Sometimes work is hard

This morning I had to do a hospital visit with a client. Her mother and social worker had been trying to get me to visit her for a couple of weeks in order to help her execute a Designation of Standby Guardianship. It's a form that we complete for our clients, which they sign, that grants guardianship powers over the client's children to a designated person if the client ever becomes incapacitated or deceased. The short form that we fill out provides a 60-day grant of guardianship powers (once there is a triggering event), and then if permanent guardianship powers are needed, you have to go to court. I had been scheduled to visit with the client before New Years, but then her mother canceled, and we rescheduled for today.

There she was in her hospital bed, stick-thin and drifting in and out of sleep. I learned, upon entering the room, that she was blind. When awake, she appeared to me to be lucid enough -- we had a significantly clear enough conversation about the guardianship designation that I felt completely comfortable in having her sign off on the designation. But I needed her to sign five other intake forms as well (retainer, client rights and responsibilities, HIV disclosure release, general release, medical release), and by the time she got to the fourth or fifth signature, she was too weak to write out an approximation of her entire name. By the last form, she scribbled a barely-recognizable first initial. I can only assume that she will be gone within a month. She is probably in her early 30s and her daughter, for whom she was designating a standby guardian, is only 10.

What do you say when concluding a meeting like that? Take care? I hope you feel better? I went with "nice meeting you," and reassured myself that she was pretty much asleep by that point.