I lost two friends in High School, one to a motorcycle crash, an the other to an alcohol induced car accident where he hit a tree with tremendous speed. I played football with both of these guys and really loved them like brothers. I lost a great friend while i was in college to leukemia.
In my very first job in Human Serices, I worked with people with traumatic brain injuries. Many of the individual were in a coma or in were "in there" but couldn't my role in this position (i was 19) was to work with the rest of the therapies (OT, PT, COGNITIVE THERAPY, my very fav Speech therapy) I and the rest of my staff were to visit with those on our caselist work to help orient them to person, place, time. as well as documenting responses to different senses.
On one particular day, "john" woke up and he and I worked so hard together, he would use a letterboard to spell out what he wanted to say but was unable to speak. He needed a special wheelchair with a head immobilizer as he had no head control and if not in the head brace his head would fall forward and block his airway.
We developed a quick and strong friendship, and I was proud to be a part of his recovery. Having a strong sense of humor was a huge part of our relationship. He was a huge New York Giants fan and would just point and laugh at me each monday am when i can in to work and the Giants but not my beloved New York Jets had won the game over the weekend. There were so many mornings I would visit his room and walk in with the Cheery "Good Morning John, and he would respond by flipping me the bird and laughing himself to the point of tears. He also became quite efficient at spelling out the same message that flipping me off conveyed. ( I truly loved this guy, his spirit, humor and fight were the stuff of legends)
Sadly one Monday I was headed towards his room and had my very first and painful lesson about ethics, advocacy, and so very much the ability to empathize.
the facility was understaffed over the weekend and john's head flopped forward out of the brace, he was not checked in on every few minutes due to the staffing and died. To add to my sadness, staff had removed any evidence of his having lived in that room. Name tags pulled from the plates near the outside of the door. His bed was overturned and sheets removed as were all personal effects, even the Phil Simms poster i got for him.
I was so hurt--no disgusted that a person and their live within those walls, what he meant to others, was wiped clean as if he never existed. So with all of the passion and the total inability to be politically corrected I stormed into the administrators office and demanded an immediate meeting between myself, her, facility program director and the director of nursing.
Since I had always presented as so calm and focused, they were all shocked with my level of agitation. After reminding all (remember i was just a pup in the world of work here) that we served and supported human beings and not cattle. Each one of them had their jaws hit the floor, while I insisted that we completely change the way we deal with death within the facility. After feeding the beauracratic dragon with meetings about how to make a policy change and to also to ensure that a grief counselor was available for staff and other residents when they wanted.
the most amazing thing that resulted from my flip was that they gave me the role of leading a committee to ensure that further losses were handled with the dignity & respect they deserved.
:::Ya dats right:::
I still have a christmas card he wrote to me all this time later.
