Roommates

Until I was married, I really didn’t understand the meaning of the word “roommate”. In the home where most of us grow up and develop, the entire family and entire house is a roommate situation. College was my first experience with an assigned roommate, the first one, a real fine fellow who became one of the state's great physicians and has now passed on.

In the military, in the officer's quarters, I had much privacy except on the field sleeping in a tent with other members of the medical profession. It took me awhile to understand, but there really are some very smart healthcare practitioners in our world. When I was having some very complicated eye surgery at the Massachusetts Eye Infirmary, a much older doctor was put in my room with me as a roommate. I learned later that it was mostly for my psychological benefit, because he was a man of great encouragement. And encouragement, is the golden thread of survival.

After some very delicate eye surgery, one woman came in to feed me. Half way through the meal, she said, “I want you to come out of this depression, I am totally blind and I still work everyday.” Both she and this wonderful older physician in the room with me made it their mission to drag me out of the valley of depression and despondency. The veterans hospital, at Durham NC, is directly across the street from the Duke University Hospital and often, veterans who need specialized care are placed in the Duke hospital. Perhaps I was used in the same way there as had developed at the Boston General Hospital. A patient from the Coastal area of the state was put in the room with me. I had come to find out,  from his wife and another friend who visited him, he had tried to cure his problems of life at the bottom of a liquor bottle. His body had almost shut down completely. He told me, that for 20 years, he drank one pint of liquor everyday and several pints over the weekend. He had cancer of the liver and other vital organs. His wife told me they had lost a fortune because of his alcoholism.

One night, he said to me, “I know I’m going to die, I CAN FEEL DEATH.” I said, “ARE YOU READY?” We talked for awhile and I found he was searching for the most important answer of his life. I said to him, “Every tick of a clock is like the muffled drum of a funeral march. We are all terminal, we are all in that final march and you can know, without any doubt, that you are ready for death.” I walked him down the Romans road. Talked to him about the first Epistle of John where we are told 14 times in 150 verses, that we can KNOW we are prepared for death. I said to this dying alcoholic, “All you have to do is repent of your sins, believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and you can have the assurance of salvation.” I had the beautiful opportunity to lead him in that wonderful decision and felt the grip of his hand when he told me he was ready for death.

Later that night, I was awakened. A man was standing in his bed over him using electronic equipment, trying to establish a heartbeat. He would say to the others, “Step back!” and my friend would almost jump off the bed, but, his life was gone, he was dead, there was nothing they could do and I heard the nurse say, “IT IS OVER”.

On another occasion, in a Boston hospital, a pediatrician from Madrid, Spain shared a room with me. He and his wife became very good friends and the next time I was in Madrid, I called him and said that I had a severe cold and needed a doctor and he was the best one I knew in Madrid. He said, “If you need a cocktail in a Madrid hospital you have no trouble getting it, but good care is another matter. My wife and I will be there shortly, with some medicine, and I hope you will feel well enough that we can go out for dinner”. They were a wonderful couple, wonderful parents and, after his death from a heart condition, which had brought on our first meeting, his wife wrote that I had inspired him in Boston and this had kept him going additional time in his practice in Spain.

"The Moving Hand writes, and having writ,
Moves on; not all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Omar Khayyam (Early Arabian Mathematician, prophet and poet)