By Jason Brudereck
Reading Eagle (Pennsylvania)
Copyright 2007 Reading Eagle
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
As a paramedic, Linda Martis has dealt with countless dying patients.
But her job never bothered her emotionally, and she never thought about her own mortality. “I thought I was superwoman,” said Martis, 47. Then one night, one special patient changed her life completely.
The hundreds of police, firefighters and paramedics in Reading often find their lives brushing against each other when their duties intermingle.
But with varied work schedules and myriad simultaneous situations to handle, they never know which of their brethren they’ll see when they respond to an emergency.
It was happenstance then that Martis was at St. Joseph Medical Center when an unmarked police car screeched to a halt with mortally wounded city police Officer Michael H. Wise II in the back seat June 4, 2004. It was just chance that Martis was the one who hoisted him from the car by grabbing his belt and the top of his bulletproof vest. She stood outside the hospital entrance yelling for help and holding Wise, who had been shot in the head. Time froze and the world went silent. “It seemed like I stood there forever,” Martis recalled. Sometimes in her mind, she is still standing there. “That was a turning point in my life,” Martis said. “Everything’s changed.” Wise died later at Lehigh Valley Hospital near Allentown. It was the first time in her lifelong career that Martis sobbed over a patient’s death. His death made Martis examine her own life. And like other professionals whose careers force them to face death, Martis has learned an important lesson by contemplating her own mortality: Embrace life while you can. And so Martis has. She quit her job, quit smoking and moved from Laureldale to a hilltop in rural Windsor Township where she enjoys panoramic views.
“The whole idea of everything I did, every change I made, is to bring serenity,” Martis said.
Helping patients
Working with patients can cause staff members at a hospital to dwell on their own mortality, said Dr. Veruschka Torosian, a psychologist who directs Reading Hospital’s Mind-Body Medicine Program.
Employees who struggle with their emotions are encouraged to talk about them, Torosian said.
“It’s essential so they can release their sadness,” she explained.
Torosian has regular sessions with employees so they can talk about their feelings and learn techniques for relaxing.
While the medical staff may have emotions of their own when a patient is nearing the end of life, their primary goal is to comfort the patient.
“You can’t help forming attachments to a patient,” Torosian said. “Your heart goes out to them.
“But we’re here to comfort the patient until the very last moment. Even the transition into death, we make that as comfortable and fearless as possible.
“I tell staff they’re a special and important part of a divine moment. We believe they pass into a better life. To be part of that is really an honor.”
Patients often have spiritual experiences in the moments before they die, Torosian said.
“They might see the presence of angels, or they might have some words from somebody who has already passed on,” she said. “Children especially say they see angels just shortly before death.”
Those patients’ deaths can dramatically affect nurses and doctors alike.
Confronting death
For some patients, nurses and doctors are the angels that help them while they’re still alive.
“We can get very involved and develop strong relationships with the patients and with the patients’ families,” said Dr. Jennifer E. Allen, a palliative care physician at Reading Hospital.
Allen said she works at palliative care only six days each month.
“I don’t think I could do this every day,” Allen said. “At the end of 12 hours, I feel like I don’t have much more to give. But at the end of the day I have to go home and be with my family and give some more.”
While the job is stressful and can be depressing, it’s also rewarding, Allen said.
“This is a time in their lives when they need us the most,” she said.
When she’s not working, she tries to exercise and stay active.
“That helps me to give more when I’m here,” Allen said. “You can emotionally only take so much.”
The job forces her to confront death.
“I have more trouble with (dying) kids and people closer to my age,” said Allen, 35, who has two children who are 3 and 5. “Recently, we had someone die who was close to my age and she had a 3-year-old. It made me imagine being in that position and what it would be like for my own kids.”
Learning lessons
Linda Kauffman, an oncology nurse at Reading Hospital, has cared for some patients over several years before they passed away.
“That’s when it’s the hardest,” said Kauffman, 50. “It’s like losing one of our friends.”
On some occasions, Kauffman has tried to avoid rooms where certain patients have died.
“But as a defense mechanism, you try not to get too emotionally attached,” she said. “Still, there’s always some people that touch your heart more than others. It’s like, ‘I don’t want to be there when he dies.’ ”
Some nurses go to patients’ funerals.
“Some need that for the closure,” she said. “Some of us just cry, like you would if your friend died. There are some of us who get too tangled in, and they don’t last. They have to change positions.”
Kauffman tries not to go too many funerals.
But in October, one patient’s death was particularly painful.
He’d been a patient for several years while being treated for lymphoma.
“About a year and a half ago, he went through a bone marrow transplant and he came back every few months and he was doing well,” she said. “He’d hug us. We were so happy for him.
“Then he came back with a recurrence. At the end, he was in the hospital for a week. He was awake and alert till the end.
“We kept him comfortable.
“But it was hard on us. He was so optimistic. He thought he had licked the cancer. When you see someone so hopeful, so full of life and so positive, and then the ground is pulled from under their feet, well, that’s hard.”
Kauffman had known the man so long that she saw his personality change over the years as he handled his illness.
“We knew him back when he was angry and bitter and he wouldn’t talk to us,” she said. “And then he become so joking.
“Cancer makes you look at life differently. People are angry when they’re diagnosed, but then they decide to enjoy today.”
That’s how Kauffman deals with her own emotions.
“It makes you view your life very differently,” she said. “I don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s not important.”