I have always wondered what doctors think about while sitting on their swivel chairs across from me. Do I frighten them? I am their peer, young educated, a successful academic, a mother, a wife. i'm not one of "those people" who drank, ate to excess, etc. If it could happen to me, it could happen to them. Do I remind them that they are not immune to disease and death by virtue of their academic pedigrees and thick wallets?
Or do I remind the of their impotence? They cannot cure or even control my disease? Along with me, my doctors are simply waiting to see what course my disease will follow; fast ad furious, or slow and steady.
But they aren't impotent. Yes, I am going to die long before I become eligible for AARP membership. For years, my body has fallen apart little by little. My doctors monitored my disease progression, tweeked medicines to make me more comfortable, and stood at the ready to pull out their arsenal of "big guns" when and if I should ever decide that I was desperate enough to try anything. The good doctors new me as a person- a wife, a mother of three children, an amateur seamstress and chef, and, by doing so, they gained my trust. If I wanted to, I could be on a first name basis with four of my doctors, but I respect them so much that even if they asked me to , I wouldn't be able to do it.
I suppose that health care providers find it difficult to establish personal relationships. Keeping emotional distance makes it easier to bare the inevitability of a patients demise, especially in life threatening diseases like pulmonary fibrosis and stage IV lung cancer Others buy into that idea that doctors cure, nurses care, absolving themselves of their duty to their patient, the patients illness, and how it effects their lives.
I have always had a belief that each of us is called to be the most honest, decent, and loving person that we can be and that the journey toward becoming that person in and of itself is an ethereal journey. Unfortunately, the journey makes no promises about one's ultimate destination or state of affairs. We want good things to happen to deserving people and bad things to befall those who are evil. Perhaps we cling to notions of heaven and hell because it tidies up something that is really a rather large mess: making sense of our existence on this planet where disparities in wealth, resources, love, food, basic sanitation, water, and a myriad of other needs are so wide and deep. At times, I have clung to the notion of heaven and hell, just to have hope that everyone ultimately receives their just rewards.
Over years of my illness, and especially over the last year, I have been aware of the journey that I am on. Looking back, I realized how much I had learned about myself, my loved ones, marriage, motherhood, faith, friendship, and love. It has been an extraordinarily difficult journey and I have wished it away many times, but I am grateful for it nonetheless. I feel as though I grasped some important truths during these past months that had previously eluded me. The irony is that I will not have a chance to use them.
I realize now that the entire journey- birth through death and everything in between- is worth the struggles regardless of the existence of heaven. I have reaped my rewards here, I loved life fully and I have no regrets.
But I still want there to be a heaven because I want to see my loved ones again and I want to meet my cyber friends who have cheered me on. And I'd like to think that all the people who had little in this life will be fulfilled in the next,
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