Mortality and Me.

I work in a small hospital, in a small town that is trying very hard not to become a large town. I see a lot of different people every day as they enter and leave the hospital system. Sometimes they come electively, to get a joint replaced or a heart repaired, and sometimes they come traumatically, after a fall or a stroke or a car crash, and sometimes they just get sick, and then sicker, until they call 911 or they go to their doctor or clinic and get referred to the ER from there. So I get to know a little bit about a lot of people's' lives, during their average length of stay, which is about 3 days.

What surprises me most is how long people can manage at home, even in poor health, even with terrible balance, even with dementia: they are driving their cars to the same market they have always shopped at, parking next to an empty cart so they can balance with it to get into the store, pick out the things they like to eat, swipe a card and get their purchases back to the car, drive home, get it into the house, up the 3 or 6 or 20 steps, day after day, year after year... until something goes wrong, something out of the routine, and it all falls apart.

There was an old couple once who were admitted to the hospital together after a farm worker found them sleeping and nearly dead under an apple tree in a large commercial apple orchard. They had been to church on Sunday, as usual, but while waiting to make the difficult left hand turn out of the church parking lot to go home, the man decided he would turn right instead and go home a different way, but he got lost. He drove around and around until they ran out of gas, and then they decided to go together on foot to get help, but they wandered deeper and deeper into the orchard until they were too tired to walk any more, so they just laid down to rest. Days went by before the worker found them. They had hypothermia, dehydration with kidney damage, but they had each other, and they both made it out of the hospital, which is where my stories always end.

This could be kind of a dark blog, being about life and death and all, but really, what else is there? I also have to keep it anonymous, since I swore an oath to not violate anyone's privacy. I think it will be good for me to share the stories, you can decide if it is good for you to read them.