Patient: (
n) One who receives medical attention, care, or treatment.
Patient: (
adj.) Able to put up with pain, troubles, difficulties, hardship, etc without complaint or ill temper.
Four years ago when I turned 40, I made a New Year's resolution to find and go to the doctor for a long overdue check up and consultation.
Four years later and after two years of complaining about a sore foot and a growing list of symptoms, I finally kept the resolution and found and went to the a doctor.
For whatever reason, it was excruciatingly hard for me to pick up the phone and get this done. I dreaded it. I complained about it. I put it off. And I don't really know why.
I am blessed to have had insurance for the last 2 jobs, totaling almost 19 years and even more blessed to have only used it a total of 2 times.
In all of this, I've often thought about my Mom.
Even though I don't get sick that often, I have a feeling I would be a horrible patient.
She was not.
I remember Louetta telling a story about when they were young, mom made a comment to her about how she was having a hard time finding shoes that felt good.
She later, at 26, I believe, was diagnosed with the arthritis that she would battle the rest of her life.
As a 9 or 10 year old I can remember seeing the look of excruciating pain on her face as she would battle to get up out of a chair. I can remember feeling helpless, but I never remember her complaining. In 1974, or so, she went to the Cleveland Clinic to have a knee replacement, which back then, was a huge operation with an extremely long recovery time.
It meant being away from us and a long road of physical therapy (does anyone remember the homemade sand bag weights she had to lift)? But I think if she were telling this story today, she would still say it was the best thing she ever did for her health. She took a risk (they said it might not help and may even come out worse) and had one knee and then the other replaced. She never had great range of motion in the second one, but the most important thing was...the pain was reduced. She said gone, but as we all know, it was probably just less unbearable.
In my book, that was enough.
Living with that kind of pain should have extempted her, or so I believed, from other types of suffering.
I was wrong.
In 1995, she went to the Doctor in October.
I remember coming home and she was in her room lying down on the heating pad. I laid down on the bed next to her and she told me the doctor said that she had lost 85 percent of her kidney function, but it was a slow process and at that point she should outlive the other 15 percent.
He was wrong.
Within 3 months she was on dialysis 3 times a week.
Doctors, dialysis, nurses, dialysis, hospitals, dialysis, needles, dialysis, infections, dialysis.
Still, a smile. Laughter. Yes, tiredness. Yes, aches and pains. And I'm not forgetting the times it would all be too much and I'd hear her crying in the bathroom. But honestly, how many times did you hear her complain? Your answer is the evidence of her testimony.
Awhile ago, when my foot starting hurting and then I had to stand on it 8 hours a day, I saw how pain can really ruin the quality of life. I felt how on edge it can make you. How even if you didn't want it to, it could make you short with people and irritable. And I thought and said out loud almost everyday: "Honestly, I don't know how she did it."
How did she live with that kind of pain...everyday and stay the person she was?
If there ever was the model of a patient patient..it was my mom, Helen Jean Vandercar.
Directions to here:
Okay...edit.
I take that back, I heard her bitterly complain on two separate hospital visits.
The complaint?
Being surprised by lemon pudding (she thought it was vanilla)!
Same goes with the New Year.
