Evolving Situation
By Charles E. Kraus
What you do when your wife is in the emergency room for eight hours, in addition to sitting there, off to the side watching the proceedings, is realize you’re witnessing a kind of precise, almost melodious process, the convergence of knowledge, systems, resources, and committed individuals coming together to achieve a single goal. In a world filled with conflict and animus, where allegiances are split, and people are drawn to their affiliations rather than to their better instincts, watching an emergency room staffed by men and women composed of the widest range of skin color, accents and sexual orientations, identifying as one — a kind, energetic collective, there to stabilize my wife, felt a little like visiting a Heaven designed to heal and then return her to life on earth.
A dynamic emergency room team — five, six, as many as eight doctors, nurses, and aids tending to Linda, adjusting to an evolving situation, doing so quickly, but somehow without rushing, going out of their way to maintain a respectful, friendly, consensus. And in the middle of all of this, as I stirred in my corner seat, time and again, people explained what was going on and asked if I was OK, comfortable, needed anything. I too was part of the equation.
It all began when the Adult Family Home facility that has been taking care of my wife, phoned to say an ambulance was on its way. I should come quick. I did. In time to provide some information to the paramedics before they whisked her away to the hospital. When she was still living in our house, I’d summoned paramedics again and again, and each time they’d arrived quickly, set a calm, ‘we’ve got everything under control’ tone, and never left us without saying, ‘do not hesitate to call.’
At this point, Linda has been hospitalized for more than three weeks. That’s three and counting; there is no immediate plan to discharge her. During these recent, indelibly etched days, I’ve realized how lucky we are to be going through this health emergency here, at a first rate hospital, the University of Washington Medical Center — Northwest. You get to our age, your life becomes a series of comparison studies. For example, good hospitals vs. poor ones. Today’s medical providers — diverse and empathetic vs. the old days and the old ways, when hospitals were staffed by a pool of white, male, American born, patrician-doctors making their rounds and articulating their pronouncements.
UWNW Hospital is a busy place with endless demands on each shift and yet, when doctors and nurses make their rounds, nothing feels superficial or abrupt. They work with my wife, step into her confusion and pull out meaning. No disingenuous empathy. No condescension. They want to hear, want to know, want to help, want to heal.
One of the speech therapists returned to Linda’s room four times within hours of his initial visit because he’d thought of this, wanted to bring something that might be helpful, had an idea he wished to share. Hearing my daughters and I were present, doctors came by with their updates, with answers to the questions we’d asked on previous visits. Called me at home if they’d missed me at bedside. It was obvious they’d been listening, knew who we were as a family, spoke with and about Linda from a depth of understanding, about who she is and why she matters. I hope what I’m writing doesn’t sound naïve or like Pollyanna has been whispering in my ear. You read horror stories depicting short staffed, underfunded hospitals. UWNW is the opposite. This is what it looks like when things work.
We are old. Some would say it isn’t worth using up resources that might be apportioned to folks with more time ahead of them. But there she was, my wife, comatose, her oxygen level dangerously low with the sudden onset of Aspiration pneumonia, all this on top of other substantial medical conditions. No one turned Linda away. They came running to get her and made the time to treat her.
She’s a character. Has never taken no for an answer when there was a better option. Ask her students, her friends, the strangers she’s befriended. All the people who, shortly after meeting her, find her so empathic they talk with her as if conferring with an old friend.
Turns out UWNW and Linda have numerous similarities, the main one being that they both strive for excellence.
