My best friend is dying
Any day now, one of my best friends is going to die.
Between visits with Sylvia (her name is the same as mine), I prepare myself for the phone call telling me it’s over. I also prepare for the worst-case scenario, which is a phone call relaying that it’s not quite over. Then I’ll have to steel myself to go see her. I’m sure that sounds heartless, but the child in me is afraid and wants to avoid the event. The adult in me wants to provide whatever comfort I can; if she wants me around, I’m there. And the writer in me has this perverse need to stand in the room with death and take the minutes of the meeting.
A big part of me has had enough already; dying is far less abstract than I want it to be. In the past month alone, I’ve learned that emptying a catheter is much like pouring a glass from boxed wine: A little spigot sends the fluid streaming out of its thick plastic casing. I’ve learned that adult diapers range from pseudo-panty shields to “disposable briefs,” complete with comfort tabs and the promise of breathability. Perhaps the most surprising thing I’ve learned is that even the dying get excited about plasma screen TVs.
A surreal counterpoint to death
In the palliative care hospice Sylvia entered a few weeks ago, each of the 10 rooms is furnished with a flat-screen TV. As I walk down the hall to her room, I glimpse past open doors and see blue legs on white sheets, the slim, wall-mounted panel at the foot of each bed offering a surreal counterpoint to the decaying human being languishing there. Apparently, this year’s must-haves for an excursion to the beyond include a remote control and a nurse call button. Clicking one yields unlimited doses of high-definition TV; pressing the other ensures a side serving of methadone garnished with a tiny blue Haldol tablet. Perhaps it’s fitting that life in the Western world culminates in an orgy of synthetic opiates and reality TV.
Before being hospitalized, Sylvia was already taking a bewildering array of medications — her dining room table was littered with pill bottles, miniature plastic medicine cups, syringes. At the hospice, they gave her even more. The first time the nurse brought Haldol, she told Sylvia it would “relax” her. She didn’t mention, among other side effects, Haldol can cause decreased alertness. Maybe palliative caregivers presume dying people prefer reduced awareness. Or maybe the very fact that all the people in their care are dying promotes a lackadaisical attitude. One of the attendants told Sylvia “three people died today.” This was delivered conversationally, as one might report a hockey score. This horrified me. If death can be so readily diminished to water cooler conversation, it doesn’t seem a big leap to a mindset where medicating patients is a management solution. Surely a sedated TV-tose person is easier to deal with than an anxious, albeit thinking human being, whose mind is left unclouded to experience the range of emotions that accompanies the end of a life.
