The space between us
She is tall. She speaks with the soft rhythms of Jamaica and Caribbean breezes.
A CNA at the rehab center where I recently spent 16 days, she was the answer to many of my call bells, a concerned woman who shared her strength, her warmth and her personage with a sometimes discouraged patient.
As busy as she was and the CNA’s were always busy, she always found time to chat, to enquire about me or to share stories about our families. She was emblematic of the best of medical care, that part which embodies both the science and the art, the part that heals.
When you are in a hospital or similar facility, you see many people who are part of the team that is engaged to care for you.
Besides healing, hospitals are businesses and have to, just like other businesses, organize goods and services around the bottom line. Efficiency and costs are part of the bottom line. For most on the team, the encounter is brief, just enough time to complete a task and move on to the next patient. Whether it is the phlebotomist or the ex ray tech, the individual in any job has so much time and so many patients with whom to work.
The best find a way to keep the person rather than the illness paramount. It is what nimble, excellent health care is about.
Yet, it is the little moments, the cheery smile, a comment about the weather, a question about how you are feeling today that are as significant as the medicine that may be dripping into your arm or the surgeon who will be operating on you. Illness and recovery have many dimensions and that dimension that is affected by the human touch is powerful.
In my state of the art orthopedic room, I was mostly alone. I could see patients and visitors walking by in the corridor but I was in what could be a modern isolation chamber…me, my TV remote and a view of the Western skyline of Syracuse. I needed human contact.
Amidst all of the anxiety, the pain and the fear, it was the human interaction that made the difference … from the smiling food service employee who would bring me a meal, helpfully placing it on the bedside tray table, arranging my bed so that I could more easily eat and enquiring how I was feeling. Or, the many different people who came in to clean the room, who took a minute to ask after my status or the charming transporters who carried on sparkling conversations whether they were taking me to CT or the operating room..
The nurses were more than competent, pleasant, answering my calls, my questions. Their jobs involved intimacies that went beyond those of other caregivers.
They were always understanding, gentle and kind They were also busy. Not once did a nurse come into my room to attend to some task for me when her phone didn’t ring, calling her to another patient. They worked hard at maintaining my personhood.
There was the physical therapy staff in their green scrubs who would engage me in a light conversation about nothing while trying to get me to move in a more productive way. They made me smile. I could see through their subterfuge but was happy that they knew how to do it. No one likes to see them come into the room no matter how important they are to your recovery. Well, I did. They held promise of a better day.
My home care physical therapist listened, listened and reacted to my emotions as well as my physical needs, bringing targeted exercises and a human compassion that made the 30 repetitions of almost any movement more effective.
There were others, professionals all, who were by form, correct. I got the feeling that somewhere in the building there was a corral of PA’s who, at or around 4:30 p.m. were sent out to enquire about ortho patients. “Release the PA’s” and one would appear, often a different person each day, introducing themselves, making a an enquiry and/or sharing information …all from six feet away.
Were they practicing infection control? If so, I would tell them to wash their hands, come closer, risk touching a hand or an arm and establishing that most human of connections. Get closer to the fear and the pain. Get to know the person.
There was one PA who, smiling, enquired of my status, acknowledged what he said must be a frustration at its greatest degree for me and then offered to show me my ex rays which he had on his phone. I wish I could remember his name. I’d write it here.
But I know these PA’s were young in both body and experience and need to learn that the reach across the chasm of sickness, one human to another is as important as anything else. It is better to be more like a nurse with patient contact than that of the surgeon whose touch is of a different sort.
Healing can happen anywhere. I think of Abby, that CNA with what turned out to be a Nigerian accent, who made me feel better, of all of those caregivers who risked emotional involvement by getting to know me.
Those who know, who understand that it is a connection that cures, may agree with one young theologian who would explain that if you seek the divine, you will find it in the space between people.
