Dear Judy,
I was asked to fill in to care for a woman with colon cancer a few days ago. She is only in her 40’s which makes it that much harder.
I met her in her living room, sitting in a recliner. She lives alone but has friends and neighbors who take turns being with her
(OK — dying and alone: it doesn’t get any worse than that…)
We talked about her symptoms and when we finished, I asked her how she was doing. She said, “I go minute by minute, and not day by day.” Her eyes filled with tears.
I said, “Okay, what really scares you?”
She said: “The hospital bed in the other room” — an answer that surprised me. She went on to say, “If that hospital bed gets ahold of me, I will die.”
I told her, “You can stay in that recliner as long as you want, and I promise not to take any of our minutes together for granted.”
So to everyone out there: Enjoy your minutes.
Jeanne
