You know, I wanted today to write about my lack… lack of energy, lack of motivation, lack of time.
Instead, I decided to write about a beautiful lady that I scanned at work last night. She was in her late 80’s, and was just as sweet as could be. It is all to easy to assume any patient of advanced age will have some sort of mental deficiency; we see it very often, our patients that are hard of hearing, or suffering from dementia. Patients that have regressed back to childlike tendencies. Patients that are completely out of it. It’s pleasantly surprising to spend my time with a woman as quick, smart and capable as I am.
(My Badge Picture)
She asked me about the sweet baby on my badge, and I told her it was my little boy. She said he was gorgeous, and I asked her if she had any kids. She told me she had 4 children, 3 boys and a girl! She also said she had them very far apart… her first at 26 years old, and her last at 38.
She told me her last child was born a premie, at 4 weeks early. She said they told her the baby was jaundiced, and that she would have to stay in the hospital. She said there was NO way she was leaving her sweet baby at the hospital, she’d had 3 kids already and knew what to do. I thought about the amount of time that had passed, and what a 36 week premie would be like that many years ago. I told her she was very lucky everything turned out okay, and she knew it.
When we were all finished, I walked her back for her next exam. I was chatting with her about Ronan and talking about how we’d like to have more kids. She said she was an only child, and that’s why she wanted a large family. As I left her, she told me that I was “just adorable”.
I would have said the exact same thing about her.
