Hospice Work

Hospice work is....well...its kind of like....well, sort of...indescrible. It is an everyday occurence for someone from medical records to notify me that a patient has died. Sometimes it happens every day and sometimes several times a day. It's not your run of the mill job. When someone from Medical Records tell me that Mrs. So and So has died, I say "thank you" -- for lack of knowing what else to say. Working in the office, all I know about most of the patients is a very brief medical sketch. Details such as age, diagnosis, caregiver, address, etc. Most profiles aren't terribly shocking since most of our patients are elderly. No surprises there. Being educated thoroghly about the grim fact that breast cancer will touch 1 in every 8-10 (depending on which statistics you read) women takes the edge off of surprise when I see a woman in her 40's dying of breast cancer. It's the thirty somethings that shock me. The really painful ones for me are not those who have been ravaged by MS or cancer but those who have been brought to the end of themselves by the destruction of substance abuse. I wonder where it all started. That first beer seemed so harmless. Now with a swollen liver that makes the abdomen resemble a 10 month pregnancy and pain that is sometimes difficult to manage it doesn't seem so harmless. It is the way of man. God has given us everything good to enjoy, but it is man's tendency to take it and abuse it. This young man is my son's age. Ah, just another day in the life of hospice.