Age.

She is young.  Young enough that every one of our hospitalist refused to have anything to do with her, and we ended up having to call a pediatrician.  Who has never been at our hospital and has no clue how to turn on a computer.  The specialist didn't refuse to see her, but freely admitted that there were doctors with more experience of patients her age. The nurses didn't like it... if we wanted to be a peds nurse we wouldn't be working at our hospital.  She sits in bed and watches all the romance movies we have, with a parent on one side and a friend on the other.  Her parents advocate for her, and she deals with the pain.  Who knows what is wrong with her.  Hopefully she will be fine, go home and live a good life. 

She is young.

She is alive.

She is strong.

She is young.  65, blonde-dyed hair, better at computers than I am.  She offered advice at a problem I was having with my computer.  It worked.  Always cheerful, knew all the respiratory therapist by name, she was living in a world of denial.  Every doctor who saw her told her the odds.  The realities of end-stage copd compounded by nasty gunk growing in lungs.  She insisted she would get better.  Over the weeks she spent with us, getting q2h breathing treatments, q4h antibiotics, and q6h steroids she went from insisting she was going home, to agreeing to home health, to talking about rehab, to giving in to a skilled nursing facility.   I walked into her room one morning and found the sun shining right on her.  The look on her face... that sunshine was pure bliss.  I laughed and told her I was going to offer to close the curtains.  She said no way.  All doctors wrote notes about discussing code status with her, discussing the end.  She left us a full code, with lungs so bad I could barely hear the air moving. 

She is young. 

She is fighting.

She is dying.

 
She is old.  95 if she is a day. Last time I saw her it was with a rapid response to find a patient seizing... heart rate high then low, a mess.  Now she sits next to the window and reads her harlequin romance.  I ask her questions, she answers so completely wrong it is sad, but she answers with such a look that I almost feel silly asking the question.  I laugh at her reading choice, wonder how much she remembers.  A dnr, she is going home with her sister the next day. Family refuses all thought of SNF.  I have to wonder how old the sister is. 

She is old. 

Living

and yet dying.

Age is relative.  The 60 year olds who can't rehab after a heart cath.  The 90 year olds who bounce back from a CABG stronger than before.  Where is the rhyme and reason, I wonder?  Where is the sense in the failing lungs of the 65yo with a brilliant mind and the failing mind of the 95yo with the perfect lungs?  The kid getting ready to start her life with what could possibly be a chronic condition is going to be strong enough to handle it.  The middle-age man who wants  us to fix the problem that he pretty much self-inflicted, all the while knowing when he walks out he will cause it again.

Sometimes I don't understand life. 

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I love my sister, but when we are 89 and 95, she is so not living with me.  

Sorry, Ricki.