Observations From a Hospital

I wrote the following while on a 15 minute break at the hospital where I'm working as a chaplain. I was sitting outside on a veranda, overlooking the city, and the following just came to me.

"I saw the face of God today. She was a 97 year-old Chinese woman with stringy, greasy hair, who wanted to die. I can't tell you exactly how I know it was God, other than just a feeling I have. When everything else falls away--eating, drinking, hygiene, an urge to cling to life--when it falls away, it is much easier to identify God.

You know what the most spectacular thing was? God was in the room twice, as only God can be. God was in the daughter's eyes as well. The daughter who slowly fed her mother a bite at a time, who told me her mother fought the doctors tooth and nail, who smiled when she spoke of her mother's ability to taste a food once and know how to cook it--God was in her face, too.

God was also down the hall in the 87 year-old Russian Orthodox woman who couldn't speak, who labored through every breath, but whose breath calmed and slowed the longer I sat and looked at her.

Lest you think God only resides in women, I also glimpsed God in a 95 year-old, New York born, ballroom dancing Episcopalian. I never knew God meringued, but I can swear it's the truth.

Coming to San Francisco, there's a lot of people I expected to meet--new friends, fellow students, neighbors, perhaps even a local celebrity. What I wasn't expecting, however, was to see God on a ventilator, to see God with pancreatic cancer. Heck, I never even realized God got colds. Yet...yet...I can attest to it now.

I wonder where I'll find God tomorrow. On a stretcher in the hallway? In a nurse's uniform running from room to room? Next to a sea of rooftops, the adventure begins."

Beepers and Other Mysteries of the Universe

It's Day 2 of my chaplaincy, and I am exhausted. I haven't even seen any patients yet--I'm dragging just from orientation.

I find it strange that I now have a beeper. My beeper even has my name on it. "Beep" has become a verb for me, as in "I've been beeped," or "a patient is coding, beep the chaplain." I have yet to be beeped, but I picture my first time as some sort of comic farce, my pocket exploding in a frenzy of loud, high pitched tones and hyperactive vibration. Perhaps I'll be walking down a hall and will suddenly flail my arms out of surprise. Perhaps I'll be in the on-call room when someone in the Intensive Care Unit dies at 2am, and I'll jolt awake with a cartoon like flourish, complete with bumping my head on the alcove with the statue of the Virgin Mary.

I'm part of a "care team" that includes the doctors, nurses, staff, and case managers working with a patient, and I sit in on "team meetings" and go on rounds. I never thought I would go on "rounds." I have a name badge with my title on it. I even write on people's charts. Craziness.

Even though it's exhausting, I'm finding a nice camaraderie with my colleagues. I'm feeling especially close with the Priests (ironic that I fled from the church but find comfort with its stewards). They tell hilarious stories about things they've been asked to do, like help the nurse get a patient's dentures back in after they died and rigor mortis had set in.

Strangely enough, even after all the exhaustion, the anxiety, the hour-long commute both ways, it still feels...well...right. It feels really good to be where I am and doing what I'm doing. Now if I can just figure out how to beep others...

New Job, Here I Come

I promise, promise, promise to post more fun and exciting things soon. I have some great pictures from my trips this summer. However, tonight I am going to bed early because I start my new job in the morning--YAY!

I report to the hospital at 8:30am so start my chaplaincy, and I'm nervous/excited about it all. I wrote in an e-mail to my friend John, who is a brilliant chaplain and friend, "I start my CPE residency tomorrow, and I'm just a wee bit nervous. It kind of feels like the first day of kindergarten again--I don't know where I'm going, I don't know who my teacher is, I'm not sure what it's going to be like, and there's a very real chance I might, at some point, cry. However, this time I won't have a nap time and I'll be dressed in a suit. Is that progress?"

I hope all of you are well. Fun and exciting things are afoot...