brazilliant

all in a day's work....

I sat there and spoke to my patient about his wife’s death for about an hour while he I gave him a blood transfusion. His wife was out doing yardwork—“just keeping busy, you know,” he said, when a tree came right down on her and went bulls-eye right on top of her chest. He said he never knew what reality was until he came outside that day and realized his wife was no longer breathing, and her heart wasn’t beating. He asked me if I really thought that a transfusion would do anything but sustain him, “and for what?” he said, “it should have been me….I should have gone down under that stupid tree, not her.” He gave me details about how 3 different news stations showed up at his house only an hour after it happened. How he had never yelled at anyone that loud before to get off his lawn. And how his neighbors, who had never spoken even a word to him before were suddenly interested in the details of the death of his wife….how all of a sudden, people in the neighborhood were pruning their trees and taking extra attention to them. “Her therapist told her to keep busy by doing something regularly, and well, she wasn’t depressed for awhile there, but if it wasn’t for her damn yard work she’d still be here,” he said. He apologized for his lack of cheerfulness about 5 times during that story. I’m not sure why he felt like he needed to apologize to me when all I could think of was how sorry I felt for him.

I didn’t say anything. I just listened, for a whole hour- and I tried my best to hold back tears and to figure out how this man would go home and live his life without his wife…without someone to look after him. That’s my job, but it doesn’t ever get easy to deal with.