Human Connection

The Old Ladies on CTU

My first lady, oh, she was so lovely. I took care of her every day during my rotations. On the last day, I said to her, “Okay, so it's my last day and I won't be here on the weekend. Hopefully you’re discharged but if you're still here, my colleagues [clerk] and [clerk] will be taking over and they’re great.” And she asked, “Young man, how far along in your training are you?” I was like, “Oh, I just started third year.” And she said, “Well, you are very good, and I hope that the two gentlemen who come on are half as good as you are.”  *grins*

My second lady had been super sick. We gave her antibiotics, and she was getting better and better. She was one of those patients who was always very down. She would be the last patient that I would see every day and I would purposely leave her for last because then I would have 30 minutes to an hour to sit down and talk to her. She would tell me about her life. She lived alone, and she had no one with her there. That’s why she was super sad, and super down. I was the only one who talked to her consistently. We would talk, and she would moan and grumble. Every day, she told me “Oh, I want MAiD, I want MAiD.” Then I'd go to rounds and mention that she's talking about MAiD. My attending would say, “She needs to be more stable to make that decision.” On my last day, I went to round on her and she’s got her reading glasses on and a book opened up. Her daughter had finally come in from out of province and was there with her. She just was so happy and introduced me to her daughter and said, “This is my friend. He's been listening and helping me so much.”  

My third lady was initially delirious and a bit aggressive towards me because she didn't want to be in the hospital. Then her husband and she realized that we didn’t want to keep them there longer than necessary. She slowly warmed up to me and also thanked me on my last day. Under most circumstances, you have positive interactions with patients quite frequently, but just the CTU and the ability to follow up with your patient in a very acute stage, you know, day to day today is quite gratifying. Those old ladies on my last Friday on CTU really made my day. Everyone's like, “Oh, CTU has all these old ladies that we can’t do anything about.” All these old ladies have their stories. If you listen to them, get to know them, and help them, they're appreciative. Sure, you can't fix them with an operation or put a stent in them or fix their mitral regurgitation as I wanted to do that one time and Dr. [cardiologist] said, “Yeah, we can’t do that... She’s too old.” Anyways, yeah that was surprising enough, one of the most gratifying experiences I had during clerkship.  I just love those old ladies on CTU.   

How do you see it translating to other patients? You talk to me about these ladies, but what about other patients? 

I want to get to know the patient and just understand their humanity. A couple of these old ladies were very frustrating to care for at the start, and there were days when I was just dragging my feet. Sometimes, there is this element of frustration in treating challenging patients. So, you have to remember that they're human, they're frustrated, they're anxious, and they don't have your knowledge. I try to be cognizant of the fact that what my patient is at that point isn’t necessarily who they are as a person. There's a lot of stuff we don't know. We don't know where they're coming from, and we don't know their previous interactions with the healthcare system. I always ask myself why they’re doing something.

(P.S. He’s now an IM resident, very much loved by the old ladies on CTU and his other patients.)