The Difference
Tue., November 18, 09:45 AM
I have what has been described as a Reader’s Digest kind of mind. I don’t even read the magazine any more, but I remember the darnedest things from it.
One item concerned a doctor who was instructing a class of nursing students on the care of the feeble elderly. He told them he wanted to describe a patient of his.
“She sleeps most of the time,” he said, “and when she wakes up she cries. She can’t talk or communicate.
“She has no teeth, so her food has to be liquid or pureed. She is unable to feed herself. She also cannot walk or bathe and dress herself, and she is completely incontinent, so she has to use some kind of protective garments all the time.”
The instructor paused. His students were looking very serious, some of them sympathetic and others just disgusted. He smiled and went on.
“I have misled you a little, ” he admitted, “she is not a patient. I have been describing my infant daughter. But how different is a helpless elderly patient from a baby?”
I thought about that a long time when I read it. I remembered it, now that I have a difficult elderly patient of my own. The difference? What I came up with then was hope. You care for an infant day by day, and you watch her progress. Each day you see her learn, improve, and turn into a person. I evoke one smile from Husband, usually from a picture of Lila. He even asked me how to pronounce her name, but he can’t remember it. As she progresses, he regresses.
I am remembering a day when my first-born was just a few months old. (I would never again have time to waste that way.) I could hear that she was awake but not crying. Instead of just going in and picking her up, I stopped at the door and watched her. She was just looking around, eying the sides of the crib, the wallpaper, her mobile up above. She was softly vocalizing and evidently quite content.
Eventually her gaze fell on the door, and I watched her focus… and then she smiled as she recognized me. This is hope; the comatose stage doesn’t last all that long. (Not in babies, anyhow.) They discover, and they learn. And so does the parent. I would not have missed that for anything, teaching my babies to understand and to talk, to read, to ask questions. But I cannot do it without feedback.
Well, this is a day late, but it does illustrate yesterday’s post. I think there are several of you who can relate — to the cartoon, not to the post. 
