Susan Carini, Emory graduate school alumna and executive director of Communications and Public Affairs, with her mother, Pat (right and far right), and her Siberian husky, Sable.
Of Clocks and COVID By Susan Carini
LOSING MY MOTHER TO COVID-19 MADE ME REALIZE THE VALUE OF HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS WHO SAW HER AS MORE THAN A NUMBER.
Call it the effect of growing up without health care in a large farm family of limited means: my mother avoided doctors, fearing that a visit for one ailment would yield another, until one’s pockets were empty and patience at an end. In 2006, her worst fears were realized when, experiencing acute back pain, she was seen at Emory University Hospital on New Year’s Eve. Abnormalities were spotted on her lungs, liver, and kidneys. Though she voiced myriad complaints about the doctors’ motives, I somehow got her to take the follow-up tests, all of which turned out fine.
46
EMORY MEDICINE
At the age of 80, in 2013, my mother was sent by her assisted-living facility to the nearest hospital—not one owned by Emory—for a UTI. While she was there, a doctor breezed in, put his hand on her forehead, and said to me as if she were not in the room, “You can tell from the shape of her skull that she has dementia now.”
