“Every thought begins with I. This is happening to him, I try to say,
not happening to me. But it is, too. This is my place to tell it.”
Leena Ambady is a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She is interested in a career in primary care and enjoys reading and writing.
The above is an excerpt from Kristin Camitta Zimet’s “A Dialysis Diary,” (Intima, Fall 2023). In this beautiful essay, Camitta Zimet writes about her husband’s end-stage kidney disease, the initiation of dialysis, and the impact that his chronic condition and the treatment it required had both on her and her relationship.
In reading “A Dialysis Diary,” I was reminded of Mrs. C, the subject of my essay, “A Lucky Man.” Like Camitta Zimet, she cared for a partner with a serious illness. And like Camitta Zimet, she did not shy away from recognizing that his illness was happening to her, too.
Mrs. C’s story and Camitta Zimet’s essay prompted me to think about how disease both intensifies and forces us to question the interconnectedness and interdependence of our relationships. In caring for a loved one we may feel closer to them than before while simultaneously feeling that their disease has changed them in fundamental ways. We may recognize their suffering while acknowledging our related but separate, and equally salient, pain. And as that loved one is becoming increasingly dependent on us, we may have to start thinking about how to build a life independent of them, the person on whom we rely “for half of [our] memories” as Camitta Zimet puts it.
To me, these tensions seem so pervasive in caregiving settings at the end of life, but often are difficult to voice. I’m very grateful to Kristin Camitta Zimet for detailing her dialysis diary so poignantly, and I plan to share her essay with Mrs. C in hopes that she might find some solace in the shared experience. —Leena Ambady
Leena Ambady is a third-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. She is interested in a career in primary care and enjoys reading and writing.