The Mountains Call
It was almost a hundred degrees outside when the call from the nursing home came. We had been running errands in the heat that had piled up all week and needed to be run before the next week had begun, and had no sooner shut the front door behind us when the phone rang. The Wife took the call on the porch to get a better signal, and I wasn’t surprised when she came back inside and said that she had to go up the mountain.
Mr. Hendrick* was a retired Naval officer and a chemical engineer. As the cancer spread through his body he and his wife decided to move South so that he could face his final days surrounded by the beauty and serenity of the Blue Ridge mountains.
But Death isn’t a romantic, and when his days dwindled Mr. Hendrick changed his mind: He wanted to live after all and wanted all means necessary employed to save him. The mountains might be a peaceful place to die, but it doesn’t have the machinery, medicines and skills necessary to battle cancer in what is always a losing war. So his doctors sent him to the teaching hospitals of Winston-Salem, an hour and a half away, that had the means necessary to help him in his battle.
Once there, Mr. Hendrick did another about-face; he refused treatment. One by one Mr. Hendrick dismissed the specialists that had been assigned to assist him. Having nothing left to offer him, and with his wife unable to care for him as she began battling her own losing war against dementia, he was sent to a nursing home near his home in the mountains.
My wife, his family doctor, met him there. His son drove down from the North to try to talk some sense into his father. A doctor by trade, he was familiar with his father’s prognosis and wanted him to die with the dignity that he deserved. But Mr. Hendrick refused his counsel to be made a DNR. “I will not have that purple sticker next to my name,” he fumed. Mr. Hendrick directed the staff to make all attempts to save him in the event of a crisis, and the staff had no choice but to follow his wishes.
The next day everything changed. Evidently his son had been successful and Mr. Hendrick decided to accept the inevitable. He was placed on hospice, and my wife hoped that he would enjoy his final days in comfort.
Then the phone call came this afternoon. The son had left and returned to the North. Mr. Hendrick’s breathing was becoming more rapid and his oxygen sats were falling; but his wife was already packing up his things. “How long is this going to take?” she asked the nurses.
My wife loves the elderly, and they love her. She loves listening to them whereas it seems most are too busy to do so. This makes it a challenge to practice medicine when insurance companies expect you spend only a handful of minutes treating a patient and more unpaid time writing up in detail what was done.
“No one deserves to die like this,” she said. “I have to go back up the mountain.”
She thought I was annoyed by her decision, but it didn’t bother me in the least. A man dies only once, and he deserves to do it with dignity and care. I kissed her goodbye and sent her on her way.
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*Not his real name and details of his identity were kept from me to protect a dying man’s privacy.
Update: Mr. Hendrick passed peacefully the following morning.
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