Song for Pete

He said it first. He had been my patient for several years. He had been dying the whole time. His lungs were already shot before a doctor inadvertently slipped an NG tube into his trachea rather than his esophagus and instilled a liter of liquid food into his right lung. By the time he made it back to the nursing home, only his left lung was functioning. There was only one position he could get into in bed that allowed him some relief from chronic air hunger. Consequently that is the position he was always in. The skin on his bottom was always broken down or at risk of breaking down because we couldn't change his position in bed.

Still, in the midst of his dying, he chose to live. He never complained. He never cursed the doctor who had made a mistake. Instead he told me what it was like to be shot down over Germany. "First the engine on the left wing caught fire... I was the last to jump." We looked at pictures of the big cargo planes he piloted. We discussed the classical music he enjoyed and watched a video together of a Peregrine Falcon in flight.

He willed himself to live until the lawsuit was settled. Then he called his family to him and said his good byes. Looking at me over the rims of his glasses he said (with 15 second pauses after every one or two words) "I'm very tired, I can't get my breath, I'm ready to go through with it now". We agreed I wouldn't treat his pneumonia this time. I would do everything I could to make him comfortable. As I sat at his bedside I thought "I really love this man, I should tell him." When I stood up to leave, he said "I love you."

"I love you, too, Pete," I said.