Still Going Strong

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

I had visited with a middle-aged lady, who was the patient, and her husband, that had been in our hospice for the last three weeks.  I had seen her husband first in the downstairs break room, and visited with him for about an hour.

            Then, together, we both walked up to the room where his wife had been lying in bed struggling with brain cancer.  We walked in and his wife was gone!  Her nurse walked up and said that another volunteer and her went out to the smoke shack to have a cigarette, or three.  She has been a chain smoker all of her life and would go often to smoke.  In the last weeks I had taken her several times.

            For someone who has been battling brain cancer for the last two years she looked good!  Her husband said that she was even walking around a little bit on her own!  This is not the first time she has been in our hospice ether.  This is the third time that the doctors had assigned her here.  Each time she would get better and could be discharged and return home!

            The other weeks that I had visited with her she would even brag about the number of tumors in her brain!  She would say that I have seventy tumors in my brain and I am still going strong!  She was a fighter!

            While she was out smoking, her husband and I chatted in the room until they returned.  Her doctor stopped by to see her while we were waiting.  The doctor was a visiting Japanese doctor.  She was here to learn to be a hospice doctor.

            The volunteer she was with was new and inexperienced.  She told the patient that she needed to stop smoking, because its bad for you!  That is something that a volunteer should never say!  If a patient already has a terminal health issue, there is no use in stopping now!  With a terminal illness, smoking is no longer a bad habit, but a comfort habit!

            We all talked about it and agreed that her smoking is no longer a problem, but a comfort habit that she should keep doing.  The patient certainly agreed and didn’t want to quit.  She said that the joy she got out of smoking helped her along.  She had a great spirit and was a fighter and she was very proud that she was still going strong!

Do you know of someone still going strong?  Can you tell me about it in the comments section?

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Brother Roop
October 03, 2009