Coming from different origins, sometimes from contrasting social backgrounds, they are of all ages. They have different beliefs and faiths. They’ve never met before, yet they live in the same house. All of them are in an extremely precarious situation: they are at the end of their lives. So what do they have with them now? A few hours? A few days? A few weeks perhaps? They are all patients at the Jeanne Garnier Medical Home in Paris, where I work as a physiotherapist.
The Jeanne Garnier Medical Home is a Private Health Establishment of Collective Interest. For 150 years, its mission has been to welcome, provide care and support to people requiring early palliative care or in the advanced or terminal stage of their illness, to enhance their well-being and quality of life. This Care Unit has 81 beds.
Where is the hope for these 80 people at the very end of their lives? What hope can we bring them? Pilgrims of hope, they have been pilgrims of hope after a difficult and painful journey of medical care, which has asked for a great deal of their energy and determination. They have now reached the end of their pilgrimage.
Hope is born through encounters. ‘Hello, my name is Caroline and I’m a physiotherapist’ is a greeting that often makes people’s eyes light up. Without necessarily knowing the etymology, they know that it has something to do with movement. And movement is life. ‘If someone comes to take care of my ‘movement’, it means I’m still alive’. In palliative care, we don’t add time to life, we try to give life to the time that remains. ‘ Life… to the end’ (Jusqu’au bout…la vie) is the title of the book we published to celebrate our 150th anniversary.
The prescription I receive from the doctor gives me a rough idea of what I can do with the patient, but my first question will always be: ‘What do you really want? How do you see us working together? I don’t go to them and impose a treatment upon them. The patients must be involved in the relationship we start. Yes, it’s all about relationships. Through a holistic approach, we reach out to the person as a whole.
The answer is often a desire to walk again, to retain or regain a little independence. Sometimes I’ll be able to help them do this, sometimes not. I have to be careful not to ‘sell’ them a dream: that’s not true Hope. If I can get them back on their feet, I know – but somewhere, they know it too – that it won’t be for long, there will come a time when they no longer have the strength. But if TODAY is possible, then let’s live today! And if it’s not possible to get up, other things are possible. To do, or to be.
A person’s dignity cannot be reduced to their ability to do things. All dignity comes from knowing that we are loved. Taking care of someone, even in a professional capacity, is always a way of loving them. They deserve our attention and our respect.
Life itself is hope. To serve it until its last moments is to nurture the Hope of God, who has laid everything on Humanity. He has all the time in the world, while we only have today.
Today…, to give, but much more, to receive. In my relationship with the patient, I don’t know which of the two receives more from the other. A spark is born when two stones strike against each other. The presence of God springs from the true meeting of two human beings. People nearing the end of their lives have, deliberately or otherwise, a sense of what is essential. Our medical team, which we build around them, is at the service of these essentials. Each person, according to his or her profession, belief or faith, expresses this in his or her own way.
For me, in this experience, even professionally, the following words are now written out in capital letters: Essential; Presence to the Other; Life; Hope.
Caroline CLARISSE, fmm
Paris (North West Europe Region)
