Calvin White

LETTER FROM DEENA’S BODY

MY DAYS HERE continue to be filled with fullness, the fullness of the heart. On Monday evening I went to the home of a 17 yr old girl, who had been pleading to be admitted to hospital for 2 months. She has MDR-TB again and has been reduced to skin and bones - a tiny, frail child who looks like one of the starving in the worst of African famines. She was in her bed and my female counsellor, Ziyba and I came to see her.

Her anxious father stood by the doorway watching us, hoping. His hands fidgeted at his sides as he listened. His gray hair, his sad, worn face, alone in his home with this young daughter and her smaller sister.

There was nothing I could do other than assure her I would try to get her in the hospital. She knows she is dying without treatment. There was nothing more that I could do, so I asked her if I could hold her in order to pass some of my energy to her. She agreed; her smooth, brown arms strained to push herself forward on the bed to a sitting position. I bent to her and held her.

In my arms, her body was like a casing of paper holding protrusions - her skin covering a spine and tiny ribs. She was fevered. I felt her cheek against mine and I cradled her in my arms and breathed. My breath long and easy and flowing, hers in short puffs; short life her remaining life. I held her a long time until I felt that we had been connected. Then I asked Ziyba to do the same.

As I looked at her again, she was more relaxed and so I held her hand and spoke of dying. I said, “I’m going to tell you the truth, but I want you to listen to all of it.”She nodded. Then, through Ziyba, I spoke.

“You might die.” Immediately her face broke slightly and tears formed. These were the words she did not want. I pressed her hand, put my finger to her eyes and said not to cry but to listen.There was not enough strength in her to now give way to tears. I continued, “You might die because you are so weak right now, but right now you are alive. And I might die, when I leave your home and get in the taxi to return to my own home. Crashes happen here all the time. You know that. We are all going to die. None of us knows when. That is what life means. Right now you and I are both alive. I felt your life in my arms. So, instead of thinking about dying, I want you to focus on living. To give your energy to living. Don’t run away from the idea that you might die. But keep your gaze on the truth. Right now you are as alive as I am. You want to get into the hospital. You want to start the drug treatment again. You know how hard the drugs are, but you want to do it. That’s who you are. You want to live. So go in that direction. Put your mind on living.”

Then, I asked her to eat more, to eat small amounts all day long. Yogurt, milk, eggs, rice, fruit, whatever her father could offer. Make herself eat. To drink more. To pay attention to strengthening her body. That was her job now. Ziyba and I left.

Outside in the taxi, Ziyba began to cry. I asked her what it was like to hold the girl, her patient. She said she had been afraid. Afraid to come so close to someone with so little left of her. I said, that was what we could give. We could give warmth. We could give our love. We could give her human touch. A message, however unconscious, that she was worth being held by other humans, male and female, that she had value, that she was wantable. To experience through the physical intimacy of another living human her own aliveness, her own presence, her own heart beating. That was what we could give. And if she would die that night then she would have died at least with that.

Ziyba cried because the girl’s mother had died only two years prior from MDR-TB. She spoke of how Deena had reached out to her two months ago for help when she showed signs of having MDR-TB back again, how Ziyba had tried to get the doctors to re-admit her for treatment. This little girl had already gone through two years of treatment and was designated as a completed case. Ziyba cried because she had not been able to convince anyone to re-admit the girl. Since she last saw her three weeks ago, the child had declined severely, wasting away. This little girl who Ziyba had cared about for months and months when she first joined MDR who was now on a death bed and so thin that she was barely a body at all. For this child, Ziyba, my 26 year old counselor, cried.

And.......the next day the little girl was admitted to the TB hospital. And...three days later she is still alive. I have looked in her eyes again and there is a difference. She sees hope. I asked her if she would like me to hold her again. She looked away and replied that I should make my own decision.

Calvin White is a retired high school counsellor who lives in the North Okanagan. He has over 70 essays published in various Canadian daily newspapers, including the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun and Province. If you have any comments on this column, you can write to Calvin White at calvinwhite@northof50.com or to Calvin White c/o North of 50, Box 100, Armstrong, BC V0E 1B0

Calvin White is currently working with Doctors Without Borders in Uzbekistan, a landlocked former part of the Soviet Union. He will be there for about a year, working with victims of drug resistant tuberculosis and training counsellors to do the same. He continues to submit his columns to North of 50 from there.