Nereida Correa
One of my first patients was a kind, and gentle man who was a bartender, well known and well liked by all who knew him. He showed up to the emergency room with shortness of breath and lungs filled with fluid that we drained so that he could breathe. The fluid showed us Mesothelioma, a rare and deadly cancer related to exposure to asbestos and deadly in a short time. He died weeks later under my care, and I saw in front of his house, which was visible on my daily route to work, a big black bow. I knew before getting there that he had died. I thought of him today as I drove past that corner. His house is no longer there; it’s been replaced by a group of stores.
Another of my early patients was a thin, handsome young man, also a gentle man who had turned yellow and was admitted with Hepatitis that was actually liver cancer. My rotation ended, but I came back often to visit him in the next month, then one day he was not there. He had died.
My brother was a kind and gentle man, and worked as a postman in the downtown area after the 9/11 catastrophe. He recalled seeing papers flying “like snow” and delivering mail through that haze for weeks and months after the fall of the Twin Towers. Today, I thought about him and of the wonderful care he took of both my parents who died in their 90s. One day he went to the hospital and they thought he had pneumonia, but he also had lungs filled with fluid and that fluid turned out to be lung cancer cells growing out of control. He died in less than a year. He never smoked, and he didn’t understand why he should have lung cancer.
My father, also kind and gentle, was diagnosed with gastric cancer and died only two months after diagnosis. I think that he had lost the will to live after my mother had died suddenly the year before. And for that matter my brother died after having lost both of them in 2 short years. He lived to care for them and had retired to be home with them and see to their every need. He had also lost his purpose and will to live. What matters to us in the end is these relationships that keep us alive and serving others.
These deaths were not JUST; they were not FAIR. The only solace that I can have is that I treated them all kindly in return, with care and with love, with good humor and like the special gentle people that they all were, and still are to me.
Just letting go with LOVE and letting life go on, appreciating every given day as a true gift and knowing that there are no guarantees except that there will be an end, or at least a passing to the great beyond–that’s what matters.
Nereida Correa a physician and an educator who has been working to write personally and professionally.