I took a walk thru the ward this evening before my shower. Normally I just do the walk and try to get it over with, but this evening I tried to understand what was happening around me.
The University of Washington Hospital is a brilliant facility. The cancer ward occupies the 7th and 8th floors of the east wing. The view from my 8th floor room is stellar, overlooking Lake Washington near the Montlake Cut. The days have been sunny, so I get to watch the boats navigate in the foreground with the mountains beyond. At night I can watch the cars navigate the bridge. This is a very nice, albeit expensive hotel room.
But that's the superficial side of the facility. It's easy to see that it's nicely designed, efficient, and effective.
There are people here too. This isn't a movie set. It's the people I saw this evening that impressed me most.
Every room is a private room. All patients are cancer patients. Thankfully not all the rooms are full. Each room has the patient's first name on the door. At first, I thought this was probably a choice they made for HIPAA and security, but it struck me that it actually humanizes the patient. And so I read: John, Fred, Antoinette, Susan, Christopher, and of course, Andre.
Many of the doors were open. It was easy to see what was going on in these rooms. What had gone on in these rooms for some time: Waiting, Pain, and Horror.
I returned to the room marked "Andre" and waited for the pain of their horrors to subside. Ed and I are so lucky.
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1 comment:
This is a beautifully written post Andre. I read this one before the previous two and it's just as well I did or I might have thought you were blogging as an angel. Hang on in there, honey!
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