life in and beyond the hospital

The rhythm of a hospital has a distinct and sometimes discombobulating beat.  The pace of the staff, nurses and doctors can be frenzied. The beeps and squeaks of the various machines and monitors produce their own groove or chaos.  The hours of service are unending.  But finally, the abrupt switch or pause for a patient and his/her loved ones interrupts the hospital while also interrupting their lives.

I learned this week, including my on call weekend, that hospital promotes life but can’t always facilitate that beyond its walls. For instance, two wives came in this weekend, following an ambulance that was meant to be caring and improving a dire situation of their respective husbands.  Yet, both wives went home alone, only their own life to live now absent one who so enhanced that very existence.  My patient from ICU who had been suicidal and barely hanging on, might go home this week with resources and possible rehab, but the care and constant life enhancement is the patient’s job when she walks out.

Mac and I are in the midst of making long term plans for Denver. While he’s in the midst of Bach Fest and preparing for music directing in CDA and I’m attending to class work and patients on a daily basis, we still have a life to begin to create in our new hometown. Mac played the secretary, making connections with possible apartment complexes and setting appointments while the job of “on-the-ground” research fell to me.  Compared to Casper or Spokane, Denver goes on for-ev-er and thus required time, energy, life to accomplish what seems like a simple task. So with a day off open to cruise the city, I visit 15 different places and neighborhoods to find a home.  I guess I should be grateful I didn’t wander for 40 years like the Israelites or have to wait without ability to take action like family members of patients. And yet, the stress of finding home, such a place of life for us, took a toll and didn’t mix well with my responsibilities at the hospital.

I know people figure out how to juggle.  We even figure out how to cope while hanging on.  But the sacred care offered and received at a hospital is not easily found, given, or received beyond.  And yet we yearn for such a place of sustained and promoted life.  That’s why we cherish our homes, our friends, and the communities in which we live.  Somehow these give life as naturally as possible.  Sometimes it’s only after a hospital visit to pause our rhythm of life that we actually recognize life beyond the hospital bed.

The Merch Perch has been secured and we even have a baby grand at our fingertips (in the clubhouse lobby). The Piano Apartment, as we call it, was a huge relief to find and will enhance and transform our lives.  And the hospital fax machine was a God-sent.  What I hope to remember is the hospital rhythm for breath, heartbeat and care need not end at the sliding doors, but can encourage us to always promote life however it comes.