Jules and Angelina

Yesterday, I visited Jules, a 71 year-old home hospice patient with disseminated carcinomatosis .  He he’s had psoriatic erythroderma for over three decades and we became friends since he moved here twenty years ago.  As his dermatologist, there’s not much I can do for him now, but I don't want to abandon him. So, I go to sit with him and visit a couple of times a week.  Over the past month he's been dwindling.  Yesterday, I saw a different Jules.

A childhood friend of his deceased son and her husband drove 14 hours from their Midwest town with Paddy, their 9 week old cockapoo puppy to be with him and share some laughs.  Angelica is an outgoing woman in her early 40s and she's known Jules since she was a kid.  She brought pictures of him, his son and herself from the village where they lived.  She effected a connection to a happier time.

I haven't seen him look this animated or happy in months.  Maybe, ever.  His visage was completely different.  He was relaxed, joking, vibrant.  There was no pathos. I was tempted to take a picture – but not everything has to be documented by a Smartphone.

When Angie and her husband left, you could appreciate the love she and Jules have for one another.  What a great gift she gave him!  They hugged, both cried – her visit was a true anodyne.  All the morphine, all the Fentanyl patches did not help his pain like the magic of her visit.

I learned a lesson yesterday that somehow escaped me in 40 years of sitting in exam rooms and rounding on hospital wards.  All we see in those settings clinical.  The occasion of a social visit let me witness the opposite of clinical. 

Image from: warrenphotographic.co.uk/