Sharkie

They don’t really need to tell you when you start this job that you ought not to get too close to your patients. Even if you’re not familiar with the survival statistics, common sense says “build a wall.” We build these walls out of self preservation, if we were laid low at the death of each patient we’d never get up off the floor. Be this as it may, sometimes when you aren’t looking a patient becomes a friend. This has happened to me twice in the almost two and a half years that I’ve worked here. I lost my friend Charlie almost two years ago, and I lost my friend Sharkie barely two days ago. We miss you already.

Sharkie was one of the first patients that I ever saw receive a bone marrow biopsy and it was awful. He was so sick in so many ways, if I could have left the room I would have but I was stuck in a corner and had to stay. I remember one of our physicians predicting that if he survived the week then he surely wouldn’t survive his first round of chemotherapy. Two weeks later he was feeling and looking better than anyone with newly diagnosed leukemia and receiving cytotoxic drugs has any right too. He ended up making it more than two years. Then again that was Sharkie: contrary in a rather delightful way. 

Sharkie was a truly gentle soul and that soul shone regardless of the seemingly endless rounds of therapy and the months upon months of illness. Even at his most ill he’d always manage a smile when we came into the room to visit. At times this smile was followed by complaints of the evil night shift nurse or wanting to go home, on better days it was whatever dirty joke he had recently heard. A lot of the time it was just a smile though, one that reached his eyes and told you how truly happy he was to see you. 

 

I didn’t see Sharkie on the day that he died. I saw him two days earlier, sitting up, smiling and with more color in his face then he’d had in months. It may have been selfish on my part but that’s how I want to remember him: sitting up, smiling and being mildly annoyed by concerned and hovering family members. I’ll remember him with his long white hair and permanent tan from fishing. I’ll remember his chicken legs and do-rag reclined in the Infusion Room. I’ll remember how excited he was to see his son’s when they came to town and how much he looked forward to fishing with them.

Leslie brought up the other morning an image that made me smile, one of Charlie, waiting for Sharkie at the boarder of this world and wherever it is that we go from here. Had they known each other in life they would have surely enjoyed each other.

To Sharkie, I hope you have found peace. You are dearly missed.