Watching and Waiting

I think the hardest part of dialysis is watching people die. In the past year I have watched people's health decline until the point that most of them just give up. There have been a few who have died from heart attacks during treatments, and the scary thing is that having a heart attack is an everyday risk for a lot of people on dialysis. Those are the scariest because you get used to seeing people three days a week and then all of a sudden they are no longer there, someone else has taken their chair and no one says anything. It's as if it is a stigma to talk about the former occupant of the chair, like the center is attempting to cover up the fact that another patient has died... there is no evidence that he or she ever existed. There are hushed whispers when a unsuspecting patient asks about the deceased, and when the words "he or she passed" there is a deafening silence as if we are taking a collective moment to pay respects to the dead but, at the same time, hoping that Death himself hasn't heard our silent prayers. The only evidence of some of those who have passed is the stark, white sheet of paper hanging on the patient bulletin board announcing that a gift has been given to the center or the local kidney foundation, a donation, of sorts, from the deceased family. Only a white sheet of paper with a few lines on it is the only remembrance the center offers to the deceased. A piece of white paper simply telling other patients about a donation made in the deceased's name. There is nothing telling of the person's life, accomplishments, likes, dislikes, family... just a piece of white paper. Everything about that person has been reduced to two sentences on a white piece of paper against the cluttered backdrop of a bulletin board. That paper says everything and nothing. It is a constant reminder that dialysis is a business like any other, and that even though people could have been patients at a center for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, in the end they will simply be remembered by an unassuming piece of paper. For all the things that have happened in their lives, for all the things that they have gone through and for all of the things that dialysis has taken away from them, I seriously doubt that this is the manner in which they would have wanted to be remembered. Life cannot be reduced into a few short lines on a piece of paper. I was once told that you must not look at the dot that is on a page, but look at the infinite possibilities that are harbored in the recesses of the white paper. Maybe that is what I must do as I read each of the names held on that piece of paper. I should look at what that person's life for what it may have been. Many of them I did not have an opportunity to get to know outside of dialysis, but I am sure that their lives were more than the defeated people that walk in the door of the dialysis center. I never thought that I would encounter all this when I first began dialysis in 2005. Five people have died since I began dialysis, most of the elderly, but I have had to watch them essentially give up living, become tired of going through the motions of what life on dialysis has become. And each time I have to sit back and watch, wanting to scream for them to keep fighting, knowing that I am too afraid to open my mouth. I just sit back, watching and waiting with the others until death swoops down and claims the life of the person he has been hovering over. I watch the black clouds descend and then, as quickly as they come, disappear and give way to the less bleak, gray clouds that seem to converge on our lives... Maybe one day the clouds will part and a blinding sunshine will come through to warm our souls... until then, we are stuck behind the blue-gray clouds and the ever-hovering presence of death.

My sister says hi and lean wit it, rock wit it!