Redeeming the Moments

Redeeming the Moments

As I stand at work making another bed, I am cranky as I often am when I start at 0615.  My fatigue creeps into my attitude and my self talk deteriorates into complaining. I stop myself in my track, more of a rut really and declare that is not who I am, a tired complainer? No more!.  And so, I decide to redeem the moment with a line from a favorite e.e. Cummings poem: “Thank you, God, for this most amazing day!” As I shout it within, my fatigue and negativity are silenced. It becomes my bed making mantra.

I am given many more opportunities to redeem the moments that day but none more powerful than this:

Early in my shift, a patient shared her outrageous story with me. Her Primary Provider’s Medical Assistant had called and told her flat out that she had cancer and needed to come in.  This, of course, devastated her and she went right in. Her provider, then, without a preamble, bluntly told her the same thing. It was the patient who needed to point out that the test results clearly said that she MIGHT have cancer and that further testing was needed.  She had come to us for that testing and left us with a clean bill of health: NO cancer. She was crying when she told me; so much relief falling from her eyes.

It was shocking to me that a caregiver could be so disconnected, uncompassionately clinical and wrong!  I felt her outrage.

Later, with the last patient of my long day, a similar outrage overtook me.  Our doctor had found what most likely would be a malignant tumor. Further testing would be needed.  My doc wrote this in his discharge instructions but did not tell her. He left that to me. I couldn’t not tell her and send her home to read the words for herself in isolation; that would be as outrageous as my morning patient’s story.

So I used my experience with the first to inform my thinking with the last.  I came alongside her, softly holding her hand, listening to her every question, affirming her strength of character, trying to be clear.  And I prayed that I would be enough.

She called me the next day at work.  She repeatedly mentioned my words to her.  How they had helped her to stay calm and seek out her support systems.  How she didn’t want to die but would use my words to keep herself fighting…

I stood amazed, mouth open.  How incredible is my God that He should use an outrageous patient story in the morning to inform my thinking with another in the afternoon.  Redeeming life’s moments. Reconnecting with my God in the moments that threaten to undo me. This is truly our life’s work.

2 Corinthians 10:5  Take every thought captive to honor Jesus.

AMRB

May, 2018