Pandemic Parables: Approaching Normal
Pandemic Parables: Approaching Normal
Saturday June 6th 2020
Things were inching back to being normal this week at the hospital in Frederick, Maryland where I’m working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August.
Three months after the hospital swung into action to prepare for a deluge of Coronavirus patients we have now crested the hill and are heading back down the other side of that dark, dangerous, destructive mountain.
At the peak of Covid-19 we had thirty seven virus patients in the hospital. Yesterday we had thirteen with an additional four under investigation.
Although we grieve the thirty five patients that have died, we rejoice with the one hundred and fifty four virus patients that have been discharged.
In addition more have been treated in the Emergency Department and sent home to recover without being admitted into the hospital.
I noticed one change that happened imperceptibly. The hospice nurses are no longer in their scrubs but are back in their own, beautiful, colorful, infinitely more flattering clothing.
“No one told us to start wearing scrubs, or indeed to stop wearing them,”
said my friend, the ex Navy nurse practitioner who has now recovered and is back at work after being being felled by Covid-19.
“It just happened. In the beginning I wore my hair up Navy style and started wearing scrubs because Covid-19 was an unknown and frightening entity. As soon as I got home I washed my scrubs and showered. It felt safer to have a uniform. But now things feel different. I have literally let my hair down. The virus is still here, but we know so much more about it. The tension is starting to ease.”
She paused for a moment and looked around at the others:
“We didn’t talk to each other about the change. We just all started showing up in regular clothing.”
“We have been through an intense, exhausting time," said one of the other hospice nurses. “It was too tiring to choose professional work-wear every day. Or to put on makeup. All of that takes a lot of energy. It was much easier to wear scrubs.”
She continued:
“It has been so emotional. We have been with patients who are dying when their families couldn’t be there, holding their hands, massaging their feet, praying with them. We’ve been on the phone with their families giving them updates, feeling their grief and anguish.
We’ve been coping with our own anger and sorrow that it has to be this way.
Our world became so much more difficult. In the hospital and outside”
She paused, then explained:
“You couldn’t just stop for groceries on the way home from work for example because people would glare at your scrubs as though you were a walking source of infection. That got old.”
“Things are approaching normal now,” she continued. “Everywhere places are starting to open. This was my way of trying to grab hold of normal and make it happen in my life. Trying to force normal to really be here. But I’m still too tired to wear makeup.”
A member of their team was there carrying her guitar. She sings over patients as they are actively dying, easing their transition. My nurse friend went with her to care for a far-too-young, non Covid patient with hours to live who had been listening to the sound of waves crashing on a deserted beach. It was recorded and sent by a grieving family who were stuck overseas, unable to travel to be at the bedside because of Coronavirus restrictions.
This beach was the patient’s favorite spot in the world. The waves’ rhythmic lulling; the sound of singing; a gentle, affirming, caring hospice nurse’s touch, as well as their colorful clothing, would be among the last sights and sensations they would experience on earth.
All in a regular day’s work for this team.
Elsewhere too things are approaching normal.
The nurse managers are starting to wear their white coats again. At the beginning of the pandemic they were told not to wear them so there would be no impediment to frequently washing hands up to the elbows. They look far less vulnerable now that they have back on their old symbol of authority.
For the same reason medical staff who always had to wear removable sleeves covering up arm tattoos were, post-pandemic arriving, not allowed to wear them.
Suddenly intricate beautiful designs on bare arms were everywhere.
This is one group that has not gone back to the old normal and are reveling in their ink-baring freedom, hoping it lasts.
It felt so odd the first time I saw the change; odder to walk through those open doors; and oddest to visit a patient in what were previously all coronavirus rooms.
It felt so odd the first time I saw the change; odder to walk through those open doors; and oddest to visit a patient in what were previously all coronavirus rooms.
A hospitalist who always made his home at one corner of the reception counter is back in the same spot after having been absent for the isolation duration.
Had he really ever left?
I felt I was in a time warp! Did the last three virus soaked months really happen?
Early in the week I baked what will probably be my last two loves of pumpkin bread until next Fall. I gave one to 3A to celebrate the ending of their isolation era. And one to sustain the nursing staff on 3B (a different wing on the same floor) who now have virus patients down one corridor.
The staff there are still learning the Coronavirus ropes.
The lovely, tall, Jamaican, janitorial worker from 3A - the one with the kind eyes - was over there. I saw him explaining to new cleaners the intricacies of Covid-19 cleaning.
That man is rock of goodness.
“It’s a bit stressful,” said a charge nurse when I asked how it was going. “There is a lot to learn with the virus patients. No one tells us what to do and then complains when we get it wrong. It gets frustrating at times.”
I nodded, understanding. Do and then learn from what you did wrong is a model for the chaplaincy course that I am doing. The Clinical Pastoral Education credits are set up on this principle. "The patient is the book."
And yes, it can be very frustrating.
I was glad I made them prayed over pumpkin bread as solace. It was the first time I’d done so for this section.
It was well received.
“They charged on it like a herd of water buffaloes," a nursing assistant told me. “Until all that was left were the crumbs.”
Music to my ears!
The one constant in the hospital during this time is change. Expect the unexpected, and be prepared for the worst that could happen.
In preparation for the Racial Justice protest march on Friday, every parking lot in the hospital, except for the ones in front of the Emergency Department and the Main Foyer were blocked off. The head of security wanted to make sure that if the Protest turned violent, patients and staff would be kept safe and there would be clear access for ambulances and cars bringing members of the community needing help.
As with the expected overwhelming Coronavirus surge, the worst scenario didn’t happen. Thank you Lord for answered prayers!
The protest was a great success, and peaceful.
But it felt good to know that the hospital was prepared just in case.
We are moving towards normal.
Transitioning is difficult.
Sometimes violent as we are seeing throughout America at the moment.
This week a friend in England, who is soaked in a wonderful form of Celtic Christianity, wrote and told me that she feels far less safe now that things are opening up. She felt that lock down was a prevention, and coming back to normal makes her feel very vulnerable. She said she feels weepy a lot of the time and recognizes that in the past this was when deep prayer was going on inside her.
I like the idea that my current tender emotional state means that my spirit is rocking in prayer. It makes the tears that these days are always close to the surface, seem so much more understandable and worthwhile.
And as a dear friend and prayer partner taught me many years ago, prayer paves the way into the future God wants us to have.
A good future filled with prosperity, hope, and success.
In this time when we are approaching normal, may we have inner strength and fortitude to face whatever lies ahead.
This is a season of great shaking, great change. May justice and righteousness prevail in our lives, in our institutions, and in our nations.
May all our prejudices and biases (and we all have them) be gently exposed and swept away. May we be healed in the deepest parts of our hearts and lives.
May we become all we were meant to be.
On the journey to normal may we hold close to the words that Joshua spoke over the Israelites so long ago.
It was when they were wondering how on earth they were they going to enter, let alone conquer and occupy the Promised Land.
It must have seemed an impossibility to some of them.
They had to cross a wide river in flood and then take a territory that was already lived in and established.
But then Joshua proclaimed over them all:
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified, do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
They held on to those words and believed them.
And despite the difficulties everything changed.
And in the end it was good.
May it be true also for us.
Amen.
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