I was not there.
What I write next is based on me being at the right place when two doctors relayed a story about a patient.
During our weekly interdisciplinary team meeting a few years ago, two doctors shared about a joint visit. One doctor had been on the visit because she then served as the hospice’s medical director and had made a house call on a new patient with complex issues. The second doctor occasionally assisted the director, seeking to learn more about hospice care.
Other than being new—which doesn’t reveal much about the patient—I will ambiguously add this was a younger-than-average female patient, and she’d lived a rough life. You can interpret what you want about a rough life. Being homeless can be rough, although I’ve talked to some who lived on the streets and preferred that version of freedom. They wouldn’t describe life as rough. Being middle class in contemporary America may not be considered rough, but what if verbal or physical abuse was taking place? A new car in the garage and never skipping a mortgage payment doesn’t prevent domestic violence. Rough wears many faces. Rough can be invisible. And so, describing the patient as having a rough life was not revealing hardly anything about her and her situation.
Like most hospice patients with a cushy or rough life, she also needed a doctor who understood pain. She needed a professional to evaluate her current condition and make recommendations about medications. She wanted the roiling, soul-wrenching pain she experienced from a disease to be better managed. The medical director would examine her, ask questions, and then let the hospice nurses know the plan of care for her needs.
Apparently, the patient didn’t reveal much to the hospice doctor. Maybe she was used to avoiding questions or judgments. Maybe she was shy. Maybe she—and most can relate to this—was suspicious of anyone offering to help her. After all, why risk more disappointments?
But the medical director was simply trying to help.
And then the second doctor arrived. Or perhaps the second doctor was already present, but waited in the background, seeking to be a shadow on a wall. She wanted to observe how her physician colleague interacted with this shy or suspicious, but definitely anxious, patient.
The second doctor slipped in beside the patient, their chairs inches apart. She began combing the patient’s hair.
At one point in this tale told by the two physicians, the medical director smiled and said something like, “And let me tell you, the patient was definitely having a bad hair day!”
Those of us listening chuckled. Hey, everybody knows a bad hair day!
For the next moments, the second doctor combed the patient’s hair. She stroked the unkempt strands, gently teased hair off the patient’s face, and unobtrusively continued the rhythm of combing as the patient revealed more and more of her needs.
Two doctors, two professionals, two caring humans, both striving to help a patient in crisis.
As their brief telling of this patient visit concluded, the medical director grinned again and said, “When we left, the patient looked directly at my colleague here and said ‘I love you.’”
A physician’s input is crucial to the work of hospice. While twenty-first century medicine doesn’t cure every illness or make all the pain vanish, we live in extraordinary times where our living and dying need not be harsh or cruel. The right nourishment, the right drugs, the right equipment, the right regime of care (and so much more), are part of the modern hospice movement’s tools and goals.
But touch matters too. It is the ancient cure. Tenderness matters. It is the eternal balm. There’s no need for a fancy degree in order to hold a hand or comb hair.
We can all be “doctors of compassion” for the living and the dying . . . and even for those having a bad hair day.
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My book, A Companion for the Hospice Journey, is available at Amazon.
Photo by Apothecary 87 on Unsplash