Modern Death by Haider Warraich

Author:Haider Warraich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

When Guardians Are Burdened

Death has always been a family affair. But the metamorphosis of death has changed the role family plays as patients undergo a protracted dying. People these days, as they prepare for their retirements, frequently become the primary caregivers of their parents, given how much longer people live. In spite of great changes, few deaths occur in isolation, and in that, death affects many who surround the dying.

Ostensibly, all hospital rooms look the same. Same white sheets and towels, stock photos and soft boards on the walls, bags of saline and IV tubing hanging by the side. Patients, too, end up looking identical, with their light blue johnnies, slip-resistant slippers, and hospitalization hair—when patients’ hair starts to stand up straight after they’ve remained chronically bedridden. Their doctors, too, look the same, with their lab coats with pockets stuffed with pens and papers, scrubs with pagers at their waists, leaving patients confused about who their doctors actually are as people. But when I look hard enough, and pay enough attention, there is much I learn about my patients just by what their rooms look like.

There are some patients who bring barely anything with them but their own person. This usually means two things: Either the patient came to the hospital emergently or the patient is not used to being admitted to the hospital. The only reason I know this is that I have witnessed how well prepared patients who frequent the hospital are. Just looking around their room, looking at the spare pajamas, the snacks and the shampoos, one can tell that their pathologies have transformed them into “professional patients.” Some of them keep diaries that detail every aspect of their health, charting how much urine they made every day, how many bowel movements they had, what their blood pressure or blood glucose level was, among other vitals and variables.

One recurring item that always caught my eye was grown-up patients bringing large stuffed animals with them when they presented to the hospital. The patients most likely to have stuffed animals also frequently had furry blankets with unicorns or the like printed on them. These toys, though, always tended to be juxtaposed with some sort of terrible condition. Frequently, these patients would have intractable addictions to narcotic pain medications and display marked features of mental and psychological instability. Turns out that my observation was not isolated; the presence of teddy bears at the bedside had been recognized as a telltale sign of borderline personality disorder in a study conducted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the nineties.1 Another study showed that adults with the “teddy bear sign” were three times more likely to have psychiatrically mediated seizures rather than true epileptic seizures.2 One case told the story of a thirty-year-old-female who came to the hospital with seventeen stuffed koala bears, each of whom represented a prior therapist.3

On the bedside tables, clues are frequently strewn. Religious totes such as little baby Jesus figurines or menorahs give insight into patients’ spiritual lives.

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