Sometimes we all need an Elsa

My ailing mother has had a rough year and a half. Last spring, we moved her from her home in Winnipeg to an independent living facility in Calgary. Last week we moved her from independent to a supportive living status. She’s devolved from a beautiful house with a fertile backyard garden to a one-bedroom apartment with a view and some independence, to a one-room suite with nursing staff visiting around the clock. Next step looks downright repulsive. My mom, a widower for more than 30 years, is stubbornly independent. You can easily guess how these moves and changes have been accepted. Not well. Not well, at all. To put things in our lingo. MEDICAL SUMMARY: 93-year-old G2P2 failure to thrive with weakness, repeated falls, and progressive deconditioning. Diagnostic list includes, but is not limited to: mild dementia, macular degeneration, SN hearing loss, hypertension, stable CHF, moderate chronic renal failure, chronic anemia (multifactorial, including iron deficiency unresponsive to iron infusions), colon cancer (2 successful resections) with chronic diarrhea post, widespread OA, DDD lumbar spine with compression fractures post pedestrian / car accident, hypothyroidism, and recent hyponatremia. “Vitals stable”—wonderfully extraneous noise to the litany. Despite volunteering at a long-term care facility and a hospital ward for decades, my mom has always been private and not very outgoing. She calls it introverted. I call it asocial, recalcitrantly so. Most of her social circle died off years ago and left are a smattering of elderly women who like to complain. Complain a lot! My mom has always been the listener, the sounding board for these women. But now . . . well, she is tired of listening to them. Their griping and negativity make her feel worse than her own potpourri of failing health issues. So, she rarely talks to them anymore. It is just too depressing. She rarely seems to talk to anyone these days, except Elsa. I have never met Elsa. I only have a vague image of what she might look like. Through my mom I have learnt that she is the “most positive woman” she has ever met. A former neighbor, she only moved when her progressive blindness didn’t allow her to stay in her own home. It sounds like she has a lot of chronic medical conditions, but this doesn’t seem to slow her down. She has supportive children and grandchildren and a huge network of friends and extended family who she stays in close contact with by phone. She is a cell phone socialite. My mother phones Elsa three times a week, 9:00 pm every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Without fail. Elsa is positive and uplifting. She apparently laughs a lot. She is not a complainer. She talks about upbeat news stories and funny things with her family. She doesn’t unload any baggage on my mother, but rather listens to her and is encouraging. Elsa is a refreshing breath of air in a stale apartment, musty with the past. She forces my mom out of yesteryear and into the present, the day to day of living in the moment. I love Elsa, even if I will never meet or even talk with her. Sometimes we all need an Elsa. As a physician, I try to be a confident, supportive and non-judgmental healer. As a physician leader I have become an unapologetic cheerleader for my peers. As a physician teacher, an unwavering optimistic and encouraging mentor. I want to be an Elsa to all those around me. A compassionate listener with an uplifting spirit. But every now and then, I need an Elsa, too. Occasionally a colleague will say a kind word formally or informally. Most times it is a patient who just says a heart felt “thank you.” That’s all it takes, and I am truly grateful. There is so much negativity swirling around us daily. If it isn’t politics, it’s finances. Global warming, wars, floods, forest fires. Death and destruction closing in on all of us. Through it all we are just struggling to survive. Trying to do our jobs and be good people. I hope to continue to rise above the depressing din and wave the flag of Elsa. Call me at 9:00, I’ll be there with a smile. Dr. Ted Jablonski is a singer-songwriter, emerging playwright and neophyte poet who has retired his family practice to focus on sexual medicine and transgender health in Southern Alberta. He finds himself advising medical students at the Cumming School of Medicine and still on the front-line trenches of acute primary care.

Sometimes we all need an Elsa

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