Juan Wick

“So you brought your wife to the emergency room and you ended up hospitalized too?” I asked this to my patient who, for confidentiality reasons, I will call Benito Juarez. Mr. Juarez was telling me the odd story of how he was admitted to our Oncology unit. Given the nature of the semi-private rooms at the hospital, two patients per room, we make sure both are of the same gender. It was puzzling when I walked in to greet my 60-something year-old male patient in Bed A and noticed there was a female patient in Bed B. Certainly someone does not belong here, I thought. Additionally, patients who share a room will not have the same last name to avoid mistakes as much as possible while delivering proper care. Hence, my increased confusion when I saw both patients’ last name was Juarez. Fortunately, I was only caring for Benito Juarez, and not both patients, which would have made an unsafe group to provide care for.

A few minutes later, Mr. Juarez caught me up to speed, explaining he had brought his wife with terminal cancer to the Emergency Room to be admitted for palliative chemotherapy, which means treatment to improve quality of life, not necessarily to prolong it. During his wife’s admitting process, Mr. Juarez mentioned having some sort of chest discomfort himself that he had been dealing with for quite some time. One chest x-ray later and he was also admitted, to the same room as his wife, with a possible mass in the right lung.

Beyond the peculiar situation of having Mr. and Mrs. Juarez hospitalized in the same room, what created a lasting memory of Mr. Juarez was the life story he shared with me. While conversing, he explained who he used to be and what he used to do. Mr. Juarez used to be a drug dealer in Mexico, well respected in a certain area of the Mexican state of Sonora. He had been a gang member since he was a child and, at age 13, met the woman currently laying in the bed next to him. He continued that lifestyle well into his adulthood; carrying guns on him, transporting and selling drugs, and “anyone who turned to look at my lady, I would beat them up” he explained.

I was baffled as Mr. Juarez shared this with me. In front of me was a thin and soft-spoken man somewhere in his 60’s with salt and peppered hair, sitting upright with intertwined fingers, seemingly harmless, telling me he used to be a feared and dangerous person to deal with? I could not conceive that idea. Granted I only had a few hours of having met the man, in caring for him for a couple of days, he never did strike me as such a person. He was kind, respectful, and very humble.

He went on to say his life, and that of his wife, changed when they committed to their newly found religious faith. At that time of change, Mr. Juarez quit his government job through which, he confessed, he would steal money and fill up his own pockets, and him and his wife packed only the essentials and left town to get away from their old lifestyle. Before skipping town, though, Mr. Juarez wanted to make sure he did not have to worry about pending business with anyone. He marched right to his “enemies”, as he called them, and explained to them he was a changed man and was leaving the world of crime behind. He shook their hands and walked away. This part sounded like a Hollywood movie, John Wick, or something similar. Mr. Juarez was completely alert and oriented, and not on any pain medication that would make him speak nonsense. I did think it was admirable and bold, though, how he ensured the dangers of his past life would not follow him into this new one, and shook on peace with his enemies. I know John Wick had to complete an “impossible task” to leave the business, but Mr. Juarez did not mention anything of these sorts.

It could be that my mind exaggerated everything I was being told and, truly, things were much less dramatic than I thought and have described. It could be. Nonetheless, what I take from this story is being aware of the complete change, 180-degree turn, this one man took through his religious belief, the peculiarity of having his wife as a roommate, and how his own hospitalization occurred.

When I met Mr. Juarez, he had already had two inconclusive biopsies to try to determine if this mass in his lung was cancer or not. An inconclusive biopsy means the doctors were not able to get the correct tissue sample. They were now planning on a more invasive, and therefore, higher risk, procedure to obtain an adequate sample. The last time I saw Mr. Juarez, he was in the recovery room after this higher risk procedure, waiting to be transferred to the Intensive Care Unit for observation. I went down to the recovery room to say goodbye, since he would no longer be my patient.