Wu Peipei: Bestowing dignity on those waiting at death’s door
WU Peipei, 33, works in the “closest place to heaven.” She is a hospice nurse who tends to people in their dying days at Jinshanwei Community Health Service Center.
Hospice care is relatively new in China, but people have gradually come to embrace the concept of making the weeks or days before death as comfortable, dignified and pain-free as possible.
For nurses, palliative care is a hard job infused with sadness. They have to deal with patients who have no hope of recovery and families who are trying to come to terms with the loss of a loved one.
“I’ve been working as a nurse for more than a decade,” Wu told Shanghai Daily. “Two years ago, I started to work with the hospice team.”
She first had to come to grips with the fact that all the patients she sees have their days numbered and may slip away in her presence.
“I try not to dwell on it too much when I’m at work,” Wu said. “But it’s hard not to feel sorrow when you pass by the empty bed of someone who was talking with you just a few days ago, or even yesterday.”
Some 90 percent of patients at the center are suffering from some sort of terminal cancer. Since most receive only the minimum medical treatments required, they have more time to chat with the nurses and form transitory relationships.
Wu has plenty of heartwarming stories amid the heartbreakers. Like the man suffering from terminal cancer whose family never visited him. He was averse to light and always wanted the curtains drawn. His room was as gloomy as his mindset.
But during one conversation, he happened to mention that a special Shanghai cake made in Qibao Old Town in suburban Minhang District was a favorite of his. So the nurses went out and bought him one. It really changed his outlook.
“From then on, every time there was a festival, he would get flowers ordered online for the nurses,” Wu said.
Wu said her job requires calm, patience and kindness. Heart-to-heart talks with patients often lift them from their gloomy prognoses.
“These patients are no one special,” Wu said. “They are the people we all meet in our daily lives. And death awaits us all.”
One patient in Wu’s care is a woman with terminal breast cancer. A “cauliflower-like” lump at the joint of her neck and shoulder festered and stank. The woman was in poor mental condition when she arrived and refused any treatment.
Nurses finally persuaded her to accept a targeted drug that doctors said would relieve some of the symptoms and pain.
“We changed her dressings every day, and the lump actually shrank in size,” Wu said. “The patient developed a more positive attitude about her condition.”
Wu is one of eight hospice