Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison this week; a military judge’s ruling has cast new doubts about the detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Someone like me, who writes about these things “lives” in the world of news. I stay in touch throughout the day and dwell on what such things might mean.
I’m not living in that world this week. This week, I’m living in the world of an “Oncology Progressive Care Unit” of a southern hospital. I’m not the patient, I’m just sitting vigil by a bedside, but this is where I spend my days and a good part of my nights.
The name “Progressive Oncology Unit” reminds of the “Department of Defense” in its euphemism. It’s a “Cancer Ward,” just as the Pentagon is surely the “War Department.”
It’s impossible to say if the cancer ward is a bigger or smaller than the world of news. The ride through here is a vertiginous plunge that takes one’s sense of perspective. Everything is stripped away.
The healthier patients walk laps through the corridors, plastic bags of saline and pharmaceuticals depending from steel poles on wheels at their side, tubes running into their arms. One man stubbornly refuses to shed his street clothes and makes his circuits in jeans, sneakers and a baseball cap. Most make the trip in white-and-blue gowns, shod only in socks with traction pads. Some still have hair, others have been made bald by chemotherapy treatments. As is often referenced in hospital humor, the gowns can billow and gap at the most inappropriate moments, but neither humor nor titillation is evoked, only empathy.
No here is as pretty as a patient on tee vee’s hospital dramas. No sponsor would dare part with a nickel of support if the actors portrayed the true pallor of the cancer patient or had a catheter and bag of urine hanging from below his or her gown. Few of the patients get a nice end-of-episode resolution here, either. Either it ends badly here or the struggle is moved off site, to a home or hospice. Whichever outcome, the room is usually refilled within an hour or two. Outside the ward’s windows, a new tower is being added to the hospital complex, another thousand needed beds can’t open soon enough.
There is a common humanity on the ward. Judging by their clothes, the families of the patients apparently hail from several walks of life and a range of political perspectives. There are “Dale Earnhardt” caps and “Save Darfur” t-shirts. Armed corrections officers are frequently seen. I thought for a while they were guarding a prisoner patient, but no, just visiting one of their own. Everyone is exceedingly polite in the hallways and the elevator. We speak into our cell phones in library tones in the lounge at the end of the hall, the only place on the floor where one can find predictable reception.
The health care system in America is a mess, there’s no doubt about it, but here on the ward, what we see are nurses and technicians who astound me again and again with their professionalism and compassion. I’m still more astounded to consider that when the room in which I’m keeping vigil turns over, they will share their skills and kindness with another family and another after that.
The cancer ward will take many things away from you – your hair, your clothes, your freedom of movement. It leaves you with odd and valuable things, the intimacy that comes with sharing your naked physical self with strangers and a community realization that wherever we come from, we all eventually take the same road.
The Cancer Ward
Lewis “Scooter” Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison this week; a military judge’s ruling has cast new doubts about the detentions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Someone like me, who writes about these things “lives” in the world of news. I stay in touch throughout the day and dwell on what such things might mean.
I’m not living in that world this week. This week, I’m living in the world of an “Oncology Progressive Care Unit” of a southern hospital. I’m not the patient, I’m just sitting vigil by a bedside, but this is where I spend my days and a good part of my nights.
The name “Progressive Oncology Unit” reminds of the “Department of Defense” in its euphemism. It’s a “Cancer Ward,” just as the Pentagon is surely the “War Department.”
It’s impossible to say if the cancer ward is a bigger or smaller than the world of news. The ride through here is a vertiginous plunge that takes one’s sense of perspective. Everything is stripped away.
The healthier patients walk laps through the corridors, plastic bags of saline and pharmaceuticals depending from steel poles on wheels at their side, tubes running into their arms. One man stubbornly refuses to shed his street clothes and makes his circuits in jeans, sneakers and a baseball cap. Most make the trip in white-and-blue gowns, shod only in socks with traction pads. Some still have hair, others have been made bald by chemotherapy treatments. As is often referenced in hospital humor, the gowns can billow and gap at the most inappropriate moments, but neither humor nor titillation is evoked, only empathy.
No here is as pretty as a patient on tee vee’s hospital dramas. No sponsor would dare part with a nickel of support if the actors portrayed the true pallor of the cancer patient or had a catheter and bag of urine hanging from below his or her gown. Few of the patients get a nice end-of-episode resolution here, either. Either it ends badly here or the struggle is moved off site, to a home or hospice. Whichever outcome, the room is usually refilled within an hour or two. Outside the ward’s windows, a new tower is being added to the hospital complex, another thousand needed beds can’t open soon enough.
There is a common humanity on the ward. Judging by their clothes, the families of the patients apparently hail from several walks of life and a range of political perspectives. There are “Dale Earnhardt” caps and “Save Darfur” t-shirts. Armed corrections officers are frequently seen. I thought for a while they were guarding a prisoner patient, but no, just visiting one of their own. Everyone is exceedingly polite in the hallways and the elevator. We speak into our cell phones in library tones in the lounge at the end of the hall, the only place on the floor where one can find predictable reception.
The health care system in America is a mess, there’s no doubt about it, but here on the ward, what we see are nurses and technicians who astound me again and again with their professionalism and compassion. I’m still more astounded to consider that when the room in which I’m keeping vigil turns over, they will share their skills and kindness with another family and another after that.
The cancer ward will take many things away from you – your hair, your clothes, your freedom of movement. It leaves you with odd and valuable things, the intimacy that comes with sharing your naked physical self with strangers and a community realization that wherever we come from, we all eventually take the same road.
© Mark Floegel, 2007