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During my thirty-five-year nursing career, I have been privileged to sit with patients and families of patients awaiting imminent death. I have had the honor of helping families cope with difficult medical decisions. I have been present to many people in their suffering. But not one of those many encounters over the years prepared me for this horrific night, when the patient was my precious daughter and she lay before me, wishing to die.
This crisis followed a long and difficult pregnancy and weeks of incapacity from a stent placed into her left kidney to help pass several large kidney stones. She had gone into the hospital to have it removed so that she could once again enjoy limited mobility and some respite from the pain. She returned to her room following kidney surgery in nearly unbearable agony. Rather than remove the stent, the surgeon also had to place one in the other kidney to help pass a total of five stones that no Western medical treatment or device could dissolve, and the resulting pain was beyond all pharmaceutical relief. Her breath was short and gasping, her hands clutched the sheets, and her ashen face was drenched with perspiration. It was more than I could bear to witness - and there was absolutely nothing I could do for her.
If ever I had wished for the power of the Gods to perform a miracle - this was the moment. Since that was not possible, my sense of inadequacy, frustration, fatigue from eight months as caregiver, anger, sorrow, and fear raged through my being with a force that transcended every emotion I had ever known. I was shattered and yet captive of the moment. I had to stay connected. It was like standing with my finger in a live socket taking the volts of electricity and not being able to let go. Together, my daughter and I barely endured another endless night.
The next morning the phone rang. I picked it up expecting it to be my husband. Each day that he was unable to come to Sioux Falls he would call for an update on the status of his beloved daughter. The voice on the other end wasn't his, but rather that of Wanigi Waci.
"Your daughter is very ill."
Hearing the comforting voice of my mentor and friend reduced me to tears and I sobbed, "I know she is, Wanigi Waci, but I have run out of ideas on how to help her."
"If you like, I can bring medicine to her, Jo," he offered.
Little did I know that this offer would take me into another dimension of health and healing, to a place I had never been before, a place that would explain the appearance of the five stones and the meaning they held for the women in my ancestry.
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