The surgical team filed out of the patient’s room. I looked over my shoulder to see a shaken daughter holding the wrinkled hand of her quiet, elderly mother who lay in the bed. I shuddered as I thought of the surgery her body would endure the next day. I knew I needed to return to her room later in the day to find out more about her history. After rounds were over and our cases for the morning were finished, I found my way back. I wanted to know more than a medical history. I felt like I needed to know her as a person.
I reintroduced myself, sat down, and simply asked, “Tell me about you.” She retorted, “Starting where?” with a touch of wit to her tone. I smiled and simply asked, “Where were you born?”
What ensued was like the script of an award-winning movie.
She spoke of her rural Appalachian roots, young love, brutal wars, child rearing, tested faith and growing old. She seemed as if she had been ready to tell her story since the day she came into this world. But this day — the day before major surgery — was closer to the day she would leave this world. As she started her story, all I could see in my mind was her CT scan that I had viewed before coming into her room. I can still see it — a mass in her large intestine with spiky tendrils invading the nearby bladder and abdominal lining. Even as a medical student, I knew this would not end well for her. But as she told me about herself, the CT scan’s image was soon replaced by the beautiful life of the woman in front of me. I sat and listened to every detail of her stories, details that could never be shown with a radiology image. Her daughter sat faithfully by her side, adding details and weaving the story through the generations of their family. Many of the stories had a common theme: faith. Her faith, along with her body, had lasted almost a century.
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