Taking care of eachother
Rahi patel
My parents are getting older. My dad doesn’t lift me when he hugs me anymore. My mom asks me to carry the laundry basket up the stairs. There’s a special type of guilt that accompanies leaving home and moving over a thousand miles away; the home your immigrant parents worked tirelessly to build for you. The home they poured every ounce of their love and energy in to provide a foundation for you to grow. You tell yourself that this opportunity is for the best. You’ll be able to care for more people and learn more if at a larger medical center. It’s worth it if you’ll become a better doctor. Right? In this pursuit, you miss birthdays and family events, you forget to call your friends, and you don’t know what your little brother eats for dinner anymore. What good is maximizing the people you meet and stories you cherish if you can’t be with those that dedicated their life to caring for you?
I often see my family in the patients I encounter. A young girl tells me of how her father passed away from alcohol abuse. How he laid bare in New York City until the police found him. She didn’t believe he was gone until she saw a photo of his body. She suffers from insomnia now. She says the image of his large stomach is what she thinks about when trying to fall asleep, a time meant for her to reach serenity and peace. I think of my mother. Did she have trouble sleeping after she saw the maggots in her father’s foot? He was a farmer and had diabetes. Seemingly no correlation for immediate cause of concern, but losing feeling in your feet and not wearing shoes on farmland can lead to a myriad of problems. He eventually went into septic shock, lost his vision, and passed away from a heart attack. Some things you can only be made aware of in retrospect.
A middle-aged woman tells me of how the loss of her brother and sister within months of each other has made her lose her appetite. They grew up together in Ghana, and when one moved to the United States, the other two followed. She doesn’t enjoy a meal if she can’t share it with them. I think of my father. Did he eat less after his elder brother passed away in his 30’s from colorectal cancer? He tells me of how he would walk to work crying after his passing, with his hands shoved in his pockets during cold Chicago winter mornings. Gloves were a luxury. I wonder what must have run through his mind when his young niece, his brother’s daughter, was diagnosed with cancer, which led to him waiting for the genetic test to tell him if he also had the Lynch Syndrome mutation. He slowly unburies these stories one by one as I get older, almost as if he’s afraid to accidentally splash the pain from his tears on me.
An older woman I met has Parkinson’s. Her promising gene therapy treatment backfired and made her condition worse. She is a Juilliard-trained violinist, having performed at concertos all around the world. She can’t perform anymore, but she has stacks of music books with exceedingly worn spines and annotations scattered throughout on her nightstand. When she speaks, words of wisdom and grace flow. She compared her love story with her husband of 44 years to a music piece; the initial rise and intensity of meeting someone new, the middle that requires adjustment to maintain stability, and the end that leaves off on a good note. I think of my grandmother. After contracting typhoid at the age of twelve, the medication she was given made her lose her hearing. She got married, had her first child at 16, and was still able to travel the world. She’s 87 now. A straight-shooting matriarch that managed to raise five young children in rural India after her husband passed away. Her gentle hands were the ones that held me on the porch while the rest of my family were scared to hold the four-pound premature infant. No matter the cards she was dealt, she not only persevered, but she thrived.
A grandmother comes in because she feels “hard lumps” on her chest and back. The doctor I’m working with meticulously listens to her concerns and performs a thorough physical exam. He reviews her weight chart with her, showing her the line that trends downwards, indicating her drastic weight loss. He asks her if she’s been eating well. She tells us sometimes she forgets to eat because she’s so busy taking care of her grandson. He tells her that what she is feeling is her bones sticking out. I think of my other grandmother. She moved to the United States when my brother and I were young to help take care of us while my parents were working. She would run by my side during hot Florida summer days while I was learning to ride a bike to catch me if I fell, and at night I would quiz her for her US citizenship test. She wasn’t allowed to go to school after she was ten, so now she prays for me before every medical school exam and sighs a breath of relief on the phone call when I tell her I passed. Her tears at my and my mom’s white coat ceremony were an acknowledgement of raising two women that will never feel their goals are unattainable.
While I sometimes question if being away from family for my career goals is worth the sacrifice, I have slowly come to realize that working in medicine is how I celebrate those that have helped me get here. The parallels I see between patients and those that I love show me how easily each person could have been someone I love. Being able to listen to people’s most intimate moments and caring for them is akin to caring for my own family. And when moments like these are put into words, they turn into an ode to my family and loved ones.
Rahi is a second year medical student originally from Jupiter, Florida. She is passionate about medical anthropology and the power writing has to foster deeper connections and enhance self-reflection.
