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Saturday, August 28, 2004


Alleluia, the Strife is O'er 

Well, officially but not technically. Today was my last official day of CPE, but I have my final two on-calls to do, back to back, beginning tomorrow night at 5pm and going through Sunday morning 8:30am. I like to go out with a bang. The last official day today was moving and, in the end, very nice. In the morning, I was called upon to be with the wife of a patient in the Cardiac ICU as they moved the patient to palliative (comfort) care. She had asked that I be with her when they did this because I suspect she knew what I knew - once they removed the ventilator he would go quickly. Once again, I was honored to be called upon and I went. This woman was a stalwart companion of her husband throughout his stay in the hospital and her love for him was obvious. She spent a lot of time using her hands to memorize his body by touching and holding his face, his hands, his chest, his belly. To me, this was incredibly moving for some reason. She told me of his pet macaw, Wizard. Apparently Wizard's favorite activity was to crawl up on her husband's chest while he napped in his chair, snuggle down, and fall asleep himself. She tells me the bird has spent the last week going up to that chair and calling out, "Papa? Papa?" I was able to stay with her as she requested when they moved him to palliative care. The man was a fighter and he fought to the end, making his death harder on her I think. It was definitely harder on me; this was not a peaceful quiet death like some of the others I've witnessed. No, this man fought for his last breath, he had the so-called "death rattle", and he gasped for air even as he was turning blue. Seeking to dignify this passing, I brought out my prayer book, and, receiving a nod from his wife, began to read the litany for the dying while his son instructed him to listen well to the words. Several minutes after I finished, the heart monitor finally read zero and his agony was over. He was in the arms of his creator and we were left with a shell. Though terribly sad for all involved, I think this was a holy ending to my official time at CPE and I was glad to be able to be a part of it.

This evening, I went to the movies to see a film I was having a hard time interesting others in seeing: Open Water. I really like fish stories and have been fascinated with sharks from an early age. The story is loosely based off the true tale of two Americans vacationing in Australia who go for a scuba dive only to surface and find their boat gone. The movie version goes on to tell the story of their harrowing experience off the Great Barrier Reef, well known for being a natural habitat for aggressive sharks (White Tip Reef Shark; Black Tip Reef Shark; Gray Reef Shark; Bull Shark). Spending over 24 hours in the water, drifting with the current into deeper and deeper water, madness slowly settles on the couple. Close encounters abound as sharks investigate these strange floating invaders. The film does an excellent job of playing on our primal fear of sharks, the ocean, and not knowing what is beneath us. From the film, it looked to me as if the sharks they portrayed were Bulls, but I could be mistaken. Not only does the movie, a low budget independent feature, do a good job of portraying a realistic reaction to this experience, but it delves into the psychological effect it would have on a couple. Several stages of anger and disbelief are explored climaxing in a brilliant moment when the man just starts yelling at the ocean and his wife looks at him and says, "Are you done yelling now?" This seemingly calm question, which one might normally hear in a living room, comes after the couple has been lost at sea for hours and has been harangued by sharks for only a slightly less amount of time. As I've discovered though, the true story of this event is extremely odd. Only click on that link if you want a spoiler for how the film turns out. After the movie ended and I got my fill of starts and thrills, I was walking out behind a couple of high school students, one of whom observed to her friends, "That sucked! I was expecting it to be much more Hollywood and much cooler!" Well, you're right about two things - it was not a very Hollywood film, nor is it a film for everyone. However, this does not automatically equate with sucking. Ah...teenagers. I remember being that cool once...last week...

-R

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