5.5.12

Tonight was my last shift at 8EW before heading to my new rotation at Santa Monica ER. I’m excited for what the next rotation will have in store for me, but I definitely had an experience tonight that I’ll remember for a long time. A man passed away tonight, not an uncommon event in a hospital, but it was my first time helping the nurses prepare the body to be taken away. The patient was named Jack Causey, a 76 year old man who died of bladder cancer but he’d been living with hepatitis C for years and had a history of drug abuse. He had one son and an ex-wife, but neither of them came. I heard from the nurses that he wanted to find God and left his family to become a homeless wanderer. He had a long grey beard and a small yin yang sign peace sign on his ankle. One of the nurses had asked him if he were a scientist because his beard made him look so wise. His body looked so small and deflated because he had lost a lot of blood in the upcoming days. Even with all of his sicknesses he still seemed so healthy- hairless, clear skin, long limbs. 

I think why this experience affected me so deeply is because not one of his loved ones were there when he was dying or came after he passed away. How can someone fall off the radar like that, just slowly lose their relationships and connections to the world. In these past recent months, I’ve started noticing the homeless population in Los Angeles more and how pervasive the problem is from in downtown LA to right here in Westwood. I so easily turn a blind eye to them and don’t even challenge myself to question how this person came to be this way and to imagine how he must get by to live. It’s sad.