It amazes me that despite my daily interaction with the most serious of diseases and maladies this world his to offer, I still managed to feel extremely sorry for myself for having a touch of influenza.
To make matters worse, we are in the throes of renovating our house and I did not have the luxury of wallowing in self-pity while a team of builders were angle grinding their way through our walls. And so, my long-suffering husband forced me to go and be sick at work… but not AT work, in one of our rooms. There, for the first time ever, I experienced what it felt like to be a patient at the lodge.
I’ve always understood what we do. I’ve experienced our care from a loved one’s perspective as we have cared for my dear mom during an illness and after a hip replacement. We did my most precious father’s end-of-life care too, and I’ve had a few close friends booked in with us, but I have never lain in a bed here myself.
I arrived, and got tucked into the most comfortable bed, with beautiful crisp white linen, the aircon set to a cozy warmth and immediately got served a cup of tea and slice of Bovril toast. I watched the treacherous cold rain surprise the garden with an unseasonable beating from the safety of my bed. At the press of a button, I could summon a human like magic. They would arrive with smiles, Busi would bustle in with tea and lunch and offers to nebulize me.
After a while, I realized that there was a lot of traffic in front of my room. The gardeners spent an unusually long time in the flower beds paying way too much attention there on such a blustery day . Cleaners I knew were cleaning in other rooms would slowly walk past my window, straining to hear if I was making any sounds. The maintenance team came to check the DB box, for no reason whatsoever.
It dawned on me that the rumour-mill must have been very busy and the staff were all wondering why room 22 was occupied by me. I wish I knew what the people thought. The last time they saw me I just had a bit of a sniffle, and now I was lying in a room that is usually occupied by someone who is either recovering from a bum-and-boob-lift, has terminal cancer or had a prosthesis fitted. The staff knows I’m too stingy (read poor) for plastic surgery, and they would have known if I had an orthopedic surgery, so they must have suspected that I was suddenly dying.
This suspicion was indeed confirmed when Mpho came to bring me a cup of hot lemon and honey tea. She perched on the edge of the bed, and with tears in her eyes, told me that the gardeners and cleaners were all fasting and praying for my miraculous recovery. Suddenly, she burst into tears: “Mommy, you can’t die, we all need you.” I assured her that I was fine and that I really needed the staff to eat rather than fast. If they needed to perform these extreme religious acts, I’d rather they do it in honour of world peace or the end of poverty.
This got me thinking how people show up in ways they understand for their loved ones. Fasting and praying is something that my staff could do for me. It was a beautiful (albeit totally unnecessary) expression of their concern. We see it so often in all sorts of different ways.
We had a beautiful patient recently named Michelle. She had breast cancer, but after her mastectomy her husband convinced her to not receive either chemo or radiation despite the recommendation of specialists. The husband accused the oncologists of just wanting to make more money out of them. Michelle took her husband’s advice and stopped all treatment.
Months later, when Michelle found a hard small lump on her chest again, her husband convinced her to stay clear of the evil doctors and big pharma. He promised to care for her and spent all his time and all their money on finding alternative cures, Vitamin C infusions, homeopathic potions and a diet consisting of almost nothing but organic vegetables and low sugar fruit.
There is a lot of merit in alternative medicines, there is also a lot of merit in western medicines, but neither of these can ever be replaced by a desperate husband’s frantic Google searches.
Despite his best efforts, the cancer grew with vigour, deforming Michelle and causing uncontrollable pain. She was admitted to hospital out of pure desperation, but her husband arrived and convinced her to discharge herself and take on the cancer with positive thoughts and essential oils, which he assured her would be the cure.
It wasn’t. Michelle’s cancer tumours grew to look like an alien trying to push through her rib cage. She could hardly breathe because of the space they were stealing from her lungs. Her life became unbearable. This is when she came to us.
This was an extreme and deeply complex situation. A husband’s fear, grief, mistrust, and love had twisted his attempts to help into something deeply harmful.
Love does not necessarily make us rational, especially if we are scared. When someone is sick or dying, we all want to believe there is something we can do. Sometimes that means fasting like Mpho and her friends did. Sometimes that means Googling alternative treatments at 2am in an overwhelmed state. Sometimes it means driving your friend to chemo. Sometimes it’s sending a Sixty 60 delivery, and sometimes, it is simply holding someone’s hand.
When we cannot change the outcome, the greatest act of love is often simply to show up – with kindness, humility, and the willingness to let someone else help.