It’s 7:30 am. I hurry down the hallways of Stillwater Hospital Centre, trying to look for the room that I had been assigned — 16M, room 1623A. I quickly remove the mask that I had wore outside on the public transport and replace it with a new one the security guard had given to me after inquiring about my entry into the hospital. As I briskly walk up the flights of stairs, I can’t help but wonder what kind of patient I would be sitting for today. The past few shifts have been fairly volatile, where I had to deal with a violent senior suffering from dementia who thought I had dirtied hospital bathroom (when in reality, he peed in the washroom’s garbage bin the night before). Hopefully it would be a fairly calm patient, so that I could have time to do my own work while they were sleeping.
I enter into unit 16M, and it is quite peaceful. There are only the occasional soft beeps of blood pressure monitors and the snoring of patients still fast asleep; thankfully, I was spared from the screaming and arguing of the dementia ward. This unit is particularly bright, with natural light flowing in from the end of the hallway, out looking from the front of the hospital. My assigned room is right next to that window, just on the right. I finally spot the sitter who was in the night shift before me, and apologize for being late — it was 7:32 am after all, and she had been there for a whole 12 hours. Luckily, she didn’t seem to mind, and asked if I had a time sheet since she had forgotten to bring her purse. So I gave her one of two of my time sheets and she was very grateful (since our company policy refuses to pay anyone’s shift if they had not signed the paper). After having filled out her hours, she explains to me that there are two patients in the room; but we were just to look after the smaller one closest to the chair where she had been sitting. She explains what PPE we need to put on, since the patients are in isolation — the soft yellow gown, gloves, eye protection and of course, the mask I was wearing. I nod, and she leaves, wishing me a good shift.
It turned out to be a very hard shift.
Her name is Mya. Not the patient I was supposed to be looking after, but the one on the other side of the pink curtains that divided the small room in two. Mya was a very sweet patient, especially after she woke up, she made a playful banter with the nurse as they were checking her blood pressure and temperature. She smiled despite being completely paralyzed from the waist down.
Whereas the patient whom I was sitting had “independent” written on her mobility chart, Mya was at the lowest level — completely bed-ridden. But as the morning passed on, and breakfast served at 8am, I started hearing sounds of crying. The nurse came around and asked her what was wrong — she wasn’t eating, and she was wrought with tears.
“My puppy” she started “I have a puppy at home alone and he has no one there; it’s been two days. He must be so scared right now”
“Do you have anyone that you can contact to take care of him while you’re recovering here in the hopsital?” asked the nurse
“No, I don’t have anyone here”
“What about your family and friends?”
“I’m alone here, they’ve long been gone”
“I’m so sorry.” The nurse went silent for a moment, thinking about what she could do to help. Only a split second later, she said “I’ll make some calls to the humane society, we can call bylaw to go to your apartment and pickup your dog”. As soon as she said the humane society, Mya’s eyes widened in fear, and she started hyperventilating.
“No, no, no, no, no, no!” She repeated.
“It will be the best for your puppy,” said the nurse “I have a dog myself so I understand how hard this is”
“No!” She continued “Have you seen the conditions in those shelters? I had to put one of my dogs there before, and I’m not doing it again!”
“Mya, this is what would be best for your puppy. If not he can’t survive at home digging through the trash without anyone around” The nurse said, firm. She seemed a bit rushed, since another patient of hers was down the hall screaming his head off. A fellow nurse came to signal for her to go. “I’ll make a few calls, your dog will be okay”
Mya sat there, cursing. “Can’t anyone just ask me before prancing off and deciding everything for themselves? Like, fuck, I didn’t want any of this! You have no idea what it is like in the humane society, they treat animals so bad.” I just sat there momentarily, lost for words as she cried. I reached out to hold her hand for a bit, my mind racing for ways to comfort her terrible situation. Finally, after a while, I asked her what kind of puppy he was.
“He’s such a little guy, he’s a pug, and… oh what is it again..? damn…” She shut her eyes trying to think “chihuahua mix.” I pointed out how cute that breed is, and I asked her how she met him.
“Well, he was having his teeth kicked in by my ex, so my friend rescued him and she gave him to me”. Poor little guy… I said that he must love her very much since she takes such good care of him. And she smiled sadly.
“He must be all over the trash now, I don’t think I took it out before coming here”. I tried to tell her that little dogs are very resilient, and they could still survive for a little while longer; but of course, someone has to go in there to rescue him. I asked her what area she lives, and maybe someone could go help get her dog out of her house.
“Lowertown,” she said “There’s a pharmacy there that I can call; the people know me well” She couldn’t quite remember the name, so I pulled out my iPad and Google Street Viewed the area — After scrolling past a few blocks, we found the pharmacy: Hope Healthcare. I call the phone listed on the website and the clerk picks up. I explain that I am with Mya and immediately she sounds suspicious-
“Who are you?” I explained that I’m simply a sitter at the hospital and that Mya wants to speak with someone who she knows works there. I pass Mya the phone and she starts explaining the situation. But, it doesn’t go far. I thought she had a friend who worked there based on how familiarly she was speaking with the clerk over the phone, but the clerk was just the person who gave her promethazine everyday. A simple worker. That was the only person she could call.
As expected, the worker couldn’t do much, she didn’t offer to go to Mya’s apartment to get the dog, but asked if she could ask her ex to get the dog. To which Mya replied
“He’s the one who landed me here in the first place. There’s no way I would ever contact him for this”
The nurse comes back in during the phone call, and looks at me, confused:
“Who is she calling?” I reply that she’s calling a pharmacy since there are people that she knows there. But from the tone of Mya’s conversation, it’s clear that the clerk can’t help her at all. So once Mya finishes the conversation, the nurse explains that she had just called bylaw and that they would be here to pickup the keys in a bit. She stays a bit to reason with Mya, but she leaves while Mya is still worked up about the humane society.
I hold her hand while she is still crying, and I try to repeat back what the nurse had said — We need to take this step by step. Our first priority right now, is to make sure that your puppy is safe. Since there’s no one at home right now, he can’t sustain off of the garbage for much longer, so the best option right now, since you don’t have anyone you can reach out to, is to call bylaw. They will get him to the shelter, where he will have food and be able to walk. Then, once you are healed here, you can go back to the shelter, and don’t worry about the finances, the nurses can arrange so that they keep the dog under your name.
Talking her through it seemed to calm down her breathing a bit, and she nodded through it all. Soon she nodded off, still holding my hand in hers. It’s the first time that I’m seeing her many tattoos — a stickman angel near her elbow, the pheonix on her forearm, a skull bracelet around her right wrist, the dice, playboy icon and cross on her fingers, her flower vine tattoo up the side of her entire leg. It strikes me that she has thinning hair, and many wrinkles despite seeming young. Her muscles seem to have been wasting away for quite some time, and she is very thin.
After a while, the bylaw officer stops by. I wake Mya up, and she asks me to stay with her while he comes into the room. The man is a tall police officer, who has a very warm but firm tone. He explained everything he was going to do and asked for Mya’s first and last name, residence of address (his demeanor remained constant even when she said communal housing), the type of dog, his name and the kind of food that the dog ate (a mix of hard and soft food). He promises Mya that he would be back in the afternoon to give back the keys and give a report to her about how the dog was doing. He was a very nice and compassionate man.
The rest of the morning, it was quiet again, and I went back to my seat on the other side of the curtain. My assigned patient was fast asleep, curled up at the bottom of the bed, twisted in 4 different sets of blankets.
But as lunch rolled around, Mya started to grunt in pain. Her feet were burning and she pushed all of her blankets off to the end of the bed. I helped her sit up; it was a long process since her lower back was hurting, and she couldn’t move her legs at all, so I had to move them for her to the side of the bed so she can sit up straight .
As she sat up, her back was burning. She was lying in her bed after all for the whole night. Her feet were burning, so I tried to massage them to get some feeling back, which seemed to help. I also massaged her back, but noticed some lumps and protrusions out of her thin skin. At the time, I didn’t take too much note of it. I asked her why she was in the hospital, and she said that someone had beat her up and kicked her in the head. But that was a while ago, and she is only now suffering the pain of that. She said that one day, she just fell down and she couldn’t move her legs any longer. That sounded pretty awful and I teared up for the second time today.
(It was hard for the nurses to change her (took 2) since she was in immense pain, and they had to rush to get to other patients as well. A lot of the maneuvers were tricky, and Mya was pretty aggravated since they seemed not to be listening too well to what she was saying.)
Everything felt quite standard until the doctor came in and broke the news. It was about the results from the screening.
“Mya, you have a very advanced form of cancer. It’s in your liver, behind your heart and all throughout your spinal cord. That’s why you are feeling pain and can’t move your legs anymore.”
“What?” At that moment, it was like all of the air was sucked out of the room and we were plunged deep underwater.
“We can’t see it too well, since it spread so much, so we need to do a few more tests… You must be on medicine right now, you can barely stay awake. I wanted to discuss treatment options, but we might need to wait for another time when you are feeling better.”
“This can’t be happening, my… my whole family passed from cancer” She started crying and shaking. The doctor was there to comfort her and just hold her. At this point, I was back in my original chair, on the other side of the curtain, but walking by, it was devastating.
I’ve never really heard someone cry like that before. It was pure shock, sorrow and pain. It was a call out for help, to someone to something higher to just stop the pain, to just pull a “just kidding, you will be okay”. But we all knew that being out on the streets, without a regular home address, without access to a primary care physician who can go over familial records and screening procedures, without having people to look over you — having a multitude of factors and stressors throughout her life just helped the cancer hide. Hide and multiply, first starting rather asymptomatically. She never knew until it was too late; until it got so bad that she could no longer move. And we all thought it was because she suffered spinal cord injuries from being beat up.
She was wheeled for another screening during the afternoon and returned sleeping. They tried to insert a catheter so that they didn’t have to change her all the time and cause more pain, but she fought and fought and called them evil. It was all very heartbreaking.
Then it was 7:30 pm, and my shift ended. I packed up and left. I wish I could have said goodbye, left something to give Mya some hope. But all I could do was hope that one day, she can return and walk and get her puppy from the humane society and just see how excited he was to see her. Hoping, for the best ending, when in reality, I don’t know what will happen for her. All I knew is that she was a very nice person — helping people until she was broke, saying thank you to everyone who came to help her, being understanding of the hospital and the amount of patients staff had to take care of. A very nice person who ended up on the wrong end of the stick, on the streets, with abusive partners. A very nice person who had lost all of her connections to family, to friends, and the only person she had interacted with regularly was her pharmacist. It’s sad. It really is sad. I wish people had better.
7:42 pm read my watch as I stumbled outside to see the beautiful sunset sky. What can I say; who knows what will happen. I just wished that people in her situation had better access to medical care so that these manageable illnesses don’t spiral out of control. Prevention is so important in healthcare, but for marginalized populations, it is far too often neglected. Hopefully one day that can change, so we can do better for the people around us. But until then, there will be a lone puppy at the humane society waiting for his owner, and a woman alone in the hospital, waiting for better days to come.
