This will be my fourth semester volunteering at a Baltimore hospital. In that time I’ve gone from a wide-eyed and scared pre-med fascinated with the theoretical “patient experience” to looking forward to listening, connecting and being with patients. I’ve picked up skills and strategies to be more present with patients. Thinking back I am almost surprised at the number of patients I do not remember. I see hundreds of patients a semester, but even though I can recall the emotions an encounter elicits, I have realized the specifics of most interactions have escaped me. I do not remember my first, and I don’t remember most of the brief cups of water, fetching of blankets or restocking of gloves, nor the muted interactions that prompted them. But I do remember the patients who ask questions, who ask me to stay. I remember the pride staying 10 minutes over my shift to talk a patient down from a panic attack brought me. I remember the wonder in the eyes of a woman as she outlined her son's adventures across Laos on tuk-tuk.
But there is one patient I will never forget. I remember everything about that night. The weather that night, what I was wearing, the room. Everything. I was just over halfway through my shift and the nurse I’d been talking to prepped me for the next room. The situation was delicate and the patient spoke only Spanish. I tried to soften my composure even more and struggled to recall the three years of Spanish classes I’d taken. I knocked and entered the room with the Spanish version of my opening spiel on my lips.
“Hola, me llamo Michael, soy—”
Inside, the patient was young and the surgery she had scheduled for the next morning was the kind that scares you. Being pre-op, she was NPO (nil per os, Latin for nothing by mouth), so there wasn't water or ice chips I could offer, nor much menial I could busy my hands with. She sat there shell-shocked, scary-quiet, somewhere far away from the room. She did not react when I asked if she was cold and offered “una manta otra,” another blanket.
Her mother was not quiet. She was unraveling. She crossed the room before I'd even finished my introduction, took both of my hands in hers — she had to reach up to do it, she was easily a foot and a half shorter than me—and started praying. Over her daughter. With me standing there, a stranger with a laminate who'd walked in three minutes earlier struggling to recall phrases from my Spanish classes, mentally preparing to have a conversation because I thought she wanted someone to speak to her.
I was wrong. She didn't need someone to talk to her. She needed someone to listen and let her talk to G-d. Her Spanish was rapid and as she clasped my hands and in the middle of what must have been a terrifying, horrible night, waiting on a lifesaving surgery for her daughter that she couldn't control, she thanked Him. For 30 minutes she proclaimed her faith and thankfulness for the strength He had given her until tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes, and she literally shook with the effort, taking long, shuddering breaths.
Finally, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. I asked if I could bring her a coffee. When I returned she took it gratefully, and she had grown quieter, calmer. She told me she hadn't slept in a while and thanked me profusely for just bringing her coffee calling me an angel. She introduced me to her daughter, who didn't respond, and asked where I was from. She told me I was a child of G-d, as were we all.
Honestly, I did very little. I poured a cup of coffee from a pot I didn’t brew and stood in a room and listened to a language I’d really only practiced in a classroom. But before I left, she traced the sign of the cross over me and asked me a few small questions: my name again and where I was from, the kind of details I realized that she needed so she could keep praying for me after I walked out the door.
I finished up my shift, forcing everything down, going through the motions. I did not have any other deep interactions for the hour I had left. I did see one person who told me her life story, and we guessed at Family Feud answers together, but then I clocked out of my shift at 8 and then chose not to go home.
I walked aimlessly and thought about medicine. I really thought about it. Why would I, why would anyone want to go into a career of such pain? Choose to see people at their most fearful, most in pain? I began to question myself. Am I just a morbid observer happy because I can peek into people's lives before darting back to safety in the reality of my healthy body?
I know I helped that patient, or at least her family, but at the end of the day I can walk away from the horror and realities of that room.
At that point my reasons for medicine were pretty cliche. I wanted to “help people.” I relished the order and stability a life in medicine might provide. Vain enough, I wanted what a white coat said about me. But all those selfish reasons really paled at the patient I had seen.
What I see as a volunteer is a snapshot. A freeze-framed moment in time of a person's life, and I feel both privileged to share that moment and duty bound to help them any way I can.
Being a volunteer has taught me the role of a health-care provider is to meet every patient where they are. No two patients are alike and your role requires an even keeled flexibility not to act a role for a patient, but to try and connect with them where they are at. At times I have been a friend, a source of home, a curious listener, an impressionable young person, a storyteller, a source of entertainment, even someone uniquely talented to decode the complicated hospital TV remotes. I was many things for that patient and I hope the connection we developed in that snapshot helped her continue on her journey as much as it has helped me on mine.
Michael Sebastian Alderman is a senior from Tulsa, Okla., studying Anthropology and History on the pre-med track.
