Susie Q

ER volunteering last Wednesday.

I was bound to leave again towards the end of my shift, when I walked into a room to ask this old African American woman if she needed anything, as the call light had been ringing without anybody answering it.

She was starving during her stay, which had been over 4 hours now, so I ran into the pantry to grab some apple juice and graham crackers for her.

Like any other patient that's geen given attention by someone in the ED, she was appreciative, asking for another refill of the apple juice before starting up a conversation.

She was waiting to be discharged from having bled out of her arm that night. Her doctors were currently treating her for dialysis, but I'm not sure what connection I can draw between that and the arm bleeding. It turns out that in the previous year, she had been admitted for these severe blisters. The primary care physician decided to send her to a dermatologist instead of a podiatrist, and the dermatologist just told her to soak her feet in warm water for the blisters to subside.

That wasn't the case, and when she was sent in again to the hospital, they had discovered gangrene in her foot. Then, the doctor advised amputation before she lost any more of her leg. There were times during the conversation where I could sense her becoming emotional, although the expression on her face confused me. It appeared as a mix between crying and laughing; it was confusing to read which emotion she was expressing in those moments.

It became quite obvious after a while that these symptoms were a result of diabetes. Which type, I'm not sure, although her diet alluded to the second. Her favorite restaurant in the city was King Lee's, where she would order with her husband a combination of either Shrimp Chow Mein, Pork Fried Rice, or Fried Chicken Wings. One can get a sense that continuing this diet into her old age most likely contributed to her disease and recurrent ER visits.

I didn't want her prolonging on the topic of her illness, so I shifted the conversation to her family. She has four granddaughters, all of whom live in Dayton, Ohio, all of whom are at least in their teenage years, some graduating from college and having moved on to New York to pursue a career in fashion. Although she always offers to fly out there, or to fly them over here. the mother doesn't allow the granddaughters to visit, mainly because of their grandmother's condition, being confined to a wheelchair. Yet again, this topic seemed to bring about more of that peculiar laughing/crying face, so I wanted to change the subject again.

This time I asked about her previous work. She was a banker in the city for 30 years- 10 of them were spent in the domestic department, the last 20 in international. This led to her reminiscing about one of her coworkers, a Japanese man married to a Chinese woman, that always took their group out for dim sum in some of the best places in Chinatown. She was a fan of dim sum, which pleased me, but she could never find any decent dim sum establishment without her coworker. She had wanted to catch up with some of these coworkers from her days of employment. However, whenever she called or met the spouse/significant other of the coworker, they would inform her that the person had passed away the year before. She was constantly reminded of her old age, what with all her friends dying around her. She was sorrowful once more.

Looking back on this experience, I don't think I should have kept probing her with question that brought up such terrible memories. The paramedics eventually came to transport her home. I picked up her dress from the chair so that she could change into it. Her purse, I had picked up earlier in the night because she wanted to order 3 units of chicken wings from King Lee's, after having a debate with her husband on the phone about what to eat when she got back from the ER. Sadly, she ended up taking off her gown in front of me. Yet ANOTHER senior moment involving me seeing geriatric naughty bits. I swear, I get more nudity from this hospital than from the television shows I watch online.

And of all things, she started barking out orders to me! Even the paramedics were laughing at feeling sorry for me. "Jason, hand me my blanket." "Jason, where are you? Get me some more ice, will ya?" Sheesh! We said our goodbyes- I said, "See you later," to which she replied, "But not too soon!"