Two Months to Live
January 25, 2010
by Susan Boring
Emerging from the exam room with a sad, incredulous look on her face, she walked toward my desk then stopped a few feet short, lost. Her eyes grew wide as she met mine and said "I'm gonna be dead in two months. Can you believe I'm going to be dead in two months?"
In my job, I strive to maintain a certain level of professionalism with my patients. After months of watching someone struggle, listening to her fears, making her laugh, and trying to lighten her load - naturally, a bond develops. How could I respond to a question like that? Empathy rushed to my surface, I immediately forgot every stupid nuance of my life that seemed so important 7 seconds ago, and I did the only thing that seemed appropriate - I walked around my desk and took that tiny creature, barely one-third my size, and held her in my arms while she sobbed into my chest. I was just present for her. Because, that's all I could be.
Thirty years and one month old. And I can't help but think that at some point, before cancer, she took time for granted in much the same way we can. Idly we sit, watching the hours slip by. We arrive late for a friend's dinner party. We rush through road trips, reaching our destination but not cherishing the journey. We miss special events because we have just a bit more to do at work. We cancel plans at the last minute. We drag ourselves through our daily chores, keeping face and keeping up with the Joneses.
Do you think of time as your own personal infinite commodity? Ever heard the story of the man who put a thousand marbles in a jar? He added up how many Saturdays he had left if he lived to be an average old age - and put one marble in the jar for each Saturday he had left. Every Saturday morning he would remove one marble from the jar. Picturing that jar really brings time into perspective for me. Sure, some of us are blessed enough to have found a path that let's us conceptualize (and even embrace) non-linear time and reincarnation and other planes of existance - but couldn't we all find ways to spend our current time more wisely? In ways that truly matter?
My patient died last week. I don't know how she spent her last 2 months, last 8 weeks, last 61 days, last 1,464 hours. But she left me thinking about how I spend mine.