I'm walking down the hall of the main wing at work, and the sound of a man playing guitar and singing reaches my ears. This is not a sound I hear often in this place. I peer into the room - it's a younger man, and I'm slightly caught off guard, as he has a strikingly beautiful singing voice. He is sitting next to the bed of a woman I have never treated, but have ofttimes seen sitting in her gerichair in the same wing I'm at now. This woman cannot speak. She cannot move her arms or her legs, and she appears to be in pain all of the time, because her face is locked into an almost permanent grimace. My heart goes out to her every day I see her, and I always make sure to make eye contact with her as I walk past her when she's out, and smile. I do this not to be pitying, but because it's a fact I've found, that a lot of people in places like where I work, just need to be seen. Need to be heard. We strip our elderly of so much in these places - to the point where I feel that they can almost lost a part of their identity. All of us in these settings should practice kindness, treating others like individuals, like humans with rich backgrounds, sick or not. This woman is on hospice. She has looked progressively worse over the past few weeks. Her roommate used to be so sweet to her. She'd sit out and hold hands with the lady, but her family moved her somewhere else, so now she doesn't have anyone to sit with her and quietly hold her hand throughout the days. I walked past that room and it almost made me tear up, to hear the man with the sweet voice singing her beautiful songs. I hope it brought some beauty to her life.
I'm treating a man yesterday. We are sitting outside, as he gets cold in the gym. "I've been here before," he says. "Twice. But I can't remember. I know I forget things, but sometimes I even forget that, too."
A woman called me over to her bedside while I was treating her roommate. She has been on hospice for a while now. A lot of times, she seems to speak jibberish, or yells, or doesn't make sense. But she looked at me today and in the clearest voice said, "What am I going to do once my roommate goes home?"
"I don't know," I replied. "I'm certain you'll get a new one."
"But we get along so well."
"I'm glad to hear it.", I responded.
"No, you don't understand. What am I going to do? Who am I going to talk to? You don't understand what it's like to be me. I'm just a dying woman who wants to be recognized. Don't you understand that? I just want someone to talk to me. I just want someone to be here. I'm so lonely."
Isn't it hard not to keep your heart from breaking when you hear these things?
Days like this make me think: what fragile senses of control we have over our lives. Just when we think we've got it, something out of our control always seems to happen, stealing away that carefully sought after sense of security. This was diabetes for me, and I'm sure as you read this, you can easily think of something that's been that for you. Working where I do always seems to solidify this for me, because here it's the things out of people's control that seem to steal away everything - even their recollection of the fact that anything is gone at all. It's easy to mourn for these things. If I stored away all of the sadness from my own life and the lives of the people I treat in my heart, it would be too much to bear. These things are designed to make us stronger, I suppose, but really, some days I just get tired. Where does the suffering of humankind end? Or does it? There's an answer to this if you're Christian - we certainly aren't promised easy lives, or lives where we won't suffer. This world is full of suffering and pain, just as much as it is matched with unspeakable joy, love, and goodness. This is what it is to be human in a nutshell, and as much as this can be hard to see face to face each day sometimes, it's a powerful reminder, that through our suffering, we must savor the little moments with beauty and peace, and build ourselves up to be strong, to face these times of hardship.
I can't even begin to express to you how much I have learned over the course of one year practicing as a physical therapist. And the crazy thing is, the important things I've learned aren't even about my clinical skills (although I've learned a lot of those). They're about working with people. They're about caring about people. This month marks one year of officially being employed, and August one year of working at my skilled nursing facility. My job is hard, and many would not consider it ideal or enjoyable. My office is a closet, the place where I work smells like, well, a nursing home, the gym could stand to be updated, the rehab department is currently a little bit of a hot mess, and I have days where patients yell at me, have hit me, and have projectile vomited across the room. We work holidays. A patient asked me the other day what I wanted to do, and when I told him I'm doing it, he seemed very surprised. There is little recognition. The paperwork is intense. Our stories of victories often go unsung. But, in my heart there is still a really big love for it. We must dive headfirst into often what seems like dark places to truly understand other people and why we are here. It is through the unpraised hard work, the little things that you know you can do, that you learn what is is to help other people, or if nothing else, why they need help so bad. I'm not saying go work at a nursing home, by any means. That's not for everyone nor does it need to be. But what I'm saying is, take a little extra time today to listen and open your eyes and ears to humanity. Ask yourself if there's something you can do. If an opportunity presents itself to help someone, consider doing it. And be kind. Above all, be kind. I try to remind myself of this daily, especially when I'm not feeling particularly kind, and not acting like it. But you'll be surprised at how far it can go, and how much it's sorely needed, by all of us.
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