" Our morning routine is to have him dressed and eat his breakfast. My caregiver helps out around 9 am. He loves walking outdoors so they go for a walk on the street with his walker. Remind you that he has Parkinson’s so he is a high risk patient for falls. Needs to be monitored 24/7 because even with medications he can lose his balance and fall. At 82, it’s easy to break anything. The Dyalisis center is about 10 min away from us. The place has about 24 stations. When you renter the building, the smell of formaldehyde is the first thing that hits your senses. The staff are friendly. I’ll describe the scene I walked into few nights ago when I was picking him up at 430pm. This is after he had been filtering his blood through a port coming from his chest hooked up to two lines into a Dyalisis machine.
These machines are like recycling centers where they suck your blood into a sensitive filteration process and then they’ll return clean blood back into your veins. To patients who undergo this process, it feels like they have ran a marathon after a treatment. It’s exhausting. It’s arduous. It’s tiring and relentless action. It requires a lot a patience. Patience is one very powerful virtue that my father and my mom have developed. They are my spiritual masters who are teaching me this virtue because I don’t have any.
I’m re-learning what’s important in life through my dad’s process. So, I walked in. My dad was in the second bed from right. On the first bed, there is a 92 year old Lebanese gentleman who now is being transported by medical care group because his caregiver can’t handle him anymore. He weighs about 85 pounds at most. There is only bones and skin left of him. No muscles, no skin turgidity, no collagen. His eyes are sunken and you can see them moving back and forth. Poor guy has sever dementia and is unable to move. When he sees me, he smiles. I know it is very temporary because his mind is not really processing the next step of communication. It’s more like a reflex.
My heart goes out for this man who I call puppy ( puppy eyes). He has been on Dyalisis for 11 years and fighting through. Above his machine there was a sticker pad saying RRB. I was staring at it, staring at him, staring at my dad to his left who’s face was in great discomfort as well. The cold air in this center makes my bones shiver. I am a big dude with heavy clothes standing there after a full day of doing my work. Yet, here I am freezing. What about these fragile half alive half dead patients who’s blood have been suck out of their veins and laying still for 5 hours?
That thought makes me shiver even more. I walk to go and get my dads wheelchair, and then I see my favorite character. There is an older Spanish lady who in my mind I call little duck. She’s really cute and fragile. She has an amazing smile. Each time I greet her, she gives me the biggest grin. My little duck was being craned out of her bed. Just like fishing fish with fishing net out of the ocean.
When the body becomes olde, fragile, and immobile, there is a risk of moving it with hand. So, they use fishnet cranes. She was somewhere in between heaven and earth , up in the middle of the air and smiling when I walked by her. I knew she was enjoying this ride. I know it was taking her back to when she was probably 3 years old playing in the park jumping up and down. I smiled at little duck and she exchanged eye contact. Her limbs where motion less. So were her hands. Yet her eyes were full of fire.
It amazes me how these patients hang on to dear life. I am completely in my own zone at this time and think about RRB sign. I got the message of "Return Return Baby". Perhaps this was Gods sending messages in my consciousness as I was simultaneously observing my surrounding and receiving insights. Return to me is what I got. Don’t be afraid. The body is just a worn out clothes but the soul is eternal. No matter what we do to preserve life, there is time for return movement. As the body disintegrates and I see it every day with my dad, there is a bigger part of us that ignites passion in our heart, gasps for the next breath in life, and adds value to the most difficult task in our experience. Return to your authentic self and change the meaning to your experience. As an observer , I had a difficulty seeing the patients suffer. From their perspective, Mr puppy is chilling to get his treatment done, little ducky is hanging in her fish net, and my dad is counting the seconds for me to pick him up and cheer him up in the car, riding back home and having our regular talk.
It’s in the fragment moments of our life that our destinies are made. Who am I to give meaning to other people’s experiences? Who am I to judge what’s going on in their heads? For me, it’s just observing and allowing things to unfold. I’ve promised to work on my own return movement. To be anchored in my spiritual self so that I allow others to get elevated and find their own return path. Patiently off course. That’s all we can ask for in life. Patience and gratitude for what is!
Namaste
Dr Rod
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