The Patient Person for Feb. 16, 2007

• By LAURIE SMITH ANDERSON
• Advocate columnist
• Published: Feb 16, 2007

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On my second day home from the hospital, I lie in bed as the smells of coffee brewing and eggs and bacon frying fill me with the joy of home.

Child’s chatter slips welcomingly through an open door from the next room, reminiscent of when our own children filled this house with the sounds of play and learning.

Ella, a bright 17-month-old, is getting a lesson on spoons and forks from my stepson, Dobin.

“Forks stab and spoons scoop,” he instructs in that patient voice adults save for toddlers. “Stab that cantaloupe. Scoop those eggs.”

“Dob-in?” she says with a lilt reminiscent of how my daughter, Sarah, finished her words at that age.

After polishing off breakfast, Ella and Dobin take on the next task — climbing stairs. Moving like a woman far past my years, I walk to the recliner in the living room to watch. Ella doesn’t have stairs at home. To her they are a play land. Up and down she goes, first on her knees, then standing and holding the rails. Dobin dotes on every step. It doesn’t seem so long ago that it was he who played such games with Bob and me. Back to the bottom, Ella turns and lifts her arms to him. “Again,” she says in a language only we can understand. Her mom, Christina, watches with the smile women have when seeing the gentleness of a man teaching their children.

Our son, Casey, and his girlfriend, Stephanie, are here too. They’re busy in the kitchen cleaning the pots, pans and plates from the fury of Bob’s breakfast making.

Growing tired, the enormity of the decision I made a couple of days ago creeps back into my mind. Bob watches me as carefully as Dobin watches Ella as I walk back to the hospital bed set up by a pair of double windows overlooking my secret garden and our pond. I take a pill and doze.

When I awake, I find that Bill and Susan Davis have brought me an early spring. They’re armed with trays of flowers in hues of purple and gold. Bob pulls out tools. Casey hauls in wheelbarrow loads of good topsoil. Bill, Susan and Stephanie start to transform my winter-wilted garden into a colorful vista visible from my bed.

I sit just inside the open window reveling in how much these people care for me and the lengths to which they are all going to make my time at home a wonderful experience, despite circumstances that might leave some patients, family and friends in the depths of despair.

The weather is gorgeous. Bob gets to pull out his chainsaw and cut timbers to make a new flowerbed closer to my window. Bill and Susan gather empty baskets, watering cans, an old wagon of Casey’s to use as flower pots to line the raised walkway that meanders through the garden.

Stephanie clears last year’s dead plants. Bob puts the chainsaw aside and restocks the two birdfeeders he placed just outside my new windows.

Unable to handle the stairs as well as Ella, I’ve transferred lodging to the first floor in my daughter’s bedroom. As a cool breeze blows through the open window, and I sit at a slight remove from the action, I again contemplate the decision I made a couple of days earlier. Signing up for care with Hospice of Baton Rouge meant that I was no longer seeking active treatment for my late-stage colon cancer. Some people might say I’ve given up, but my family knows I haven’t. That’s a topic I’ll address in another column.
My body has stopped responding to cancer-fighting drugs. Those drugs made me feel ill and seemed to weaken me more every day.