Several years ago, my guess is about 2001, I was taking my husband, Ken, to dialysis treatments three times every week. One day, in the waiting room, I met a delightful woman named Anna. Anna was an older, elegant looking African American dialysis patient. We arrived at about the same time on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The first dialysis shift started at 6 A.M. but we had to be there at 5:30. The patients were called in one or two at a time to get hooked up to the machines that cleansed their blood for several hours. Ken was a big guy and Anna was a tiny woman so his time on dialysis was significantly longer than hers.So after Ken was wheeled in Anna and I shared stories in the waiting room. Anna spent most of her adult life working for a wealthy white woman who lived half of the year in a big house here in Central Florida. The woman loved to entertain and Anna was proud of the kitchen she was assigned to preside over. She told me several times that it was so big it had two dishwashers.
In the winter months Anna kept the dishwashers busy because the woman of the house loved to entertain. When I asked Anna what she did in the summer months she told me about polishing the silver. She'd sit at the dining room table with mounds of silver piled around her. She expressed pride in how she would polish and carefully wrap a dozen punch bowl cups. She deep cleaned every room in the house so that when the lady returned the place was "dazzlin'."
Some days when Anna was finished with dialysis she went a little crazy for a time. This was not unusual. Ken did the same. He wasn't usually wild or violet but his mind was garbled and he slept so soundly in the car coming home that I had to have help getting him into house and into his bed.
Anna, on the other hand, screamed in her dialysis stupor. She reminded me of a baby seemingly screaming for no reason after you'd done everything you knew to do to quiet her.
One morning Anna told me, in a quiet matter-of-fact way, that "when the insurance runs out my family is going to let me go." I didn't know what to make of this. I already knew that some patients, at some point, opted to stop dialysis. But at that time I had never heard of family members making the decision. I also was well aware of the financial ramifications of years of dialysis treatment. But Medicare usually took most of the burden. For whatever reason; possibly because I was too tired, sad or confused, I never questioned Anna further.
A few weeks later, after not having seen Anna for several days I asked one of the nurses about her. They said she was gone. That was it. She was gone. For weeks later I had questions in my mind. Could I have done or said something? Should I have done or said anything?
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