Today I met an angel. His name was Ignacio (name changed for privacy). He lives in a poor barrio in Bogotá with his very young mother (Madonna) and father, whose work pays for the insurance coverage that allowed our palliative care team to visit Ignacio and offer him and his family the best care possible.
(All photos used with permission.)Madonna sits with Ignacio, who will die within the month, on her lap. He was born with a congenital heart problem, and without the morphine he is receiving daily, would have died sooner, in respiratory distress. Many babies do not survive gestation.
Our homecare team consisted of Dr. J, Nurse H, and Dr. E, the Psychologist, who also has a diploma in palliative care.
After taking Ignacio’s vital signs and letting him play with her entrancing stethoscope, Dr. J asked Madonna about his symptoms, and learned his quality of life had improved since the last visit. She also fielded a hopeful question about a heart transplant, saying she would put Madonna in touch with the pediatric cardiologist. (She privately told later me that a heart transplant was impossible, for clinical, ethical reasons she could not go into during the visit.) Their medical duties in the house done, Dr. J and Nurse H stepped out and left Dr. E to give her counseling session, asking if I wanted to stay, which I did. I also asked Madonna’s permission to stay.
Dr. E gently probed her state of mind, giving Madonna the space to say what she needed to say about how it feels to have a baby she knew could die at any moment, yet who seems to be doing better. The rational words failed her, and the tears came. She explained them saying she can’t stop wondering why God should punish her like this. Going over and over what she had done wrong. Dr. E heard her out and then gently told her that God was not punishing her, that he loved her, and was with her in this suffering. (Her theology was excellent!)
She then practically paraphrased the Buddha’s story about Kisa Guatami the woman who had lost her son, saying that as mothers we never know when we will lose our children — it could be sooner, rather than later, but it may happen at some point. If it happens, tragically in our lifetimes, the death of a child is never the action of a punishing God. Gradually Dr. E calmed Madonna down, as Ignacio played on her lap with the handles of a tiny toy purse, seeming for all the world like a normal six-month old, drooping and eventually dropping off as he felt his mom relax. I told her he was an angel who was visiting her for a while, and was rewarded with a radiant smile. Dr. E completed the image by saying he was an angel who would always be with her, whenever she thought about him, and even when she wasn’t thinking about him!
Palliative care and access to controlled medicines is excellent in Bogotá, and in some (mainly) urban areas of Colombia. For more information, see the Latin American Palliative Care Atlas. The discipline is developing slowly, and more new cohorts of medical students are receiving palliative care training as part of their education.