Code Gray by Farzon A Nahvi

Author:Farzon A Nahvi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I recall caring for a patient named Ms. Hill. She was brought to us by ambulance after having passed out and fallen to the ground at her nursing home.

Despite her fall, Ms. Hill claimed that she was without pain or injury. She told me that she felt great and that she had no complaints at all. She told me that she could not actually remember having fallen to begin with. She told me, in fact, that she could not remember very much of anything at all.

Well into her eighties, Ms. Hill was suffering from a good degree of dementia. She had identified the hospital as an “arena” and believed we were living in the era of the Sputnik launches. She was absentminded and would reply to our questions with upbeat but irrelevant answers that were often untethered to reality.

“How are you feeling today?” was asked.

“I’m feeling great! As long as I take my pills I’m doing wonderfully,” Ms. Hill replied, appearing to make perfect sense at first.

“That sounds fantastic—did you take your pills today?”

“Of course I do. I take them every day.”

“And just so I know which pills we’re talking about, could you tell me which medications you take, just to make sure everything we have in our computer is up-to-date?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I just take whichever ones that Jerry gives me.”

An aide from the nursing home who had accompanied her looked toward me to obtain eye contact and quietly shook her head no, as if to say, “Don’t believe this.”

I picked up on the cue. “That’s terrific. Who is Jerry?”

Soon she was giving us a detailed and loving description of her dead husband, who she believed was somehow still caring for her and administering her medications. Ms. Hill did not know which pills she took, was not sure where they came from, what they were intended to treat, or how she obtained them at all. She did not even seem to realize that she was living in a nursing home.

Nevertheless, despite her dementia, Ms. Hill was exceedingly merry. As long as we did not venture into any details or specifics, we were able to engage in delightful conversation. She demonstrated as much concern for me as I did for her, and she dispensed sweet compliments to the nurses and technicians like candy on Halloween. When I asked if there was anything that might be hurting or bothering her, she laughed me off and merely responded by saying how fantastic she felt. On a scale of bad to good, Ms. Hill considered everything some degree of “super.”

If one considers the ultimate goal of life to be a happy and contented existence, Ms. Hill seemed to have taken a shortcut. Without having to attend to the circumstances of her life, she had somehow arrived at the goal. She existed, it seemed, happily.

Nevertheless, tasked with caring for Ms. Hill’s well-being and refusing to put much stock in her self-assessment that she was “completely fine,” we conducted a thorough evaluation.

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