in the bed three doors away. I knew so little about her. She liked basketball. She and her fiancee liked to go to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks play when they got the chance. Sometimes they would share a tub of popcorn. Her fiancee loved her very much. He helped her brush her teeth. He helped her comb her hair. He held her hand and told her that things were going to be all right, even when it wasn't clear that they would. One morning, when I came in, there was a little note from him sitting on her meal tray to the left of her bed. It was signed, "All my love, Donell." I moved it over to the right side of her bed so that she could see it--because of the stroke, she could no longer see on her left. She had a twelve year-old daughter. I don't know her name. I never asked. The night I admitted her to the Neurology unit, Jeanne looked at me and asked, "Am I going to die?" I smiled and told her that she wasn't. What else could you say? Joe told me last night. It's the only thing you could have said, really. I agree. But the thing is, it's not so much that I told her something that ended up being a lie. It's that at the time, I believed it. xo Michelle |
Saturday . April 13 . 2002 . 10:12am |
jeanne Last night, I found out that my neurology patient, the 35 year-old woman who'd had the massive right-sided stroke, passed away two weeks after we finished our rotation. She had been in the CCU for several days before being moved back to the Neuro unit, after which time she had another massive pulmonary embolus and died. I heard the news from another medical student who picked up the service after I left. They still don't know why all this happened. How can an otherwise healthy 35 year-old woman have such a catastrophic stroke, enter the hospital, and never come out again? These are the kinds of outcomes that are just unthinkable. I lay awake in bed for a long time last night. I remember the way she looked when she was admitted, lying over on the right side of her bed, with flaccid paralysis of her entire left side. I remember how sleepy she always seemed, because of the edema pushing on her brain. I remember calling her home phone in an effort to get in touch with her fiancee, and hearing her voice on the answering machine ("Hi, this is Jeanne, I'm sorry I can't answer the phone right now...") so happy and full of energy and so different from the patient lying in the bed three doors away. I knew so little about her. She liked basketball. She and her fiancee liked to go to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks play when they got the chance. Sometimes they would share a tub of popcorn. Her fiancee loved her very much. He helped her brush her teeth. He helped her comb her hair. He held her hand and told her that things were going to be all right, even when it wasn't clear that they would. One morning, when I came in, there was a little note from him sitting on her meal tray to the left of her bed. It was signed, "All my love, Donell." I moved it over to the right side of her bed so that she could see it--because of the stroke, she could no longer see on her left. She had a twelve year-old daughter. I don't know her name. I never asked. The night I admitted her to the Neurology unit, Jeanne looked at me and asked, "Am I going to die?" I smiled and told her that she wasn't. What else could you say? Joe told me last night. It's the only thing you could have said, really. I agree. But the thing is, it's not so much that I told her something that ended up being a lie. It's that at the time, I believed it. xo Michelle |
