Going into this experience, I worried about my ability to connect with my patient, and for the first few visits I questioned whether my patient really wanted me there. She had a reputation amongst the nurses for being difficult to deal with, often lucid and aggressive if touched or provoked. After the first couple of visits, I realized she was nothing like that with me. She was quiet, a result of no longer being able to process what was being said to her due to memory loss. But you could tell that she enjoyed being around others: she enjoyed laughter and conversation, even though she was not able to fully engage anymore.
I would always come with my driver, and we would sit together with her patient. It was difficult at first to see that she was not able to engage, but the more time went on, the more I realized that the act of just sitting with her and having a normal conversation was enough. At that point, I realized I had been thinking about my ability to connect with my patient the wrong way, and I had to meet her where she was at. I would not be able to have a full-length conversation with her, and that didn’t take away from the relationship we built. As the weeks went on, I got accustomed to meeting with her, and I could tell she remembered me occasionally. It had become a routine for me, and I had never considered the reality of the situation: that she was on hospice and that her time was limited.
She never made me second guess whether I would see her again, often saying goodbye to me, assuring me that we would see each other again the next week. She became a constant in my life, so when she started to make a sudden decline, at first, I did not think much of it. Again, I was very unaware of what hospice really entailed. Although I knew what it meant in theory, I never thought of how it would look in practice. She was incredibly weak the last time I saw her and was barely able to keep her head up. I thought she would recover, and I would see her next week, but that never happened. She passed on a sunny Monday morning three days after I had last seen her.
I remember being really upset that no one helped her, that she was not given treatment, and that I would not see her that week. That’s when I realized that I did not truly understand what hospice meant. She had passed peacefully in her sleep after a long and fulfilling life, and she died on her own terms. She did not want to prolong her suffering, and it would have been cruel to keep her alive in the state she was in. Once I realized that, I felt that I was truly able to let go of my frustration and understand why she had chosen hospice in the first place.