Life, Unfolding

Dear Reader,

How is your year going so far? I hope you are thriving! My year has started in a very unexpected way. I am fine now, but I spent nearly two weeks of January in the hospital with a gallbladder infection. I came home just under two weeks ago, and have spent most of the time since then resting, rebuilding my strength, and reflecting on the experience.

Today, I want to share a few of my insights.

To be clear, I do not consider my gallbladder issue serious. It had to be taken seriously, and monitored closely to make sure it didn’t become serious. And I will still need to go back to have it removed (the gallbladder is not a necessary organ; who knew?) Still, my issue was not as serious as those of some other patients I met during my stay.

I spent my first three days in hospital here in Shetland. My infection needed further treatment, however, and I needed a test using MRI equipment not yet available here. As a result, I flew to Aberdeen in an air ambulance.  The rest of my stay unfolded at a large teaching hospital in the north of Scotland.

The Adventure Continues

Aside from brief visits to my general practitioner, this was my first significant experience with a vast, unfamiliar health system. It was also my first experience on a busy open ward, in a large room with up to five occupied beds.

In Aberdeen, I was first admitted to the emergency ward late on a Saturday night, and moved to a different ward the following night to free up an emergency bed. Those open wards unnerved me at first, although I eventually got used to them. There is little privacy on the ward. When doctors come in to discuss treatment with the patients, they pull the curtain around the bed, but voices travel easily and it is hard not to listen.

At no point was this more clear than during my second night on the emergency ward. A doctor gently told an elderly patient who had just been admitted, that his cancer had spread too far. An operation would do no good. He recommended sending the man to the oncology unit to discuss palliative care, so that he could live as comfortably as possible during his final days.

The rest of us lay quietly in the dim bluish light, alone with our thoughts, trying not to listen to something so deeply personal and private. I sent him silent support.

Dedication to Service

People who dedicate their lives to service are everywhere in this world. I received excellent care and support throughout my journey, from intake in Shetland to the paramedics in the land and air ambulances to all the staff members on the hospital wards.

The paramedic in the ambulance to the Shetland airport told me that he had known that he wanted to be a paramedic since he was fourteen, before the term was commonly used in Scotland.

While in the air, the accompanying paramedic told me there might be a delay before an ambulance was available to take me from the airport to the hospital. Not surprising, since I knew that the ambulance system in Scotland has been overwhelmed during the pandemic.

Shortly before we landed, however, he told me that I was in luck; an ambulance would be waiting. The paramedic in that ambulance was like a character from a Monty Python movie! He welcomed me with a big grin, and said with a flourish of his arm, “This is where you will be sitting. It’s a brand new seat, very posh!” Then, as we pulled out, “Your ride to the hospital should be very smooth, although with Jill driving, I can’t guarantee anything.” He turned and beamed at me, “I can say that, because Jill is my wife!”

They were a husband and wife ambulance team, driving on a volunteer basis for the Red Cross, on their weekends off from work!

Amazing, but it got better.

I asked how long they had been volunteering, expecting that they might have been helping out for the duration of the pandemic. But he said, “For me, since 1978. Jill has been volunteering since 1975.”

More than forty years each. Think about that.

The nurses

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: nurses are amazing.

Doctors are amazing too, of course, but from my perspective, nurses are the glue that hold the hospital together. Nurses, over the course of a twelve hour shift, deal directly with both the patients and the doctors. They are usually the first to step in when something unexpected happens. Often overwhelmed, especially during this time of COVID, nurses are expected to do everything in their power to make patients comfortable and put them at ease.

The nurses made all the difference. They taught me the “bag trick” for easily putting on my compression socks , made sure my pain meds were just right, and threw in a little laugh at just the right time.

I watched them deal with every kind of patient you could imagine, from administering treatment to cleaning up messes to feeding some patients by hand, one spoonful at a time.

Life, Unfolding

A few days after my admission in Aberdeen, having been moved to a new ward, I lay awake in the early morning light. Large windows along one wall faced east, and the morning sky over the North Sea was streaked with vivid red and orange. The glow filtered into our ward, where I and three other men in lay our beds. I looked out at the sky, and around at the beds.

One man by the window was quietly eating his breakfast, conserving his energy for the day ahead. Across from him, with that curtain of privacy drawn, another man was listening to his surgeon detail the procedure  he would receive later on, including the potential complications. And across from me, a man in his early forties with MS was watching early morning television. He needed assistance for nearly everything, from changing his position in bed to eating. He had a good heart, and was an inspiration to the rest of us.

I just lay there, appreciating the morning light, the quiet, the fullness of the moment. The sky, the ward, four men on four different journeys – all felt related. I felt a peaceful awareness of my place in a great unity:

“This is life, unfolding.”

Brotherhood on the Ward

A few days later, I finally got my MRI test, and the results looked good. My infection had disappeared. It looked like I would go home. But a radiologist noticed an odd shadow on an old CT scan. The doctor, with the curtain of privacy pulled around my bed, recommended that I stay and get another, more complete CT scan for a more accurate read on the shadow.

They got me in for that test quickly, but the result was inconclusive. It looked again as if I would be going home. I joked with the guy in the bed across from me that it looked like I would make my escape before him. I even had my flight itinerary in my hand.

In my hand!

But at the last minute, a doctor came hurrying in and drew the curtain around my bed. He told me that after speaking to an artery surgeon, they felt that it would be safest to do a small procedure on what might be an aneurysm, since it could rupture anytime and cause internal bleeding, which would not be good.

I was a bit upset.

It was hard to argue with their reasoning, although I briefly considered taking my chances. I so wanted to go home, and see my dear wife, who was unable to make the trip with me. I trusted them, however, and agreed to stay. Maybe they felt badly about how the timing played out, but they said they would fly my wife down and put her up in a hotel through the weekend, so I could see her after my procedure.

I took a moment to ground myself, then pulled back the curtain around my bed and said to the other men on the ward: “Well guys, it looks like you’re stuck with me for a little while yet!”

Strangers though they were, they wholeheartedly supported me. They listened. They validated my choice to stay. We shared a few laughs. I joked with the guy across the way about his comment from a few days earlier, “Shit happens.” And in that moment, in that brotherhood of men, I felt a little better, a little more like I could do it.

I admired those men. Each, in his own way, had developed the ability to face his challenges head on, and do what was called for, when it was called for. In opening to their support, I like to think that a little of that spirit rubbed off on me.

Homecoming

Louise and I arrived home late on a Monday, after a flight and a forty-five minute drive in the dark. The next morning, I danced in my sitting room. It was an act of both healing and independence. I have danced every day since.

Also that morning, I grabbed a book of poetry (Mary Oliver, one of my favorites) and read a poem out loud. I felt and heard the words flow through my body, and knew that it was good for my spirit. My daily treatment of poetry reading continues. Sometimes what we need for healing make no rational sense.

In reflecting on my time in the hospital, I noted that aside from a few chakra meditations and a little dialogue with my healing guides, I didn’t do any of my regular spiritual practices while there. I didn’t write, didn’t meditate, didn’t pray.

Why?

I realized that while in the hospital, I was busy living my spirituality, rather than practicing it.

Did I benefit from all my previous days of practice while there? Absolutely. When you maintain your practices through good times, they support you in times of challenge. And ultimately, life itself is your biggest spiritual practice.

Sometimes it is enough to just live.

In the end, none of these insights feel like blinding illuminations. I have experienced them more as quiet deepenings of insight, and validation of my true nature.

My adventure was a journey of letting go of control. It called on me to have trust and faith – faith in the expertise and goodness of other human beings, as well as faith in my own resilience and ability to both receive the goodness of others, and contribute my own goodness.

You have this goodness and resilience in you too, simply because you are human. You hold these qualities even when you feel overwhelmed, or lost, or lacking. They are waiting, ready to be drawn forth by your fellow humans, or for you to summon them yourself to share with others.

You too are a part of life, unfolding. And for that, I celebrate you.

I honor your loving heart,

John