Monday,
January 7, 2002.
I've been spending my words over here: RBJ
boards.
Another journal, another L I A R : Oops
... I meant FUCKING liar.
Full picture of the one to the right: Here.
BELIEVER
"Hi Mr. Fiddler," I say walking into the old man's room on the surgical floor.
He looks up at me, his face covered with sewn lacerations. He is surprisingly alert for an old man who recently suffered major trauma and a prolonged ICU stay from falling off a rooftop.
He's been staring at a photo of him and a woman, taken in the 1970s, on the table over his bed. He had the flared collar and James Colburn look going back then. Today, his eyebrows are much bushier and whiter and there's little cuts where his hair used to be. The woman in the photo is unrecognizable to me.
"Is this you and your wife?" I ask picking up the framed photo.
"Yes, my wife is really beautiful, isn't she?" he stares at her like she was his first love. Or true love, maybe.
"I can't wait to go home and see her again. I've been here so long. She's been waiting," he smiles.
Jesus Christ, I think. I look away for a moment. It feels like I'm in some melodrama for a minute (this will make a decent entry, I say in the back of my mind). Of course, every other patient room is another melodrama.
He looks at me, realizing something and asks me,
"Are you my doctor?"
"No, I'm not, Mr. Fiddler. I'm your wife's doctor."
I glance at the photo of the same unrecognizable person in the photo,
"From downstairs. I came up here to talk to you ... about her," I sit down next to him.
I'd been his wife's doctor for the past two weeks. From what I heard of the husband, it didn't sound like he'd make it.
The wife came in because her only caregiver, her husband, was no longer at home sheltering her from the outside world as he'd done for the past five years, I'd heard from Social Work. She couldn't take care of herself.
She had a bladder infection that was easily treated. I remember first seeing her, mildly but "pleasantly" demented. She babbled gently about things and held and stroked my hand for an oddly long amount of time, as if it were habit.
It didn't take long for the Alzheimer's to catch up with her in the hospital. It usually does once they're out of their familiar environment or have some new "insult," or infection. The human mind can be an iron fortress, but with age, like everything else, it can be as fragile as egg shells.
I tell him she isn't doing well at all. She won't eat. She's hardly aware of her surroundings. Moaning (only when she hears people) despite every possible test being normal. A broken mind. No cure.
This is end-stage dementia.
She wouldn't be waiting at home for him. She was going to another home.
He takes the news well, considering, but not that well.
"She was so beautiful. How could this have happened?" he asks himself, more than me.
"They told me it would happen, but I didn't want to believe it. I tried to protect her, you know?" he says.
There's another photo of her. Black and white, straight from the Leave It To Beaver days. I pick it up. I could almost see her in the photo. Almost.
"She was seventeen in that photo. She dressed back then the way girls do now. Always into the fashions. I never knew why," he ponders.
"Do you think ... she remembers?" he asks under bushy eyebrows.
"Well, yeah. I mean not the short term things like this hospital visit, but patien -- people like her, they still recall their earliest memories," I encourage him. Indeed, many of our Alzheimer patients actually THINK they are still back in the 1970s when we ask the year.
"Even though we can't communicate with her anymore, I am sure she still remembers the good times you two had together. That's probably all she CAN remember now," I may be lying, I really don't know. But the important thing is, he doesn't know I'm lying. If he asked me about God and heaven, I could paint him a prettier picture than a preacher getting paid by the convert. But I wouldn't believe a word of it.
He nods and asks, like a little boy,
"Do you think I'll be able to remember too?"
He's so in love with this broken shell of a person that used to be the 1950s starlet in the photograph that he can't bear to think he may forget about her someday.
"You're pretty sharp, Mr. Fiddler. I think you will remember everything."
"Wow, strong too," I say as he shakes my hand. Strong for an 85-year old man I expected to be dead by now, that is.
"Thank you, doctor. Thank you for coming by to talk to me. It's nice to talk to someone who's intelligent for a change," he says free of sarcasm or insult.
I just laugh. His comment isn't very fair to the surgeons who've been taking pristine care of him.
But like I said, I'll let him believe what he wants to believe.
Because I want to too.
* ("Pristine" is the surgeons' favorite word, as in "the post-surgical wounds are in pristine condition. Transfer patient to Medicine Service.")
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At any given time there are around six people I want to link to, but I usually never get around to it or for whatever reason feel like that's too many (because people never check out this many links plus it makes others jealous when they're not on such an arbitrary list).
I'm too tired to say much, but here's a few good ones I haven't linked before or quite enough I think.
Donna - for opening my eyes.
Dave - for making Michigan a funnier place.
Johnny - for being a pretty cool guy who has a lot more to say than he's been saying lately.
Rasee - for being genuine and sweet (and a fine writer).
Key - for being a ridiculously and adorably stubborn adopted dongseng.
Michael - for being a good guy who's put up with more of my rants than he deserves.
Heat - for being there when she's there and using my Korean name (still waiting on that journal).
and Maria - for reading me the longest, talking about K-pop when I thought it was the most annoying thing ever, and being an inspiration to Korean-studying hapas everywhere :-).
Honestly, I wish I could link everybody, but then who would bother?
Night.
