My patient had severe mental impairments, nonverbal, institutionalized. She comes to surgery accompanied by employee. The same woman who brought her to the office. She seems well cared for. Her real family resides in another state.
After surgery, as I sit in the PACU going over my instructions, the employee half listens to me, half listens to a conversation on her phone. It’s understandably distracting. I realize someone is crying on the other end. The woman apologizes. She turns the screen towards me explaining that her facility has another patient in another hospital “that is in a bad way”. Her friend is with the other patient. On her phone’s screen, I see a woman in the ICU.
The two nurses aids cry softly and tell the other woman they love her, they talk briefly in a shared foreign language. They share neither race nor culture with their patients.
And it hits me…the incredible burden placed on these ladies. They clean and bathe these patients…but that isn’t the hardest part of the job. More importantly, they stand in as their families. They become attached, and they watch them die. They are there to hold their hands, tell them they love them, and tell them they will be missed. They do it for far less than I would to even consider doing their job. They will do it again for the next patient when this one dies. I realize that it must take a toll on them, and understand that they deserve far more than society gives them.