by K Carothers
Erin nodded. “I think so. And the same goes for my father. Luke is pretty sure he left town, which is probably for the best. But even if he comes back it doesn’t really matter. That’s another part of my past I’d like to leave there.”
“There’s a difference between ignoring your past and coming to terms with it. Do you think you’ve done that?”
Erin thought about everything that had happened since she found out Jenna had cancer. “I think I’ve at least made a good start,” she finally said. “Though I’ll probably never completely come to terms with the fact that my father killed my mother, or that I had to grow up without parents. I don’t know if it’s possible to ever really get over things like that.” But it occurred to her that she didn’t feel the old bitterness and anger anymore, the dark heaviness in her soul that talk of the past usually left her with. And she knew then that she really had come to terms with a lot of things.
But it wasn’t just acceptance she felt for her mother now. It was so much more. Somehow, someway, despite death, a whole lot of misconceptions, and twenty-six years spent trying to forget her, she realized the love they’d once shared had still managed to find its way back to her.
Smiling softly, she sat there enveloped in the warmth of that love as she watched the fireflies flicker around her, almost as if they were winking their approval, sharing the moment with her in joyful celebration, reminding her that there was indeed an amazing and powerful force in the universe from which all love was born.
Erin turned back to Jenna, feeling a shift take place inside her, the dawning of a new, deeper understanding of life and how it needed to be lived, an understanding that her friend had really been trying to teach her all along. “I think you’re right that the meaning of life lies in self-discovery—in finding the truth within us. And I know now that part of the journey has to include understanding how the past influences our thinking and behavior, otherwise we’ll end up like those cows on the hill in your poem. But beyond that, there’s no use in obsessing over the past, or the future either. We need to embrace every moment right now, to be grateful for what we have instead of always looking for something different, something more. And above all else, we need to love ourselves and others no matter what. It’s all so simple and yet so complicated. But it’s the only path to inner peace—the key to unlocking all the wonders of eternity.” She grinned. “There I go, rhyming again. And I’m sounding more like you every day.”
“Actually, you sound like Thoreau,” Jenna said. “One of my favorite quotes is—”
“I know exactly which quote you’re thinking of,” Erin interrupted. “It was the first one you told me when I got here: ‘You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.’ I think that quote has been stuck in my head ever since.”
“And now you won’t need CPR on the beach.”
“No. I can actually swim.” Erin shook her head with a laugh. “I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that I would ever learn how to swim. In fact, if you’d told me ahead of time about half the things that would end up happening here, I would’ve said that you really did need a brain scan because none of it was even possible.”
Jenna smiled, lifting her gaze up to the stars. “I have a feeling there are more possibilities than you or I could ever imagine…And I think your journey here has only just begun.”
Afterword
(The Real Story)
One of the first people who read this book wondered how much of it was actually fiction.
My response was that many real-life events inspired it, though I changed the details somewhat to fit within the framework of a single story or to protect privacy. And unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—Erin’s story is in a lot of ways my own story. My father was a less benign version of Helen Harris who used to take out all his unresolved anger on my mother, and to a lesser extent on my five siblings and me, continuing a cycle of abuse that had started in his own childhood. But my parents divorced when I was ten, and afterward my dad became a “born-again Christian.” He then used religion as an outlet for his hatred. And he soon became quite adept at terrorizing others with words from the Bible.
After they divorced, my siblings and I lived with my mother most of the time. But she'd always struggled with mental illness and was too lost in her own world to have any real concept of being a mother. There were no hugs or words of affection growing up. No rules, or curfews, or making sure homework got done. I’m still amazed that six kids managed to survive in an environment like that, though three didn’t graduate from high school. And I learned that if there’s anything worse than not having a mother, it’s having a mother who’s there but not really there at all.
Like Erin, I’ve been claustrophobic since childhood, though not as severely. I avoided elevators whenever I could and used to keep the bathroom door slightly open if possible—which usually resulted in some combination of animals and/or kids coming in. So I eventually learned to at least close it more often! Most people are somewhat afraid of being trapped in an enclosed space—unless your name is Houdini—and millions of people around the world have full-blown claustrophobia. It’s actually a complex disorder (as most disorders are), and a number of factors usually contribute to the development of it. But I think for me the most significant causative factor was an event that happened when I was around five. An older girl lived across the street from us, and I liked to hang out with her. But one day, for reasons I’ll probably never know in this lifetime, she locked me in her shed and beat me with a stick. I can only recall a few bits and pieces of the incident, and I have no idea how I got out, but I remember going home and curling up on the couch. I was wearing a dress and looked down at the welts on my legs, and it was like I was looking at someone else’s legs—which is something the mind often does to help a person cope with trauma. But interestingly, I never talked about the incident with anyone and never associated it with my claustrophobia until I was writing this book. Like Erin, I’ve always preferred helping other people with their problems rather than dealing with my own. I think a lot of physicians are like that, and it’s one of many things that needs to change in medicine.
Other real-life events were a source of inspiration for this book as well. For example, there really was a well-liked city treasurer in Illinois named Rita Crundwell who embezzled millions of dollars from the city she worked for and “invested” the money in her horse ranch. In fact, it’s not uncommon for horses to be used in money laundering schemes. And it’s a sad thing that such beautiful creatures are used as a screen to cover up the ugliness of human greed.
I’ve also done my best to write the medical cases accurately. Variations of these scenarios have all happened to an ER doctor out there somewhere. And the child abuse case was one that I dealt with myself, and took extremely personally, having grown up with an abusive father.
I treated the child the first time, and the case was even more dramatic in real life than I related in the book. Afterward, I truly had felt like saving that child’s life validated all the hard work and sacrifice that had been required to become a physician, and made up for all the times—the many, many times—when I’d felt like I wasn’t really making a difference. Sometimes patients have even outright said so, usually the ones who didn’t get narcotics. But I wasn’t working when the child was brought in the second time. The ER physician on duty that day later told me what the neurosurgeon had said after the child died, the words Erin quotes in the book. And when I heard them myself I felt like a piece of my heart had been ripped right out of my chest, a piece that I don’t think I’ll ever get back.
Parts of the book have also been inspired by my experience helping a friend—who I’ll call by her middle name, Lee, for privacy reasons—through stage 4 breast cancer. I first met her in the ER as a patient and gave her the initial diagnosis. She’d come in alone that day, and I quickly learned
that she was an incredibly strong, independent woman, though also very reserved. But I told her she was going to need help dealing with her diagnosis, that someone should come and be a part of the discussion regarding treatment because this wasn’t something she could or should cope with on her own. But she said there was no one, and I’ll admit that I had to hide a few tears when she told me that and left alone. (Unlike Erin, I’ve always been a crier. I haven’t once been able to watch the movie Scrooged and not cry when the little boy finally speaks.)
In any case, I made arrangements for Lee to see a breast surgeon a few days later, and I called her during my shift the next day to see how she was and to remind her about the appointment. I don’t call patients back every day, but I will always call if the circumstances warrant it. And I’d felt an immediate connection with Lee, probably because we were a lot alike. But when I talked to her she sounded very uncertain about seeing the surgeon, mostly because she was intimidated by the prospect of driving to a hospital she wasn’t familiar with in a bigger city. I knew there was a good chance she wouldn’t follow through, so I told her I would take her. I’ll never forget that moment. I remember thinking it was probably a bad idea—I really didn’t know her after all. And I wondered if I’d be crossing some medicolegal line that would get me in trouble, which is a truly sad commentary on medicine these days. But I didn’t feel like there was a choice. I was off the next day and she needed help. That’s what it all boiled down to. And I heard the gratitude and relief in her voice afterward (she also said so, but her tone expressed a lot more than her words), and I knew then that I’d made the right decision.
I thought it would be just a one-time thing, though. I’d bring her in to see the breast surgeon, get the ball rolling, and they would take over from there. But life rarely works out exactly like we plan. The surgeon, who I’d never spoken to before, was very matter-of-fact. She basically told Lee there was little she could do, that the prognosis was extremely grim, and she should get her affairs in order (and then after saying all that she did a breast biopsy).
I was horrified, and it’s another moment I’ll never forget. I’d given bad news to many, many patients over the years—and to Lee herself—and I couldn’t imagine being so callous about it. This was a human being after all. But I think the surgeon misinterpreted Lee as being aloof and uncaring because of her stoic personality. I knew differently because I’d taken the time to really talk to her. And I think this critical interaction between a doctor and patient is often not taking place anymore because of the dehumanization of medicine—it’s become more about numbers than people. Doctors are numbers. Patients are numbers. And in a profession that is supposed to be about treating human beings, and requires as much skill in psychology as biology, a model like that will never work.
But after witnessing the interaction between Lee and the surgeon I vowed that I would do whatever I could to help Lee. And so began my journey of seeing medicine from the patient’s perspective, which I’d never really had to do before. She was referred to an oncologist, who was just as matter-of-fact as the surgeon had been. She told Lee that she probably only had weeks to live and didn’t think palliative chemotherapy (chemotherapy intended to prolong life or improve symptoms, but isn’t a cure) would do much. In the book Jenna chooses not to get chemotherapy, partly because I wanted to emphasize other important aspects of treatment, not the least of which is maintaining a sense of humor and remembering to laugh every day. But there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to palliative chemotherapy. It should always be the patient’s choice and supported either way.
Lee did want to go ahead and get chemotherapy, and I was with her for every session. We became friends, and the weeks turned into months. Despite being told she only had weeks to live, Lee survived for fifteen months after her diagnosis. Much of that time was actually spent without palliative chemotherapy either, due to complications. But Lee had the most potent drug available, one neither the breast surgeon nor the oncologist ever offered: a positive attitude. She lived despite cancer. She never let it define her. She chose to live while she was dying rather than die while she was still living.
One of the most important lessons I learned from this experience is that no patient should ever be given a timeline for his or her death. Yes, patients need to be appropriately informed about their diagnosis, and they need to be adequately prepared for their death—just as we all do—but they should never be bundled into an “average.” The range of possibilities should be discussed, with an emphasis placed on what is possible—that is, the numbers on the right side of the bell curve. More power needs to be put into patients’ hands in determining their fate, that with good treatment and a positive attitude there is no reason they can’t be counted among those who live as long as anyone else has with their condition—or even longer.
When patients hear that they have a certain number of weeks or months to live based on an average, they’re much more likely to follow that timeline. It’s not necessarily because of statistical probability, but because of the power of the human mind. If we believe something will happen, it’s much more likely that it will happen, good or bad. There is nothing more potent on this earth than the power of the human mind. And it’s a weapon that’s vastly underutilized in medicine.
I could go on and on about that, but I’ll move on to another topic I could go on and on about: the paranormal. I actually did go on and on about it, and I had to rewrite this section because I ended up with far too much material to put into an afterword. So I think at some point I need to write a book specifically about my experiences with the paranormal, which have been many, along with a discussion of near-death experiences and some of the rather illogical and unscientific arguments that have been used to dispute them. And of course, the paranormal will play a part in the sequel to An Eternity in a Moment.
But as far as the paranormal goes, the first time I saw a ghost was when I was around age six, and it happened just like I wrote in the book when Erin wakes up to see the ghost next to her bed. I know the skeptics will say that I was simply in a state between dreams and consciousness and imagined the whole thing. But I’ve woken up over 16,800 times since then and have never seen anything like that again. I later found out that a man had hung himself in the house, and that my mother had been terrified living there. My father worked the night shift, and she would often hear footsteps, or would feel like someone was touching her, and even felt the bed shake at times. Ironically, because of my mother’s mental health issues, I would never have believed her if I hadn’t had such a vivid experience myself.
A lot of paranormal things have happened since then, both inside and outside of the hospital setting. But the one I really want to discuss is my most recent experience, the one that I think is also the most extraordinary and meaningful.
By November of 2016, I’d been helping Lee for a year. She’d overcome one complication after another: sepsis due to a port infection (the permanent IV line in her chest), a deep pressure ulcer on her tailbone from lying in the hospital bed for so long when she was sick, almost monthly lung taps to drain cancer fluid out, and a punctured lung when she had a new port put in. But everything eventually began to take a toll on her. She was getting sicker.
That, and other things, were taking a toll on me as well, unfortunately. In addition to helping Lee, I had to have a hysterectomy (which I’ll discuss later) and was working full-time in the ER. I also had the most important job of all: being a parent to two teenage daughters. Their dad and I had divorced several years previously, and he wasn’t in their lives much, so they were depending on me too. One night I was especially overwhelmed, sitting alone in my family room, and thought that the burden on my shoulders had become too much to bear. But as that thought crossed my mind I suddenly saw an incredibly bright flash of bluish light to my left, encompassing the whole left side of my peripheral vision. It only lasted a second and was gone, and for a moment I sat there wondering what had ju
st happened. There hadn’t been any light coming in through the windows, or any other source I could identify. And nothing seemed especially different afterward—other than I was too shocked to feel sorry for myself anymore.
The rest of the night was uneventful, but not long after that I started seeing a bluish colored ball of light—and sometimes more than one—in my left peripheral visual field. It’s continued ever since, and I’ll see it pretty much every day, usually multiple times a day, and it will only be to my left. I can be anywhere when I see it: at home, at work, driving, at friends’ houses. It seems to happen randomly most of the time, though more often if I’m feeling down, and is gone within a second—or at least, it seems to be. (You’ll understand what I mean by that in a moment.)
As a physician I know all about the flashers and floaters and various visual anomalies that can happen to people, but this didn’t fit anything I’d ever read about in a medical textbook, or anything I’d ever read or heard about otherwise. Still, if someone else had said it was happening to them, and I’d never experienced it firsthand, I would’ve told them that there had to be a medical explanation and they should get their eyes checked. But I’d had a normal eye exam within months before all this started and knew my eyes were fine.
There was simply too close of a connection between what I’d seen in my family room that November night and the blue ball of light that I kept seeing afterward for it all to be a coincidence. As crazy as it seemed, part of me was pretty sure it was a spiritual presence of some sort, perhaps one of the angels I’d never quite believed really existed.
For months I didn’t tell anyone about it except Lee. I’m a physician after all, and I couldn’t have anyone thinking I was crazy. I’m also well-versed in the sciences. I’d aced every biology, chemistry, and physics class I took in school, and what I was seeing wasn’t in any of those textbooks either. Part of me was also worried that this ball of light might not necessarily be a good thing. Even though I’d never felt anything negative about it, I couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t a less than benign spiritual attachment, or didn’t portend something bad. So I decided to go to a medium.