To Total Pain

When did we lose that basic human instinct to care for the dying? As medicine became a science, with careful testing and blind studies, did we slowly erase the person until we were left with just a thing to connect tubes and wires to, something to test and poke, hopefully cure, of course, but when it was clear the disease was not cured, were patients something to walk away from because there was nothing left to be done?

Source: http://www.stchristophers.org.uk/
about/damecicelysaunders

There is so much more to be done, she would say. Cecily Saunders recognized you, named you “total pain.” Not just the pain in the bones, coursing through the nerves, up and down the spine, across the fingertips so that touching the wool blanket hurt, but the pain the soul feels as it breaks away, the ache for more.

You were lucky to be noticed at all, but Cecily fell in love. He was a Polish immigrant, a waiter, a man who earned his living bringing hot soups and roasted chicken while diners talked about the love they were in or the love they were falling out of. He knew when to approach the table with more water, to take a plate away, and when to wait. One reaches for the other’s hand. The other reaches for the wine instead. As the waiter, he watches and waits for every right moment.

She met him as a patient, dying of cancer. It’s wrong to fall in love with your patients her friends would tell her. You can’t remain objective; you won’t be able to care for him properly. But Cecily knew the opposite was true. He was the first patient she truly cared for, the first she could really see all that was hurting and all that needed treatment. She brought him morphine, priests and social workers. Total pain, total care. She was easing his pain; she was easing her pain.

We do not live only in our bodies, and we don’t die there. And medicine is not only for curing. And dying is not a failure. And healing is not an occurrence. And pain does not exist in one person. And she could not ignore it.