Agnes

I recently spent three days in the hospital for an infection. They don’t tell you another aspect of cancer is all the side illnesses and problems. I think if they had I would not have signed up for cancer. But this post is not about all that, it is about Agnes.

I did not get a single room at the hotel hospital this time, I was put in a room with Agnes. Agnes had just had her foot amputated. The short version of her story is she was flying, was delirious, didn’t know who she was, she was in pain. Airlines get her off at DIA and she is sent via ambulance to the hospital as a Jane Doe. Doctors figure out she has this crazy infection in her foot - in the bone and all. They did emergency surgery, she was close to death. She is very disoriented, and in pain when I become her roommate. They did figure out who she was and notified her family but it turns out she was from Florida and it didn't seem like anyone would be coming to be with her.

Our first night together was not too bad, I had to call the nurse a lot because her beeper on her IV kept going off. This was when I discovered that she was too confused to use the call button.

The next morning they whisked her away for her second surgery at the infection site. When she came back she bounced back from the anestesia pretty quickly and although still confused, was awake. She wanted food. Her nurse gave her the menu, she couldn’t seem to decide, so the back and forth led to a turkey sandwich. It seemed like she just didn’t have the energy to read the menu. Her nurse had a very thick accent which caused some miscommunication between the two as well. We figured out later her menu was in Spanish.

When she needed the nurse she would just yell “nurse!” loudly. Since I was already using the call button for the beeping IV I just added another call button push when she yelled for them, it worked, but probably made my nurse a bit nuts. I also overheard all her phone calls as she put them on speaker phone. I learned more about her. She thought she was in Minnesota. She had a strong faith in God, and she could get a little spicy with people. We did okay on day two,

That night was rough though. I think the pain, confusion, fear crept in. She spent what felt like forever just singing “Jesus” over and over. She was restless which meant the IV beeper was going off every few minutes. And at 3:00 am she decided we had had enough sleep and managed to get the overhead light on. The morning was not any better, she was wailing and talking to The Lord, going between asking Him to take her, support her or just telling Him she believed. After being ill myself and not really getting good sleep for a couple nights I was feeling rough and I will admit, not all my thoughts about Agnes were kind.

Here is the thing, I am not a believer in a lot of what I call woo stuff but Agnes and I needed to cross paths. She had a lot to teach me it seems:

I can get through tough and painful things, our bodies can take it. It doesn’t have to be done with grace or stoicism, it can be done with wailing, a little anger or whatever works, messy is okay.
No matter the situation, you cannot have your dignity taken from you.
Agnes believed that if she put love/goodness out there it would come back to her
Accept help unapologetically if you need it. This kind of goes with the previous point. If you have put your goodness out there you get some of that back when you need it,
It's okay to get spicy with someone if they need it, make sure your voice gets heard.
This is the tricky lesson for me, that I have to keep thinking about. Agnes had unwavering faith in God. That faith was helping her deal with the fact she had just had her foot amputated. There is just no way I can have faith in God like that but I think I can remind myself of a quote by Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff.” and that is what links the universe and I can believe deeply in that. If I have the whole universe behind me, I got this.