I never saw “Lillian” with her eyes open, never heard her voice. I watched her die from outside her hospital room, watching a compassionate young nurse hold her hand. I can’t forget those moments, and hope I’ll always remember.
I am a hospital chaplain in a small city in Northeast Wisconsin, part of the Fox Valley Region south of Green Bay. Our hospital probably qualifies as “medium-sized” for our area, running a total census of about 45-70 patients daily, including new moms and babies, psychiatric unit patients, intensive care, and general medical patients. As you’ve probably read in the news, Wisconsin is experiencing a huge surge in COVID-19 cases. Our first state surge was centered in the Milwaukee and Madison regions, but this newest one is affecting mainly areas more than an hour north of those urban centers.
In addition to patients from our own city, we have often served as “overflow” for a bigger hospital about 30 miles away from us, and currently are experiencing transfers from a lot of the tiny hospitals located in the northern regions of the state with which we are affiliated. They are overloaded with patients who either have COVID, or other complicated illnesses which require bed space or expertise those facilities can’t offer.
Lillian, though, was from our area. She came to us with a positive COVID diagnosis, and went straight from the ER to the ICU. The first time I laid eyes on her, she was on a ventilator, so there was a breathing tube down her throat, and she was sedated. For those who don’t know, when intubated for purposes of mechanical ventilation, a patient is immediately sedated, because a very ill person who is awake but not able to understand what’s happening will panic and try to pull out that painful tube that is hurting the throat so badly. Once the patient is starting to recover, and able to breathe with less support from the machine, the doctor will have the sedation reduced, and patients are then able to leave the tube alone and understand the explanations of what is happening, as they are weaned off of this support.
I could not communicate with Lillian, and her husband and daughter were not allowed to visit, since only RN’s, MD’s, and respiratory therapists are allowed to enter the rooms of our patients with COVID. She and “Luke” had been married for 66 years, and when I called him, he spoke of how lonesome he was feeling at home without her. After talking with him for a while and offering assurances that we would do our best to care for Lillian, he said he’d like it if I’d say a prayer for him over the phone, and I did. He mentioned that he wasn’t feeling well, either, and would be going for a COVID test that afternoon himself. I knew her prognosis was poor, so I couldn’t offer much other reassurance about his wife.
Later in the afternoon, I returned to ICU to just check in on all the patients there. The supervisor present said that she was about to call me to let me know that it would be a good time to offer a prayer or any type of support I thought would be appropriate for Lillian, as she was failing fast. When I walked to the room, I could see through the glass doors and open curtain that our nurse, Danielle, was sitting beside Lillian holding her hand. Another nurse, Karen, had Danielle’s portable phone and the intercom for the room (really a nursery monitor), and Karen was communicating with Danielle and then completing calls to family, pharmacy, the doctor, the County health department, etc., so that Danielle could stay with Lillian. In the next hour or more, I never saw Danielle let go of Lillian’s hand.
The nurses tried to call Luke, but he did not answer. No cell phone, just a landline, which is not unusual when one is over age 85. Karen reached their daughter, who said she understood the circumstances, and would meet her dad at home when he returned from getting his COVID test and tell him what was happening.
I felt so helpless at this time. Normally, I’d be beside the patient, holding her hand, offering prayer for a religious patient, or other words of comfort based on what I’d learned about her. Drawing on my conversation with Luke, I borrowed the room intercom and told Lillian I had talked to Luke in the morning, and he told me their church and their faith were important, and that I had prayed with him, so I would offer a prayer for her. I assured her of how much he loved and missed her, and told her that he wanted her to be at peace, then read a “Prayer of Commendation for the Dying”, never knowing if she could physically hear me or not. I have to console myself with the thought that her spirit heard and understood the prayer.
Not too long after that, Lillian died. I heard the monitor in the nurses’ station beeping urgently, and watched her heart rate slow and stop. I never saw Danielle let go of her hand. I was grateful to her for doing what I could not. So often, nurses tell me, “I could never do what you do,” when I stay with a dying patient. But they can do it, when they have to.
Later, when I finished my documentation on the ICU computer and walked over to where Danielle was talking to her supervisor and completing the forms necessary for COVID deaths, I told her how important it was that she stayed close to Lillian, and how much I appreciated her willingness to do that. I saw her eyes fill, and she told me it was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
I sent a card to Luke and communicated that his beloved wife was never alone in that final hour. It seems a small thing to offer, because her death seems like such a huge thing. There have been over 207,000 of those in the US alone. May we never forget that these deaths are not numbers, not statistics, they are people who are loved and needed. Hers was the seventh death from COVID that I’ve been close to in my work, but I anticipate many more. I hope each one breaks my heart like hers and the previous ones have done. I hope I don’t become inured to COVID deaths, but I fear that I will. This is my plea that all who read this will remember that each death is that of a beloved person who would not have and should not have died at this time. We can reduce these deaths. But we’re not trying hard enough, as a society. Please don’t forget these human beings. Please don’t let Lillian become just another number.