Pandemic Parables: Camaraderie
Pandemic Parables: Camaraderie
There has been an increase in camaraderie in the already friendly, hospital in Frederick, Maryland where I work as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August.
This is no real surprise as the hospital has far fewer people walking its halls. There are virtually no visitors, and staff have been cut back to a minimum.
Those who can are working from home. Others, such as medical staff who are not needed on the Covid-19 areas, or in their sparsely-patient-filled regular sections, have been furloughed or reassigned. The hospital has created a generous virus-related policy enabling non-essential-at-the-moment employees to select very fair alternative ways to work and be paid.
This is a hospital that truly values its staff.
If you see an unfamiliar face hurrying through the halls with a visitor badge and a strained, glazed expression it is someone on their way to seeing a dying patient. Alternatively it might a proud, focused, car-seat carrying new father headed for the birthing center hastening to get his partner and freshly-emerged progeny far away from the hospital and its carefully cloistered Covid patients.
Because there are so few full time staff members left, strong bonds forged by kindness and understanding are being formed between those that are still here as we face this crisis and share together the tension and stress that permeate the hospital’s atmosphere.
Sometimes I feel like walking through the hallways quoting the long-ago memorized St. Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...”
As I visit my assigned areas I see signs of this camaraderie and kindness everywhere. I went into the isolation wing on my floor, the third floor, as I do daily to check on the staff. I wanted to see if they were ready for more pumpkin bread.
They weren’t.
When I entered their break room I saw why. There was a huge basket overflowing with fruit, cookies, cakes, chips; an enormous box of donuts; a myriad of other good things.
This glorious largesse had been put together by the nursing staff of another area of the floor wanting to thank their fellow staff on this isolation wing, and the one on the floor above, for their dedication and bravery in being sequestered with the virus-sick.
Such generosity and kindness!
As I walked towards a group of nursing staff to see if they would like prayer, I saw a tall man with a Jamaican accent who had just come out from cleaning one of the Corona virus patient’s rooms.
“How are you?” I said. “Are you doing alright? How are you feeling”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as though he was smiling widely under his cloth mask.
“How are you?” He said looking down at me from his great height. His eyes were kind.
“You get to look out for and pray for everyone else. So I want to know. How are you?”
Moved by his genuine concern I melted into a puddle all over his recently shined floor.
The staff on my isolation wing are grateful that there has been a recent decline in the number of patients they are looking after. They see it as a welcome pause before the next wave - a time to catch their breaths.
“The prayer is working!” Said one. “Amen!” another agreed.
I told them about St. John the Evangelist church, five minutes from the hospital in the historic part of Frederick, (known as the City of Clustered Spires because of the close proximity of its beautiful old churches.)
St. John’s has the tallest bell tower, which has just been lovingly restored. It is the one you first see when you drive into town. Every night until the end of the pandemic St. John’s have committed to flooding their tower with blue light to remind everyone who sees it to pray for those who are on the front lines of the Covid-19 war.
“So you are being prayed for by many people” I said.
Their smiles of gratitude tinged with relief are engraved on my heart.
The stress really is palpable in every area of the hospital and felt by everyone, not just those working in the ICUs and isolation wings.
A security guard told me in passing he had to exercise discipline to take only one blood pressure pill a day. Several who heard him sympathized, nodding knowingly.
Alongside the stress is a guarded relief that the feared surge has not yet come. As of Thursday night we had twenty four confirmed virus patients, thirteen of whom were in the ICU on ventilators, and three who were sealed off under investigation.
The hospital has now sourced chemicals enabling them to process virus tests that come both from their drive-by sites and from within their walls.
That means that instead of waiting for up to ten days to get results from seriously log-jammed outside laboratories the results can be had within 24 hours - sometimes quicker. This prevents unnecessary use of PPE - and gives the patient and their families great relief.
There is a new ritual for when a patient is declared Covid-19 free and sprung from the isolation wings. Music is played on the overhead speakers. The opening notes of a lullaby are always heard when a baby is born. Now, in addition, we are getting bursts of the theme tune from “Rocky” or “Here Comes The Sun” and we rejoice that another patient is on the far side of their virus nightmare.
There is one patient, dear to many of our hearts, that we are longing to hear has kicked Coronavirus to the curb. A truly wonderful nurse practitioner in the Hospice program, whom I adore, has tested positive and is recovering at home where she lives alone. This former army nurse is one of the most vibrant, loving genuine people I know. She lives nearby. So of course I dropped off a still warm, prayed-over loaf of pumpkin bread, and hearty chicken soup outside her closed front door.
This Nurse Practitioner wants to heal quickly, and build immunity, so she can return and continue caring for dying Covid-19 patients.
She and her fellow Hospice nurses are the most incredible human beings.
They are frightened - or at least wary - of the virus, but they gown up (grateful that the dwindling supply hasn’t completely petered out) and go and minister love and compassion regardless.
One of their patients loved Elvis. She wanted to hear his music one last time. So the hospice nurse held her hand and sang his songs as the patient transitioned into death.
That is love in action!
Needless to say the second loaf of pumpkin bread went to the hospice nurses this week. Such a tiny tribute for a group who give so much.
There is a Service Excellence Team at the hospital who are doing their best to make all the staff feel valued and loved. We have no physiotherapy patients at the moment so they have emptied out the equipment that is normally in their gym and have turned it into a “Zen Den.” The lights are low, soft relaxing music plays, reclining massage chairs, rocking chairs and foot massagers are all ready to be wiped down with disinfectant before use and enjoyed. They have placed writing and meditation prompts in there as well as refreshments and aromatherapy sprays. It is there for any member of staff who needs a Time Out from anxiety.
This team have also placed placards by the time clocks. One says: “This Is Where Heroes Clock In” Another - “You Make The World A Better Place”.
It is all kindness and comradeship in action.
The other day I had seen two dying patients in a row. They were non-virus patients who were well below their biblical allotted span. They were long, emotional, meaningful visits. One was grieving because it was the first time she had ever been away from her home-schooled children, realizing that her absence would soon be permanent.
The other was hoping to return home to die.
He was scheduling his friends to come and see him for short visits so he could say goodbye. He was going to insist that each of them take a book from his carefully collected library of technical literature when they left.
“Why not?” He said. I won’t be needing them now.”
After those visits I went for a ten minute break in the Zen Den. I was stretched out in a recliner when an interpreter that I didn’t know came in and smiled at me. She picked up an aromatherapy bottle and said “would you like me to spray you with lavender?
I would.
She did.
And then she left.
Again - kindness.
Lavender reminds me of my maternal grandmother. I felt safe and cocooned in those memories
So for those few minutes I lay back and let some of the tension from the hospital that seemed to have gone in my bones flow out of me.
As I did I realized that this virus season is showing people for who they really are deep down. Surface distractions are gone. At times like these you see people’s essence.
I am spending my days with a dedicated, skillful team of people who care. Really care. We are being bonded together by a common, invisible enemy.
We are being supported by an army of people who pray, encourage, love.
And that is good. Very good.
It makes me rethink my future. What I want.
What I will no longer tolerate.
It also makes me think about a bible story that starts in 1 Samuel 22.
David, the shepherd boy, psalmist, and future king, was fleeing from King Saul and had to pretend to be a madman to get out of the clutches of one of Saul’s allies, Achish who was King of Gath. In despair David holed up in a stronghold called The Cave of Adullam. Four hundred men “who were in distress, or in debt, or discontented” made their way to him. Together they spent time in isolation, in effectual quarantine from an enemy that seemed too big for them. But when they emerged this misfit rabble had been transformed. They are referred to later as “David’s Mighty Men” and were known for their bravery and exploits.
So with us.
I believe that this quarantine time is honing and testing us. It is a necessary boot camp for what lies ahead. Lessons are being taught that we will need - and could learn no other way. We are being transformed. And although it is hard to endure. It is worth the pain and frustration.
Or will be.
And I believe that there will be a real camaraderie between all in this generation who have feared, faced off against, and overcome this virus. At some deep level we will be permanently bonded.
Shakespeare says it best although he was talking about the Battle of Agincourt, and not an unseen enemy. It is the rest of the quote that I found myself muttering in the hospital’s halls.
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
God be with all of you. We shall fight. We shall endure. We shall overcome. And the new reality will be different but real. Worthwhile.
May it be filled with peace, grace, and fulfilled dreams.
For all of us.
Amen!
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