“You’re a terrible nurse, you can’t even back-prime the pump”, he said with a coy smile and his eyes twinkling as he motioned for me to bring the IV pump closer so he could do it himself. R was the very first patient I cared for as a pediatrician in training. He was smart and charming, and on his second battle with pediatric cancer. He knew more about cancer, life, loss, and suffering than most people will know in their entire lifetime.
His cancer just WOULD NOT relent to our drugs. He had lost so many in his family to cancer. He knew the odds were stacked against him, but he never stopped living. On my overnight shifts we would spend hours talking about life. He spoke of marrying his girlfriend and traveling the world with her. He simultaneously marveled at the changes and oddities in his body from his numerous therapies and postulated about college life.
We had the big conversations. The ones about how people die and how he wanted to die. “I won’t go without a fight, even if you know we’re going to lose Wendy, I want the world to know we tried.”
We had the big conversations. The ones about how people die and how he wanted to die. Share on XOn the drive home one afternoon after a 30 hour shift, I burst into tears and sobbed the entire way home; I could tell we were losing. I didn’t care that people were staring at me as I sat in traffic. I cried and cried and got home and cried myself to sleep. At 6 or 7 pm I abruptly woke from sleep and called the nurses station. R had died. I raced back to the hospital and met his family at the hospital entrance as they were loading his belongings into the car. Tears welled up in my eyes and we embraced. It was the first time I REALLY hugged a patient or their family. I whispered, “We tried and I will never forget him.”
Maybe it was coincidence or maybe it was fate that he was my first patient. Whatever it was, I’ll never forget my first teacher who taught me the human side of medicine and what it really means to live.
