Homework #27: Visiting an Unwell Person

This holiday, I was in Texas. Every day was planned out so there wasn’t really any time to visit someone who was sick. Instead, I interviewed my mother about her experience in visiting my good friend’s dad in the hospital. He’d had a long term illness that weakened him so about 4 months ago, he had a mild stroke. He was admitted into the hospital and it turned out that the stroke had damaged his ability to swallow. Through this new disability, mucus got backed up in his throat and he soon developed pneumonia. After a week or so, he was left over night, unattended, and went into a sudden crisis. My mom thinks it’s because he wasn’t being watched closely enough by the nurses and he didn’t have anyone around to comfort him. They took him to the ICU and did a tracheotomy which means putting a tube into his throat so he could get food. However, on IV, he still went a week without food.

When my mom went to visit him, he had been in the hospital for a month. She says that his whole situation was very scary. After his surgery, he was put in isolation. So when my mom went to visit him, she had to put on gloves, mask, and gown in order to see him. Because of the lack of food, he had lost tons of weight. He looked skinny and frail. On top of that, he couldn’t talk. So their whole conversation was through him writing on paper. Although he couldn’t speak, he still tried. However, he could barely make above a whisper so when he did, my mom had to ask him to write it down because she couldn’t understand. This embarrassed her a lot because she wanted him to be able to speak. At some points during this visit, he would ask her to pound on his back to loosen up what was in his throat. The same thing happened in Tuesdays With Morrie. Once he was well enough, they took him out of the ICU and put him in an isolation room. However, there were no isolation rooms at the standard treatment level, so they moved him to the luxury suites that celebrities and presidents stay in. The amazing part is that he didn’t have to pay extra for the room. When my mom went to visit him for a second time, he looked much better. He had put on weight and seemed more aware of his surroundings. In fact, he became frustrated that he couldn’t go anywhere or move around at all. My mom took this as a sign that he was getting better because it showed that he knew how to express his feelings and say what he wanted. The third and final visit happened at his house. He was mostly better and able to be discharged from the hospital. He’d had his trachea removed and could breathe on his own. My mom kept commenting on how much his wife had been through and how well she was doing with 2 kids in high school and college, bills, her job, and her husband who got very frustrating at times.

When my friend’s dad was in ICU, his wife raved about the amount of care and attention he got. However, once his case was less serious, his amount of care went down considerably. These were mostly physical realities. I think that hospitals base all of their care on the emergency patients and leave almost none for the long term patients. At some points, this is reasonable and makes sense. However, there should be some balance between helping a patient when they’re in crisis and following up with attention and care after they’ve stabilized.

In Tuesdays With Morrie, Morrie discusses how when we are sick, most people complain about their pain and it all about how they can get better fastest whereas he just gives to others and tries to do anything he can to help other people. According to Morrie, as long as you’re around people who you love and love you, it will be OK. My mom thinks that the reason my friend’s dad went into crisis that one night was because he was around people he loved and no one was there with him.