Cancer’s return is fatal for wife
My wife, who recently died of cancer, spent nine days in Uniontown Hospital — nine days and nights fraught with uncertainty, confusion and an endless series of tests.
Here’s an odd juxtaposition: everyone — I only slightly exaggerate — hates and distrusts their hometown newspaper. When I worked for the paper in Greensburg, readers would say, “If you want to know what’s going in Greensburg, you have to read the Post-Gazette.” The idea was ridiculous but people seemed to believe it.
The same is true of hospitals. Everyone thinks the hospital over yonder is vastly superior to the one in their own backyard.
This is just not so. Barbara, my wife, had many ailments over the years. She spent a considerable number of days in a variety of hospitals, including in Pittsburgh. I can’t honestly say one was superior to the other in terms of hour-to-hour care. A hospital is a hospital is a hospital.
This last time, my wife was a patient on the fourth floor of Uniontown Hospital. The nurses and nurses aides on the floor could not have been nicer.
With few exceptions, they were unfailingly polite and helpful. A nurse whose first name was Bill was one of these. One aide — Melissa — was especially nice. Despite her condition, Barbara took special delight in Melissa, who looked no older than 19 but to our astonishment turned out to be in her late 20s and the mother of three.
A small thing: Melissa managed to latch on to some fingernail files for Barbara. “I got these for her,” she told me smiling. “I hope they help.”
As the days passed and Barbara’s condition worsened, Melissa and the others on the floor actually seemed to grow more caring. The kindness of these strangers toward my wife was touching as well as heroic.
The doctors, too, tried to be helpful and considerate. For the most part, they succeeded. The doctor involved in removing the small lump from Barbara’s neck for the purpose of a biopsy spent 15 to 20 minutes explaining to myself, my daughter and her wife the intricacies of the procedure, Barbara’s prognosis as it was then understood, and the complications of treatment.
That doctor’s name was Charles Calabrese, a gastroenterologist.
Kathleen Thomas, a nurse practitioner and oncology specialist, was the genuine article. So was Edward Slayden, an internist serving as a hospitalist (a term I had never heard before) whose job included keeping track of the variety of specialists who were trying to figure what exactly was wrong with Barbara.
Dr. Slayden was our eyes and ears to the murky world of medical diagnosis. He was honest, forthright and, as far as I could tell, genuinely interested in Barbara.
All of this is not to say that Uniontown Hospital is perfect. It’s an institution run by human beings. By definition, people are imperfect. Therefore, no hospital is perfect.
Before getting sick, when she was up and about, my wife used to echo a complaint you hear from many folks who visit the hospital: the walk from the entrance to an elevator is way too long. If you’re going to the fourth floor, the walk is longer yet.
But this was the least of it. The old saw is true: rest in a hospital is all but impossible. The monitoring was incessant. The interruptions constant. Barbara’s IV monitor seemed to beep-beep-beep with the slightest movement of her arm.
At times the fourth floor wing where my wife tried to rest was hot. Sometimes unbearably so.
Barbara had several roommates during her time on the fourth floor. This was unfortunate, for both my wife and the women who occupied the other bed. Privacy was impossible, and it was noisy.
But what else can you expect when two people are sandwiched into a space the size of a small living room with only a slim curtain between them?
The view, of a rooftop, was dismal, not that Barbara was near the window and could look out.
Uniontown Hospital needs an aesthetic redesign. But then, all hospitals do.
My wife only wanted to come home, to “feel cozy,” as she said. I kept telling her the doctors wanted to run more tests. She told us that she overheard a doctor — or someone — say following one test that the breast cancer that we thought was beaten had returned and spread. I thought she might be confused. Several days later the diagnosis was confirmed. By then Barbara was pretty much out of it. I told people at the funeral home that Barbara never fully realized how sick she was. I can only hope this was true.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — “Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation” and “Our People.” He can be reached at grandsalutebook@gmail.com.