There is much to be grateful for in the palliative care ward, which makes those moments that deviate from this path the more noteworthy. Take, for example, this interface decision that was taken on the display of this morphine pump: essentially, a device that pushes down very carefully and consistently on a syringe until the syringe is empty.
This pump is only used – as I understand it – on patients who are very near the end of their lives. And so, I was surprised to note that the wording they have chosen for the error message that indicates the syringe needs to be topped up is “near end”.
As it turns out, these words were not entirely accurate, and yet, as a wise friend said to me, any acute illness will seem – looking back at the end – to have progressed very rapidly indeed. In the throes of caring for someone, it seems to be going for a very long time, but looking back, everything happened very quickly indeed.