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8C Wednesday, January 5, 2011 The Statement
PERSONALSTATEMENT
ttatement
JANUARY 5, 2011
LOOKING DEATH IN THE FA
ONNE U s
WO I R17HG H HOS PIC E
BY JENNIFER XU
F irst it was Gertie. After that
followed Katherine. Then May
who grimaced at me from the
second I pulled out my copy of Alice
Munro (and who eventually request-
ed my transfer, one week before she
passed away). Jean who liked to read
Nicholas Sparks, Lucille who I never
got to meet. And then there was Ruth.
I started volunteering in a hospice
the summer of my freshman year. I
needed something to do that wasn't
centered around schoolwork or The
Michigan Daily, and I always had an
,,affinity for old people.
These are the questions I usually
get when I tell someone where I go
every Friday: Why do you do that?
How can you stand to be around
all those dying people? Or, in a rare
moment, "God bless you." Well, God
needn't bless me, because I cer-
tainly didn't come into the position
with some high-minded mission.
I've never had anybody close to me
die, and I haven't the slightest idea
on how to alleviate the suffering of
mankind. My aim was simple: I just
wanted to make a friend.
I was nervous when meeting my
first patient, a boisterous 82-year-old
woman with dementia, disorienta-
tion and an oxygen tube affixed to
her nose.
"I'm here to visit Gertrude," I
announced to nobody in particu-
lar. "Oh, Gertie," one of the nurses
smirked at me, pointing to the kitch-
Statistics say that patients die within
CE six months after being admitted to
hospice care. At the nursing homes
that I frequent, most patients pass
within two. One of my greatest fears
when I first started volunteering was
that I would get a lot of heavy ques-
tions about God and morality. But
most patients I've talked to are very
frank about their situations - they're
en door. "Good luck with that." prepared for death to come at any
I saw the bright red throw blanket moment and are not afraid for it to
before I could see her face. When I happen. Somewhere along the way,
got closer, I could feel her eyes on me, they've already figured it out.
suspicious, but not unfriendly. Then, That day, I spent nearly five hours
with Gertie.
"One of my greatest fears when I I barely even
remember
first started volunteering was that what we talk-
ed about -
I would get a lot of heavy questions desserts, the
sexiness of
about God and morality." Christopher
Plummer, how
before I could introduce myself to much we hate music - the kinds of
her, she cut me off. "Where's my random conversations you have with
cookie?" she demanded. your friends late on a Thursday night.
It takes a long time for a person to She had to go to the bathroom in the
admit that he or she is terminally ill. middle of my visit - which she did in
front of my face, as I watched two
nurses flip her on her side and wipe
the mess away with paper towels as
soon as it came out. "Jennifer, do
you like the movie?" she cracked.
Later, after I tucked her into bed,
I realized that I had no idea why I
was so scared to see Gertie in the
first place. Lying there underneath
the white-frosted covers, she looked
so small and vulnerable.
"I feel like I've known you forev-
er," she said to me in a brief moment
of seriousness. That was the last
time I ever saw her.
I think the biggest shock to me
when I started volunteering was
that my patients actually died. I
know, that should be obvious. What
do you expect if you work in a hos-
pice, right? In movies, the patients.
look sickly and weak about three
months before the event actually
happens. My mind flashes back to
Melanie Wilkes's death speech in
"Gone With the Wind." She takes
like 45 minutes to talk to each and
every one of her friends before she
i , a passes away. But real deaths sneak
up on you so quietly, so suddenly,
t ga , markthat it doesn't seem possible. In one
a a moment, Gertie was an exuberant
force of nature, making jokes about
a r pooping, screaming at nurses to find
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her cookie. In the next, she wasn't.
"They're trying to get rid of me,
but I'm still hanging on," my current
patient, Ruth, likes to tell me. Ruth
has a pretty severe form of demen-
tia, and on most visits she can't rec-
ognize me from the week before. But
we've gradually fallen into a routine:
I introduce myself. I compliment her
on her hair (which she gets done at
the salon every Thursday at 2 p.m.).
We talk about poetry.
There are days where I come in and
she is so full of pain that it hurts her
to even speak. During these times, I
pull out my copy of William Word-
sworth and read to her selections
from her favorite poems. It seems to
calm her down. But sometimes, she
can't even bear to listen.
Geriatrics presents a different sce-
nario than conventional medicine.
Usually, a person who comes to the
hospital is suffering from an "illness,"
which the doctor can deal with by fun-
nelingthese symptoms into a "disease"
and treating that disease with a "cure."
The heart of geriatric care is about
follow-up. Palliative care is fashioned
not in order to treat symptoms, but to
look at the big picture: morphine drips,
psychological and spiritual treat-
ment, pain management, anything
that makes their lives a little easier.
If a 20-year-old is sick, that illness is
treated as an abnormality, a battle tobe
vanquished. If an 8O-year-old displays
those same symptoms, the symptoms
are attributed to the natural processes
that gradually wear the body.
Past a certain age, doctors can't
stop the inevitable deterioration of a
human body - blood vessels harden,
arthritis sets in, bodily functions
decay. But a hospice can make the
transition more manageable.
Within the few short months I've
been a part of the hospice commu-
nity, I haven't figured out anything
about myself or what I'd do in the
event of an emergency, and I still
have no idea what the "suffering of
mankind" is. But I know one thing:
On the last day of training the hos-
pice volunteer coordinator told me,
"Your job as a volunteer is not just
to provide care and support for your
patient in their last months of life,
but to be a new friend."
- Jennifer Xu is an LSA
sophomore and a senior arts
editor for The Michigan Daily.
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