Hospitals

December 10, 2018

Greetings from the observer,

I have been passing through places, an observer, for all of my life.  It has become part of who I am.  It’s not my only experience, but it is what I am given to do in between the others.

There is a family waiting room that never has a single person in it. It seems like it is always empty or overflowing with people.  It smells like food that was brought in to be eaten while people wait.  Pizza.  Fried chicken.  Chinese.  There is a TV on the wall that is always on. 

When that room is full there are people sitting on the window sills, or on the floor near the elevators.  It has a refugee feel to it, like desperate people waiting for someone to come save them.  When I walk by they look at me as if I have wandered into something private.

The patients, if they are able, peer out of their rooms when they hear my shoes on the tile.  Are you a doctor?  Are you my family?  Are you bringing me my juice?  I am almost always a disappointment.

I have been in hospitals more in the last five or six years than all of the decades before combined.  I have come to understand the culture of these places, the language, the limitations and the miracles.  Mostly I have learned about the people.  The saviors and the saved.

I am grateful for my status as an observer in this situation.  That is not to say that I wouldn’t rather be observing a trout leaping out of a mountain stream, or a sunset over the cliffs at Torre Pines.  But I realize I am lucky to be moving in and out of this world at will. 

I’m thankful that I am not the one being poked and scanned and alternately drained and filled with fluids.  I know how fortunate I am that it isn’t me that is being treated by doctors who are making educated guesses about life and death questions.  I am not being critical, I am in awe.

I have learned that medicine is a science, but it is an inexact one.  There will be collection of information, some examinations, search for evidence, recollection of other experience.  This is not to disparage, it is simply the truth.  I am not going to say ‘If they can put a man on the moon why can’t they cure diverticulitis?  Or kidney stones.  Or gout.  Or pain. Or dying.’

The body is so astounding in its complexity, miraculous in its simplest functions, that to approach it with a scalpel and some drugs and a CT scan, with the optimistic plan to heal it, is a brave endeavor.  It is an terrifying and wonderful dance to watch man tinker with what God created. 

If you talk about hospitals and doctors and health care, it is a rare occasion that this will lead to a positive theme.  The costs, the apathy, the poor diagnosis, the people who get sicker or die.

Everyone has a story.  Or they know someone who does.  I am not going to join those ranks here.

Things are not always pretty.  The rooms and halls are not filled with happy endings.  What is inspiring, what gives me enough optimism to be able to write this morning, is the battle is so fiercely fought.  In some ways it is a privilege to watch.

There is the smell of antiseptic and of burned coffee and soiled linens.  There are hushed voices, the sounds of machines huffing and beeping, alarms trying a quiet urgency.  There is light, a mixture of the harsh and necessary and the soft and considerate, but always light because the place never sleeps. 

All of this is just the stage for the real work of the place, which is where the healers put their hands on those waiting to be healed.  What I have seen is a tired and tireless group of determined, compassionate people, who pour themselves into the people they care for.  I know there is a price. 

The nurses and doctors and the rest of the staff move in and out of the rooms bringing pills and tests and pillows and tending to the wounds and beeping machines and hold the hands of those who are afraid.  They bring kindness, they bring hope.   Someone said once that angels roam the halls of hospitals and look in on the people we love when we can’t be there.  I think I have seen that too. 

I realize I am looking at things with a slightly rosier lens than some others may, particularly those who are suffering or struggling to care for someone who is.  I don’t want to minimize the realities of what happens in a hospital.  I have seen most of it, from birth to death and all the variations on those themes.  I know.

The struggle is what is inspiring, in some ways.  Malcolm Gladwell said that a lot what is beautiful in the world is a result of struggle.  What happens in hospitals, all of the time, is the ultimate struggle, and the product is near the apex of beauty.

People get sick, get hurt, they go to a hospital and get good care, and they get better.  Not without challenges, not without failures.  What I want to share is that in this place there are people who want the best for other people’s families, and they throw themselves into the fire to bring healing for people who don’t know their name.

I already know that I could not do what the doctors and nurses do.  Forget that I am probably untrainable in the complexities of medicine.  Forget that I am so squeamish that the smell of bandaids makes my knees weak, let alone looking at a wound, or imagining opening a body on purpose to solve a plumbing problem. 

Most importantly, I already know that I could not keep seeing suffering and pain as a constant state and go home and not be affected by it.  I could not care about people as these angels do, and feel their struggle, and be part of it and somehow remain separate from it.  Even writing this in the quiet of my den, I feel it.  The observer does not escape entirely unscathed.

Hope this finds you cared for,

David