Hospice

Today as part of my ambulatory block I was assigned to spend a day with a hospice nurse making house calls.

I thought that this would be incredibly uncomfortable. This is how I imagined it would go:

::knock, knock::

::front door opening::

Us: "Oh hey you! So you're still.... alive..."
Hospice patient: "Yeah."
Us: "You're not dead yet!"
Hospice patient: "Nope."
Us: "We really expected, you know after the last time... well this is a bit awkward then, isn't it? Can we... bring you some more morphine?"
Hospice patient: "Ah, no, I'm good."
Us: "Okay. Yeah. See you tomorrow then?"
Hospice patient: "Maybe."

But I was completely wrong. The visits were just like any other pleasant house calls. I also worried that we might visit to find someone had already expired by the time we got there. But nope! Luckily everyone was alive. It was kind of a good day. Relatively speaking.