About dying...

I always knew that coming to a place like this would mean looking after lots of people that ended up dying. It was therefore no surprise to find empty beds on a Monday morning where patients had been on Friday. What took longer to accept was that it was not my fault. It sounds strange perhaps but initially all this death left me wondering whether I should really be here and perhaps I was doing more harm than good. It has taken me a few months to come to terms with the fact that I am doing my best and that, although many people are dying, that is good enough.

From a medical point of view I have noticed a few key markers of likely demise. Getting oxygen on the general wards is a real mission usually involving you personnaly looking around the hospital for a tank with any gas left. Consequently you generally only tend to do that when a patient really needs it, so much so that so far not a single patient who I (or my TB colleagues) have got oxygen for has survived. The patients were the first to notice this and have given a name to the oxygen tank which is 'the big black man that brings the death'.

I use the word death and dying freely here but not with the Xhosa people. I quickly noticed that the word for death was never used and in it's place were euphamisms like 'rested in peace' and 'she has left us'. It's not that people are afraid of death just that the word itself seems to be taboo.