This past May, the Department of Medicine’s Culture & Inclusion portfolio hosted its fifth annual Story Slam. These events celebrate storytelling by allowing participants to share brief stories with an audience. This year’s theme was “Filling Buckets.”
Below is the transcript for the story our Vice-Chair of Culture & Inclusion, Dr. Umberin Najeeb, shared at the event, entitled Are you OK?:
It was 4 in the morning when my phone started to ring. The early morning phone calls are very anxiety provoking, especially for people like me who have family back home because they never bring good news.
It was my sister-in-law on the other side and she informs me that my father has passed away. It was not an unexpected news. My dad had a major stroke in September of 2016. I went back home immediately at that time. We all thought he was going to die but he survived, to the surprise of his physicians – if you call that surviving. He had lost his ability to speak and swallow. He was dependent for all of the activities of daily living.
My dad was a wonderful communicator, a great orator with a sense of humour and an infectious laugh. He had this uncanny ability to resolve conflicts. Colleagues, family, friends, peers would reach out to him for advice. And he had this ability to find solutions when situations were dark and bleak. It broke my heart to see my father like that. I had to put a nasogastric (NG) tube in him as well. I've done NG tubes many, many times, but doing that to my father was not something I expected to do.
I stayed for 4 weeks. I spent my time talking to him, taking care of him. Sometimes he responded, sometimes he did not. When I left, I knew this was the last time I was seeing him alive. It was just before Canadian Thanksgiving when I came back home, so the call in January 2017 was not surprising. I started making travel plans. I asked my husband to book me a flight, and for some reason, he couldn't find anything. Everything was two or three stop overs and I would arrive three or four days later. Like a typical wife, I thought my husband was doing something wrong, so I called my travel agent and I said find me something so that I can go as soon as possible and arrive as soon as possible. But he was also not successful. There was a new travel ban south of the border, which was creating havoc in air travel.
In our faith, we don't delay funerals. We want our dear departed loved ones to be buried as soon as possible. It was becoming very apparent that I would not arrive in time, so I told my brother to go ahead with the funeral and not to wait for me. And in the end, I decided not to go.
I attended my father's funeral on a WhatsApp video call. It was my cousin’s responsibility to call me and to have the Whatsapp video on. My cousin every few minutes would ask me, “Baji, are you OK?” Baji is an Urdu word to show respect for an older sister. I would take a pause and then I would say, “Yeah, I'm OK.” We both knew I was not OK, but we went through this ritual of checking in. “Baji, are you OK?” and me responding a few times, “Yeah, I'm ok.”
I said goodbye to my father and kissed him virtually. I don't think I will ever be able to describe that experience in words. It was a very surreal experience.
A few months ago, I was on a clinical teaching unit taking care of a patient. Let's call him Mr. Smith. He was not doing well despite all the active medical management, and we organized a family meeting. I had a conversation with his adult children. Mr. Smith was too sick to hold any communication. All of his adult children were in Canada, but his only daughter lived outside of Canada.
It was a somber family meeting. I provided a medical update and tried to understand their values and beliefs, and we all agreed that we will continue the medical management but will not escalate the therapy anymore. When the time comes, the focus will be on comfort. At the conclusion of the meeting, the daughter, let's call her Cathy, said to me, “Dr. Najeeb, I’ll make travel plans. I'm coming.”
That same day closer to 5:00 pm, the nurse came to find me and said Mr. Smith is not doing well.We immediately rushed to the bedside. Mr. Smith was very short of breath, and it was apparent that he's going to pass away. I asked my senior resident to call the family and my mind immediately went to Cathy, who was making travel plans. So I called her. I made another WhatsApp video call. I provided her a medical update, and then I let her talk to her dad.
She said her goodbyes, she cried, she kissed virtually. It was a deeply emotional and personal moment, and I had the privilege of witnessing and observing that. I didn't realize at the time, but every few minutes I would say, “Cathy, are you OK?” And she would take a pause, and a few minutes later she will say, “Yes, Dr. Najeeb, I'm OK.” We both knew she was not OK, but this was a ritual checking in. Mr. Smith passed away and his family arrived. His family and his daughter thanked me and my team for all the care.
Rumi says, “Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life search for love and wisdom.” Rumi has words for everything.
My life experiences of pain, loss and grief has led me to acknowledge situations which I was not able to appreciate before. The grief and pain which I have experienced hopefully has made me an empathetic and compassionate human being in both personal and professional settings.
Cathy and Umberin – joined by the grief, and the pain and the loss of their father, multiple continents apart in different parts of the world on that WhatsApp video call - going through this ritual of checking in. Let's use our life experiences of grief and pain to be compassionate, to be empathetic, and to check in with each other to ask, “are you ok?”
