handbooks, handshakes, humans

Two of three days of orientation can be crossed off the calendar.  Such time has been like a fire hose with incredible amounts of information, procedures, and a good deal of internal reactions and surprises. Tuesday turned out to be a little tough due to sleep deprivation. All day we went through the handbook.  Infectious diseases can be cool, but even that half hour lecture had me nearly nodding off.  But still I had a special opportunity to meet and connect with my cohort of other interns- Tracy and Brother Donald- and hear wisdom from seasoned and passionate chaplains. I hope I retain such words, but by grace of one chaplain, we are to give ourselves, “Patience, patience, patience.”

Such advice I had to remember yet again today as we dove deeper into the training of chaplaincy. First was the hospital tour. Hospitals can be like malls- confusing layouts with elevators and stairs in random, hard to find spots, and only one food court.  Thankfully we shook some hands of security officers and charge nurses as be oriented ourselves to the units.  We got lost and found a couple times and followed the color tiles in the floor. It’s a bit like the yellow brick road but with a variety of colors designating the path to different units. We shared our faith maps with each other: the interns, residents, and our supervisor together, and then figured out our schedule for the next 3 months. I’m sure I’ll say more about it when the time comes, but one requirement is on-call duty from Friday, 5pm- Monday, 8am. And how will I get called? A pager! The technology still works AND is used!

The afternoon session comprised of a lesson and conversation about organ and tissue donation.  What a gift donation can be to people! What a scary decision that might seem to be for someone who just lost an unregistered loved one! In our training we walked through the careful donor plan, the benefits of donation, and the ways to have this conversation with families.  All of a sudden, life and my service at the hospital were real. Oh yeah- we are connecting with humans. I tried to role play and found my tongue tied and default words such as "humane" and "procedure" replacing more appropriate words of "care" and "offering." 

I realize even this story doesn’t exist in a vacuum. We are all dealing with hardships and suffering- some minor and other major. So to ramble on about recovering organ and tissue donations without affirming the human life that this might require or gift would miss the point.  At 4:23pm I felt that trembling heart of fear that what I say mattered and who I spoke to deserved more than a book answer.  Yes, the role-play lacked the reality of death. However, it did not fall short of being a keen reminder than handbooks are a tool to move into shaking a hand and speaking humbly of our humanity.