[The following is my "Reflection" for this coming Tuesday's Inter-Disciplinary Group (IDG) meeting at which we will again discuss and pursue the best possible care for our agency's hospice patients.]
Kathy
Reichs is the forensic anthropologist whose life and novels are the basis for
the television series Bones with Emily Deschanel starring as Dr. Temperance
Brennan. In her first novel, Deja Dead, Reichs writes about the
challenges of considering her “patients” as the “persons” they were before they
ended up in her care. It reminded me again of what it means to continue seeing
our patients as persons.
Here’s
some of what Dr. Reichs writes about that:
“Day
after day I cleaned them up, examined them, sorted them out. I wrote reports.
Testified. And sometimes I felt nothing. Professional detachment. Clinical
disinterest. I saw death too often, too close, and I feared I was losing a
sense of its meaning. I knew I couldn’t grieve for the human being that each of
my cadavers had been. That would empty my emotional reservoir for sure. Some
amount of professional detachment was mandatory in order to do the work, but
not to the extent of abandoning all feeling.”
Shortly
after, she adds:
“I
felt for these victims, and my response to their deaths was like a lifeline to
my feelings. To my own humanity and my celebration of life. I felt, and I was
grateful for the feeling. That’s how it was personal. That’s why I wouldn’t
stop.”
On
behalf of this past year of patients, families, and all the other members of
the Bridge Hospice Central Coast team whether present or gone, thank you for
continuing to care, to feel, and to be human persons together. My hope
is that we never stop.
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