By Ann Von Dehsen, September 19, 2019 — Over the past several weeks, I have been supporting a friend as he undergoes chemo in a formerly unfamiliar place that I now call Jeffland. I never realized how many buildings and blocks make up Jefferson Hospital. So far, we have spent time in the neuroscience building, Cribbons building, and the oncology center. Strangely, we took a 1-minute ambulance ride from neuroscience to Cribbons. There was neither urgency nor time to use the siren, but the driver let me push the button anyway, much to my inner child’s delight.
We quickly learned the hospital routine – morning rounds by various attending physicians leading every growing groups of residents who look more like high school students than med students. We make up nicknames (Dr. Tweed jacket, Dr. Baldy, and Dr. I don’t-understand-a-word-you-say).
Lunchtime, pill time, walk time down to the hospital bridge of Sansom Street and check on the food trucks’ lunchtime business. Then, there are the volunteer clowns who roam the hallways. They mean well and they volunteer their time, but somehow, we just didn’t enjoy their visits with their corny usual jokes and sound effects. So whenever I saw their huge polka dot shoes luring down the hall, I’d run in the room and say, “Quick! Pretend you’re asleep” and wait for them to pass by.
But its truly the nurses who are the stars and directors of the daily show. I really cannot praise them enough. Beyond their impressive medical knowledge, they come armed every day with smiles, gentle humor, compassion, and encouragement. They consistently made us feel as if he was the only patient on the floor.
Slowly, a camaraderie develops between the patients and their families as we pass each other on the floor, noticing who has graduated from cane to assisted walking to walking only with an IV pole. “You look great today – your colors so much better.” We share homemade cookies and banana bread and wish them well upon discharge. In this atmosphere, their politics, social status, religion and ethnic background make no difference. We are simply human beings just rooting for each other’s survival and happiness. And somehow this gives me a sense of hope and peace.
On quiet afternoons as the patient slept and the chemo dripped, I often gazed out the window at the old, but once elegant, white stucco building across the street. It housed a tacky perfume store on street level, but on each of the eight stories above, there are 3 floor-to-ceiling windows encased in architectural sculptures of rosettes scrolls and 2 lions holding shields that said 1854. They appeared to be mostly unoccupied apartments being renovated, but I enjoyed imagining them as the apartments of starving young artists back in the early 1900s throwing paint on their canvases and screaming at their models who would later become their lovers, oo la la, until the being IV brought me back to reality.