Lonely

First set of rounds back from maternity leave.   The patients who know me and remember me from visit to visit asked about the baby.  The ones who weren't on my schedule stopped by the nurses station asked about the baby.  It's good to have you back.  I walked by one door and got scolded into coming in: You tryingto dodge me, girl?I brought pictures, showed them off, listened to them marvel - ten pounds, really? 
And then there were the patients with dementia, the ones who ask me every visit who I am, who are pleased to meet me for the third or tenth time.  I know them all, even if they don't remember me from month to month.

Trouble stopped up at the nurses station to call his wife for the tenth time that shift, waved and smiled at me.  The only thing he ever asks me for is to let him go home.  Problem is, he can't get around and the stroke that took his legs away and put him in a wheelchair also took away a significant portion of his cognitive abilities.  He needs someone to help him with the little things in life, like staying safe.  Dressing.  Bathing.  Getting out of bed.  She can't take care of him and his family can't arrange for twenty-four hour coverage.  I've explained this over and over.  He just wants to go home and be with his wife.

I stopped at one bedside - it's usually a quick visit, in and out; she doesn't ever remember me and she doesn't have any complaints - and I reintroduced myself.  Twice.  Told her my first name. Twice.  Spelled my last name.  Yes, I'm the doctor.  How are you doing? Can I do anything for you?  And she looked at me for a long moment, her face as expressionless as it always is.
What do you do, exactly? 
I was taken aback.  Well, I doctor. I make people feel better.  It wasn't much of an answer, but I wasn't certain she'd been delving for the existential truths of the art of medicine -  it really was the longest sentence I'd ever heard from her.  So I repeated my usual parting words:  If you need anything, let me know.
How?  How will I find you? 
The nurses could find me, I explained.  They had my number.  And I was halfway to the door when she said, very softly: Stay and talk to me a while?
I've never seen her family in there.  I've never seen her talking to anyone at all.   And so I turned around, sat down on her bed, and talked for a bit - about the pictures on her wall, where she grew up.  Nonsense chatter, really; I didn't know what to talk about.  About the baby I'd just had.  And when I got up a few minutes later, pleading the need to get home and feed my baby, she looked almost happy.


Walking down the hall a while later, I saw a woman in a wheelchair staring out through the double glass doors that serve as a fire exit, framed by spray-on snow with flowers stenciled into it.  It was snowing out, blowing and drifting, a landscape of white on white.  I wondered what she was thinking.

Stay and talk to me for a while?

Lost in Translation

From a discharge report I received today:

"Questionably noncompliant with 2-minute therapy with admitting INR 1.2"


Coumadin.  I think they mean Coumadin.