There are angels in this very room

[temporaryreality]

I've been following naked capitalism's regular commenter IM Doc since he first revealed the flaws in the Pfizer vaccine study and  its subsequent publication. This is his most recent post. Yes, he recommends vaccination for those with high risk of covid complications, but he's also been sounding the alarm about how the vaccines have changed the situation for all of us for the worse. This post, though, is included here because it touches on the themes I gravitate toward on this blog.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/08/links-8-10-2021.html#comment-3587201


 Good Morning.

I have endeavored to share all I could about what is going on on the ground in my world. I have had a very emotional past 10 days – and sometimes on the ground reporting as a physician is going to have to include very emotional things. This current situation has really taken a turn for the worse. The patients who are getting to the stage of critically ill are very very ill indeed. It seems they are not responding to things that were useful in previous waves. I am not sure what that means at this point. And although, we have not seen any kids here that are critically ill, I know this is happening to some degree across the USA. Furthermore, I have now seen with my own eyes cases of other viruses that should be confined to winter now making people very sick right now. I fear that our COVID friend may be learning some new tricks.

We now have multiple doctors and nurses on quarantine because although fully vaccinated they too have fallen ill, just as I did a few weeks ago. So I am going to be very busy and this will be the last report for a long while.

I have two brand new students with me starting this past Monday. As I always do, I start their rotation off with a very simple statement – THIS IS STILL A NOBLE PROFESSION. I endeavor always to make sure they know that through their entire time with me.

I have a lot in common with them as they enter their careers in this COVIDtide. When I was 25 and a brand new doctor, AIDS was raging. Death and dying hung in the air. But what kept me grounded back then was the other aspect of being an intern in that era – taking care of the WWII generation as they hit their 70s and 80s. As I always tell my students, go through your life learning more from your patients than they ever learned from you – and those WWII folks could not have been a better font for a young man.

One of the mystical things about being a PCP is the opening up that happens much of the time right as people know they are about to leave this realm. It happens all the time. I was 24 back then. I do not need to watch Saving Private Ryan to know what life was like for a 24 year old on D Day. I saw it repeatedly in haunted eyes and words as these men were dying generations later. I did not need to watch Judgement at Nuremberg to know what it was like to see the Nazis being executed one by one – I lived it out through memories of a 24 year old who was there – spilling his soul years later to his 24 year old doctor as he lay dying. I could go on and on with kamikazes, Iwo Jima, the USS Missouri, and Pearl Harbor.

I have also realized that patients will tell me in all kinds of ways that they are ready to go. And I best not stand in the way. And the thing that has become so important to me – this process can be just as mystical as watching a baby being born.

And as I have learned so many times in the past, life lessons are often given to me as their physician as they are dying – it is one of the greatest gifts of my life.

This happened this past weekend. A very elderly woman, fully vaccinated, told me in her own way that she was ready to go. This has been a very difficult struggle for her, but she took it with all the grace and dignity that I know she has. Her family has been here in this area for generations and she is as tough as nails. She gave it everything she had. But it was her time to go.

That morning, when I walked in the room, she looked up at me – “Doctor, there are angels in this very room – Do you see them? – They are all around me. They are getting ready to take me home. I am not afraid. They are standing right behind you and have their hands on your shoulders. Take their strength. They are trying to lift you up. Let them.”

One lesson I have learned is to not get in the way. When people are talking like that, they are indeed ready to go home.

And I walked out of her room, and promptly fell to the floor and I started weeping like a baby. I am no longer 24, and this gets harder and harder every year. I also think there is just an overall exhaustion at play. This whole thing is really taking its toll on all of us in the hospitals. There is also some PTSD at play with me personally. Abandoning people to face this moment alone was common in the AIDS era. It was horrible then. I thought I would never see it again – but it is happening all over again now. People dying all alone.

But her family and her church family were just not going to let that happen. A few minutes later, as I was doing her note, a chorus started to ring out from the windows in the room – an old American hymn – There were about 50 people outside her room letting her know they were right there.

O COME ANGEL BAND
COME AND AROUND ME STAND
BEAR ME AWAY ON YOUR SNOW WHITE WINGS
TO MY IMMORTAL HOME

And they kept right on going with another African American hymn —

MOSES LED GOD’S CHILDREN, 40 YEARS HE LED THEM
THROUGH THE COLD AND THROUGH THE NIGHT

THOUGH THEY SAID LET’S TURN BACK
MOSES SAID KEEP GOING
CANAANLAND IS JUST IN SIGHT

THOUGH WE WALK THROUGH VALLEYS, THOUGH WE CLIMB HIGH MOUNTAINS
WE MUST NOT GIVE UP THE FIGHT
WE MUST BE LIKE MOSES, WE’VE GOT TO KEEP ON TRYING
CANAANLAND IS JUST IN SIGHT

THERE WILL BE NO SORROW
THERE IN THAT TOMORROW
WE WILL ALL BE THERE BYE AND BYE
MILK AND HONEY FLOWING – THAT IS WHERE I’M GOING
CANAANLAND IS JUST IN SIGHT.

It was a joyous occasion. And as has always been the case – I learned many many lessons.
But the reason I bring this story up – I think we can all learn lessons.

That last song is from an ancient story sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims. It has a message that should be visible to even agnostics and atheists.

I will sum it up for you like this –
Americans – time is running out. We need to begin to realize we are all on the same team here. If we fail to do so, it will likely lead to 40 more years in the wilderness. If we find it in ourselves to start working together, the milk and honey will be flowing. We are going to do this together or not at all.

If you are high risk, get vaccinated NOW. All of us should be eating well, exercising, out in the sun, losing weight and getting the stress off. We should all be looking for moments in our lives that are transcendent like I described above. It is very important for all of us to know that there is a higher purpose and we must get there together.

Live not by Lies
Live not in fear.

Comments

[hearthspirit]

That's a great story. You might like the one about my grandmother:

When she was dying of cancer, she'd wanted to die at home, being afraid of the hospital. But my aunt had been in denial about how quickly she was declining, and hadn't lined up the palliative care nurse required with enough notice; though the plan was all in place, it had all been arranged, they need x amount of time to get a home care worker available to administer the saline drips, morphine, etc. So she ended up being taken to hospital.

She was unconscious by the time she arrived, and so my mom and aunt just sat with her, waiting, and had days to chat with the people sitting with another very old woman in the next bed. They had removed the other woman from life support shortly after my grandma arrived, and she then baffled the doctors by not dying for days. After talking to my mom and aunt, the other woman's grandchildren were happy to understand - she was waiting for my grandma, because she knew she was afraid. Their grandmother had been a very devout hindu.

My mom and aunt were like oh, that's sweet, but, this is embarrassing, uh... Mom was... Uh... You know mom might not have been very nice to your grandmother in life, is what we're saying.

They laughed, said that sounded about right too, for their grandmother, that probably gets you extra karma points.

The day my grandma died, the other lady did die within twenty minutes.

If she'd been at home the way she wanted, she would have had to face what would have been possibly a pretty frightening experience on her own.

Though, one of my grandma's phrases to live by had been "Never bother telling someone when something bad happens, expecting something to be done. Nobody will care and nothing will be done about it. Better to just get on with it, life is unfair." (You may infer what sort of life experiences she had to develop that rule.) So I bet at minimum she was pretty surprised to learn that wasn't entirely true, either.

[temporaryreality]

That's a very interesting story! It says a lot about the "expansive" mindset afforded by the Hindu approach to death and really, how very little we who are living understand about the whole process and its greater significance.

You reminded me that when my great-aunt was dying, she told my dad and me that my mom (who had died maybe a year prior) was in her presence and "with the angels." I saw no reason to doubt her. Then, some years later, when my grandma (sister of the great-aunt) was some months out from dying (but still standing in that zone-between-worlds that's thinned and transparent to a degree), I asked her a question and she said, "I don't know, you should ask the grandma." I said, "But Grandma, you ARE my grandma" and she gave a little laugh and said, "No, the other grandma, the one [gestured] there." I wondered if her own mother or grandmother had come to see her through.

[hearthspirit]

That's a great story, too, thank you! I'm glad you remembered it.