Hospice and whimsical

We had our weekly team meeting yesterday. Yes, the day after Christmas, we had to meet and present on every one of our patients. It was a long day. In order to have said team meeting, Medicare mandates that a doctor, nurse, social worker, and chaplain must all be present. If any of the core group is missing, you cannot meet and officially collaborate on each patient. Anyways, our team chaplain was out of town last week. So we had a PRN chaplain fill in and sit through our meeting. He was very nice and polite. He gave a devotion, prayer, and then some comments as we discussed each case.

Then...about an hour into the dullness, he starts laughing. Not just a giggle, but an out and out roar. We were all slightly confused as nothing terribly funny had just been spoken. Finally, through his tear filled laughter he said, "do you all realize you are sitting on millions?" "These stories, these people, you could make millions on a book from the few stories I've heard today."

Laughter slowly spread across the room. I get used to a certain level of crazy in this job. I go into people's homes and spend time in their story at a very critical juncture. And people, are always people, dying or not.

We laughed as we realized how these stories might sound to a new person listening. He had not heard about the rooster chasing me across the yard, in the middle of the city. He didn't know the man had a security camera on his back yard connected to his large screen television so he watched me run from this rooster.

The chaplain wasn't aware that we had a patient whose son gave him a gun and told him to kill himself. He hadn't heard the story of another patient whose family members drive by their loved ones home for eight months and never stopped. Suddenly when they are dying, they are at the bedside wondering what went wrong.

This chaplain didn't know about my veteran who won't let me take a pen into his home for fear of me writing any information about him. Or my 100 year old who is sharper then me. I told our patient we were giving her daughter some medicine to help her sleep, the patient told me, it would be neat for me to give her daughter a pill that would make the patient sleep.

Then, oh, then, we have the people who I need to inform they are dying. Or the ones who yell about everything. Or the rich who think they can "buy" good care for us. (I assure you we give good care to them all). Or the homeless woman we have in a shelter right now. Or...my list goes on.

Just my caseload of thirty or forty a week. My team serves eighty to ninety. This hospice on any given day has over 900 patients.

I had this idea that working here would be a time of reflection. A time where dying people impart wisdom and I get the benefit of listening. As a friend said recently, I thought it would be whimsical. A good word I thought. And as I looked up the definition I found it to be an accurate description after all.

Hospice = whimsical: Full of, or characterized by, whims; actuated by a whim; having peculiar notions; strange; freakish.

So to the outsider looking in they say, "oh I don't know how you can do that job, doesn't it get to you."

Yes, my friends, it does, but not because of the dying people. It's those whimsical living ones who are hard to handle.

Christmas Day

Well, it's already been Christmas at our house, twice. You see our whirlwind life involves me working both Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, while managing to squeeze a 4-5 hour trip to Panama City on Christmas Day. This meant none of these days would work for Natalie to wake up at her house with her "Santa" and family presents. This Saturday, Chris is running 23 miles so we couldn't have our Christmas then. What day is left you wonder? Well, last Friday. I took the day off work and we had our Christmas. Yesterday, Chris' parents stopped here on their way to Panama City and we had another Christmas. Natalie will have opened a lot of presents by Thursday. It's been great and I must post some pictures before Natalie's KK shoots me from WV. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas whatever day you celebrate it! :-)

Christmas tree adventures

One pic from the mall seeing Santa with KK and Papaw:



We finally got our tree up earlier this week. I am just now putting some of the pictures on the blog. Natalie is funny. There are a lot of words to describe her, but funny is usually the first. One of the girls from church told me today that she will never be good at poker because her face is so expressive. She is so very right. Some recent things that Natalie has told us is:

"Shoo wee, I've had a busy day."

"Everyone cover your eyes....good job people."

In the line at Target, "hey Mommy when you hold me and not let me walk, it hurts my booty booty."

Yeah, that's my kid. Anyways, putting up the tree was just all the more funny. When Chris started pulling stuff out of the attic, Natalie said, "wait daddy, let me get ready and I help you." This is what I found a few minutes later:




This is how she enjoys eating cookies:




And this is where she spent most of her time while we decorating the tree:




Finally, she ends the evening pondering life while drinking "daddy's warm chocolate." You can't call it hot chocolate, she'll never drink it because "it's too hot."

Natalie vs Restaurant Trash Can

Round 1 goes to:


The Trash Can






The first picture is last night after we got home. The second is this morning. She was smiling more and said, "Mommy my owie is all better and my owie is still an owie." I'll have to check her baby book to see if there is a spot for first black eye.

Secrets

Today one of my patients gave me a piece of her story. She said she needed to talk and asked her family to leave. I pulled my chair close to her, held her hand and let her cry. I let her tell me how mad she is at it.

It is the pain, the cancer, the signs, the symptoms, herself ignoring all of these things. I just let her cry and be mad.

Then, she handed me her secret. To me, it came out of nowhere. It wasn’t in context with our conversation. It was as if her wall around her heart crashed in all the madness and her secret tumbled out of her mouth. She said it. She told me. Details that she has never shared. Ever. We talked about it. I listened and wiped her tears. I listened some more and was teary eyed with her. I prayed.

Then she said she thought she would have understood it by now, in her old age. I gently suggested there are some things in life, which are so horrible, they are not meant to be understood. I threw a different light on her secret. We spun it around and looked at all the protection she had offered to others because of it. She told me she hadn’t thought about that protection she had given to so many.

Her entire being changed. Peace and freedom washed over her face. Her body relaxed and she told me she felt better now. Tired, but better. I stood to leave feeling like I needed to stay and hold her hand. I felt as if I should say something profound and well thought out. None of that came to me. She was tired. I bent down, wiped her hair away from her face, kissed her and told her that I loved her. She kissed me back and I knew I had to leave.

I was privileged enough to be holding her secret. And it was long past time for her to let it go.