Every Sunday I would wake up looking forward to meeting Dora, thinking about how my visit would bring a bit of happiness to her life and someone to talk to and share experiences with. I noticed that regardless of how refined an assisted living facility may be, it is difficult for patients to have company given the volume of patients that workers must monitor on a daily basis. Therefore, I know that being there for my patient was something that made her very happy. Regardless of her degenerative brain disease, she would always tell me that she enjoyed my visit and that she hoped that I would come again. She liked to hold my hand and give me a hug every time I left, so I knew she enjoyed my company and that my visit brought some warmth into her life.
My journey as a Holisticare Hospice volunteer was not easy from the beginning, though it did get easier with time. The first time I visited Dora, I was really nervous just to step into her room. I didn’t know how to interact with her, what to ask her, or what to do to keep the conversation gong. However, once I got to know her better and learned more about what she liked, I was able to gain more confidence and get over my nerves. I learned that she really enjoyed music, so every time I would play music for her. Once when I played an Elvis Presley song for her, she was able to sing along without any subtitles, which was quite amazing given her degenerative brain disease. This encounter brought both of us a lot of happiness.
The hospice program has helped me get over the fear of talking to many different kinds of people. It has exposed me to an environment where many patients feel helpless and allowed me to help and listen to them. This experience has solidified my desire to become a doctor by helping me realize how much I love being by the side of those who need it the most. It taught me to listen and not always be the one to talk.
More importantly, the hospice program has taught me to look at death in a different light. As we see in “Can We talk? We Are Bad at Death,” a doctor was not able to find any of the patient’s wishes in her chart because her family never thought of the possibility of death, therefore the patient never expressed what her wishes were. Because it is so difficult for people to talk about death, we never want to think of it and do everything we can to avoid it. Even though patients that spend their last few months of life using medical treatments are not able to extend their lives by much. Instead of spending the last months of their lives using medical treatments that can make them even more uncomfortable, patients should be informed about hospice care and that it can help them spend the last moments of their lives in peace and with more comfort than from medical treatments.
Talking about death can be difficult, even for doctors. Dr. Atul Gawande is an example of this in the film “Being Mortal.” In the case of the female patient with stage 4 lung cancer, he knew that at that stage, her cancer was not curable. Regardless of this, he always had the hope that she would be one of the people that could survive this. Unfortunately, that was not the case. This shows that even for the professionals who are faced with death frequently, it is very difficult to talk and think about death. Even they want to hold on to that very small percentage, that very small chance of survival to give hope to their patients.