Robert Died

The last time I wrote about Robert, he was feeling great and was more optimistic than he had been for months. He was last in the clinic in mid-November. He came in with acute bronchitis. We put him on ten days of antibiotics, filled his maintenance drug prescriptions, and told him we would see him in two months.

In early December, I noticed that we were receiving pages of X-ray reports from the hospital with his name. I briefly looked at them and they were filed in his chart.

Then I saw his obituary. I had no idea, which is fairly common. While we function as a primary care provider in many circumstances, we don’t have a provider here except for clinic nights. Because of that, we usually do not receive any of the communication from the hospital when one of our patients is hospitalized.

What I can piece together is this: he was admitted to the hospital with “cardiac dysrhythmia and treated with anticoagulants and then bleeding began.” What that means is that he was admitted with some type of irregular heartbeat, which they treated with blood thinners – and then he started bleeding. At that time, the testing began and a mass was discovered in his colon (large intestine). The mass was diagnosed as cancer.

One report I received referenced a recent surgery; but, I have no surgery report on him. He had pneumonia or congestive heart failure – I couldn’t really tell from the reports I received. At some point he was on a respirator; he had a feeding tube inserted; he developed an obstruction in his small bowel; he had a central line; there were daily X-ray reports, but no other communication with the clinic. He was ultimately transferred to a regional hospital, where he died.

There are so many holes in the story, but those ultimately do not matter. There was nothing I could do to change the outcome, or to even help. But, I feel so helpless. And frustrated.

We pulled him back from the brink of death last summer, only to have him suffer this much. Was it worth it? Did he have some good days? Some good months? Did he have family that reached out to him?

I am left with questions, questions that cannot be answered. No hospital report is going to tell me what I need to know.

And, maybe the saddest part of all is that he was 55 years old, or rather, only 55.

I don’t know his family, or his friends. I wish I could tell them how much he meant to us, how he always brought a smile to our faces, how much he appreciated us and how he always expressed his appreciation. He always said thank you; he was always polite and happy to see us.

I will miss you, Robert.