Another day, another palliative patient to discharge back to a nursing home. As per my usual conduct, i sneak into the room in search of the medication charts to write a discharge script, hoping that being palliative, the patient would be so out of it that i wouldn't have to talk to them.
I enter Mrs M's single room in my usual haste and spy her lying quietly in bed awake. Mrs M is a 93, stick thin, bed bound and no longer communicative granny who had stayed with us for 2 weeks, almost dying in 2 separate occasions despite our heroic attempts to dissuade her.
On her first attempt at death, she became unrousable and unresponsive. We gave up, ceased all medications and the next day she sat up asking for steak and meat pies.
With our hopes buoyed, we recommenced medications slowly and in her defiance, she made her second attempt at crossing over to the unknown. Quelled by her unyielding determination to pass on, we withdrew medications again and now her eyes are focused on me and following me with her gaze as i drift by the foot of her bed.
Having lost my chances of darting in and out without being rude, i walked up to her, gave her a smile and said hello as i rubbed her shoulder.
She looked back at me, smiled, gave me a cheeky wink and ripped a part of me asunder.
I can't withdraw treatment and let a patient who winked at me die!
Yet it was our meddlesome methods that were killing her.
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