When I was able to have my first visit the next day, my husband asked where I had been. I explained that there were very limited visiting hours. This prompted my husband to speak to his nurse and say, “You know, she’s not a visitor. She’s my wife!” But he was informed that didn’t matter, that there were rules, and that I was a visitor and had to be treated as a visitor.
The rule trumped both of us and what we wanted. The rule meant he had to suffer alone. This was an accredited hospital, but in my view it was archaic. Staff hid behind the rules rather than using their heads and their hearts.
Over the next few days, I saw that my not being there with my husband was leading to more and more distress for him. As he became more ill, he would not allow the nurses to wash him, and he would not eat their food. He was doing everything he could do to get the staff’s attention to revisit the visiting restrictions. If I’d been allowed to stay, I’m sure I could have helped with feeding, with bathing, and with toileting. I’m certain I could have calmed him and helped lower his blood pressure.
I was treated as though I was an enemy, but all I wanted was to be with him, to share the last days of his life. I had always been his anchor. I was the person who navigated the everyday waters of his life. The hospital’s rules meant that he was adrift, and I was lost.
During his hospitalization, he was not afforded the respect he had given to all his patients and the nurses and doctors he had worked with each day. For example, the ICU staff never asked him how he would like to be addressed. They called him “Bill” when he should have been addressed as “Doctor Gruzenski.” He wouldn’t have thought of calling a resident by his first name, and there were only a few people in his life, his inner circle of family and friends, who called him “Bill.”
One day, I actually witnessed one doctor refer to my husband not even as “Bill” but as “Billy.”
I followed this doctor out of the ICU and challenged him saying “Would you think you were valued as a medical professional, and that your life had meant something if, in forty years’ time, someone called you ‘Billy’? ‘Billy’ is what you call some young boy you like, not someone who is sixty-eight years old and is a dignified gentleman and physician.”
My husband earned the title of “Doctor.” He attended four years of medical school, one year of internship, four years as a resident psychiatrist, and he was board certified in psychiatry. He had earned respect by exceeding all the societal standards for being addressed as “Doctor.” These achievements should not be washed away once you are hospitalized. In fact, I believe my husband might have felt a little safer if he had been addressed as “Doctor.”