Hospice Patients as Human Persons: Where Does Professional Distance Fit?

[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.

 

“Job Security in America” - A Poem during my own personal COVID-19 quarantine (December 2 through ??, 2022)

The rumor they spread is this:
If you give us
one-hundred-and-ten-percent,
you’ll always have a job.
 
Perhaps that’s true.
 
But you’ll always have a job
that pays you ten percent less
than they promised.
 
Still, it’s only four free hours a week.
An extra forty-eight minutes a day.
One less weekend per month.
 
Where do you find the time?
 
Make sure that the
bodily functions humans require
occur off-the-clock.
Or at least urinate
as quickly as you can.
Be sure to sign-out at lunchtime,
and occasionally forget
to sign-in again.
But don’t do it so often that
you endanger the company
if the auditors come to check.
(Do the auditors ever check?)
 
Mostly, though,
just stay focused,
stay diligent,
stay busy.
Stay.
Anxious.
(Shorten your life
by that ten percent too.)
 
It’s easier
if you’re salaried.
You can sip your coffee slowly.
You can meander to a meeting,
arrive “well-prepared,”
and then stay
and chat beyond the agenda.
You don’t punch a time-clock.
There is no time-clock
that covers a
work-week that has
no beginning
and no end.
Use as much as you need of that
one-hundred-sixty-eight-hour
work-week.
Just make sure the job gets done.
Even if the job is never done.
 
But the rumor is:
If you give us
one-hundred-and-ten-percent
you’ll always have a job.
 
Perhaps that’s true.
 
But when your injury
or your illness
or your grief
or your age
exceeds what the
Human-Resources handbook
says you’re allowed?
No matter how many
years you’ve given
one-hundred-and-ten-percent
you don’t earn the right
to be ten percent slower.
To take ten percent longer.
To get ten percent distracted
when you think
of how empty
the house is
now that they’re
gone.
 
When they’re gone,
by the way, it’s
seventy-two-hours for
bereavement leave.
And, if they’re enlightened,
a sympathy card.
And, if your supervisor
has known a similar loss,
perhaps a week or two,
maybe even a month or more
of adjusted expectations.
 
If they remember
your previous habit
of giving them
one-hundred-and-ten-percent,
they think,
you might do so again.
 
But find closure.
Adjust to the new normal.
Move on with your life.
Because “company policy
doesn’t allow us to accept
anything but your all
for very long.”
Get well soon.
Get over them soon.
And get back to work.
Soon.
 
And then,
unless you can give them the
one-hundred-and-ten-percent
they’ve come to expect,
get to your retirement,
or get to your disability,
or get to your next employer,
soon.
 
Or they will need
to get another
who will give them that
one-hundred-and-ten-percent
for the partial pay they promise.
 
 

-Wm. Darius Myers

Salinas, California

December 10, 2022