Today's Hospice Adventure

“Bedpan,” she croaks out, barely intelligibly, and her right hand, the only one that still works, flutters on the covering sheet before grasping and pushing it down.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, “But I can’t, they told me not to.” Besides that, I think but don’t say, I’m spectacularly unqualified to lift you, and if I move you I’m likely to hurt you, I’m an accountant, and we don’t know how to do these things. Got any numbers you’d like me to add up?

But she’s insistent. “Go potty,” she says, again, and so I make a half-hearted stab at it, which is what I do when people want things, getting the bedpan, rolling her slightly, but I see she is heavily diapered and double diapered, so there’s no chance.

I tell her I know it’s hard, but if she really must go, to go ahead and go. They told me they’d clean her up when they got home so it “may be stinky,” they’d said. I’m not so much worried about being offended by smells as I am by Agnes’s reluctance. She looks at me uncomprehendingly, as if I’ve suggested she climb a try and shit on innocent passers-by.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, because I really don’t. “Someone will be here soon to help with this.”

The phone rings repeatedly this morning, between the hours of 8:30 and noon. Hospice, the physical therapist is coming between 1 and 2.

Hospice, again, the aide is coming for a bath and such between 11 and 12.

The pharmacy, they have something in that someone wanted for Agnes.

A salesman. I don’t care.

Hospice, again, for the third time, the RN, and she’ll be by between 3:30 and 5:00.

I hope that’s everyone. Dying takes a village.

But hey, someone’s going to be here between 11:00 and 11:30, giving me and Agnes hope for a future potty break.

Agnes does not want to wait, and again, for the third time, she pulls down the sheet and tries to turn, saying, “potty,” and gesturing at me to do something about it. I do something about it all right. I lean in close to her and say, “Someone will be here soon from hospice,” and I pull the sheet back up so she won’t get cold.

Helpful I am.

Water. Ice. Water. Ice. Agnes is insatiable today. I give her teaspoons of water and ice, one after the other, and she keeps asking for more. “Thirsty, today, aren’t you?” I ask her, and she smiles at me. I wouldn’t really know if she’s thirstier today than usual. This is my first day with Agnes.

She gets me to come over again and move her forward, and she indicates she wants her back scratched, so I do, over the thin nightie, and I feel all her bones, as if she’s barely anything else at all, nothing more than bones anymore.

There are a profusion of kitties living here, but I don’t remember all the details. Two kittens locked in one bedroom, but if they come out another cat can’t be in. A cat in another room, and she can’t go outside. And another cat, a Siamese, who can’t come in except under certain circumstances that escape me (maybe when the kittens are in hiding?). It’s okay though, for none of them make any pretense of being present and if I didn’t know better they wouldn’t even exist.

Water. Ice. Bed up. Agnes likes to sit up, and then I prop her up with pillows. But then she removes the one on the side holding her head up, so her head falls forward when she starts dozing. She looks uncomfortable, but last time I attempted to make her more comfortable her eyes popped open and she said something that could have been, “water.” Or it could have been “who are you and what have you done with my daughters?” It could have been, “get me out of this hell hole,” but I doubt it. But when I offered her water from a teaspoon her eyes lit up, faded blue, the only spots of color left in her, and she opened her mouth wide.

The aide comes and takes care of the potty issue, and she gives Agnes a partial, which I suppose means a partial bath, and she makes Agnes comfortable again. The aide is efficient and kind and beautiful, she speaks loudly enough that Agnes can understand what’s being done, and before she leaves she bends down close to Agnes and says, “Thank you for letting me take care of you today.” Agnes smiles at her, beatifically, from her horizontal position, drifting off to sleep. On Friday the aide will return for a full bath.

I think Agnes might sleep now, she must be exhausted, and the physical therapist is coming in an hour, but no, it was an act for the aide, and as soon as she’s gone Agnes wants to sit up, she wants water, she wants the bed this way and that.

I’m not allowed to give meds, so I hope Agnes’s pain holds off for a bit longer. I’m not allowed to do much of anything but spoon feed water, adjust the bed and pillows, answer the phone, talk to Agnes, and help myself to anything in the kitchen.

I don’t, I never, except once when I was starving at Fred’s and decided one piece of toast would be okay, eat at a patient’s house.

I hold Agnes’s hand, and I look at our hands together. At 93, Agnes has a few years on me, so suddenly my middle-aged hand looks younger. Want to shave years off your appearance? Hang around old people. I tell Agnes her ring is pretty and she smiles, and it’s a pretty good smile for someone who has cancer and had a stroke two weeks ago.

I know so little about Agnes, except her name, and that she has two twin daughters who are taking care of her. I know what’s killing her, and it’s the same thing that killed my friend Stew, and my mom, and I wonder if she said everything she had to say before the stroke happened. I hope she didn’t wait too long to say anything that needed to be said.

Agnes’s grandson comes home, and tells me he’s not usually back from work so soon, but his mom, one of the daughters, called him and said she needs a couple more tests and so they’ll be later than they’d planned. I’d told them that was okay, I could hang around until . . . whenever they got back, and I tell him the same thing. He’d watch her, if I needed to leave, but Agnes doesn’t like him to watch her because he’s a man with important things to do. Her daughter tells me later that when Agnes was still getting around she didn’t like her grandson to take her to the store, because it’s not right to expect a man to wait around while one goes shopping. I tell him not to worry about it, I’ll just keep hanging out with Agnes, and he goes to his room. At least if Agnes needs something for the pain he’s there now, so I can say, “Look, let’s give her something for the pain,” and I won’t be overstepping my bounds.

Agnes does start to drift off then, sitting up, her head slumped forward a bit, sleeping, finally, and when her daughters get home she’s still asleep, and I leave her like that. I tell them I’ll come back next week, and at first the daughter I’m talking to doesn’t understand that they don’t need to have doctor’s appointments, they don’t need to have an urgent task to attend to, if all they want is a couple of free hours to take a break from the 24 hour responsibility I can fill in, providing water and ice and the occasional back rub, and all they have to do is tell me what time they want me there.

Volunteers just do the simple things, like give people a little bit of time.