Pandemic Parables: The Right Thing
Pandemic Parables: The Right Thing
Monday June 29, 2020
Yet another change, a scaling back, happened today in the hospital in Frederick, MD where I am working as a Resident Chaplain until the end of August. The friendly faces that for the past few weeks took your temperature as you entered the building have all gone.
They were the ones who cheerily greeted both staff, same day surgery patients, and the few visitors that are allowed. They asked about any possible Covid-19 symptoms, and gave out colored bands that went around wrists or badges to prove you had passed under their vigilant gaze.
They are no longer.
They have been replaced by a machine.
Ah, the way of the world!
From today staff have to take their temperature at home and stay there if it is 100 degrees or more. Before starting to work they must swipe their badge against a newly installed reader to attest that they have indeed taken their temperature that day and are free from Coronavirus symptoms. Anyone who is not staff will have temperatures checked by the security officers at the main foyer, which is the only entrance that is open, besides the Emergency Department.
So first thing this morning I took my temperature. It was normal.
There was a nurse sitting by the new check in device to guide people through the change.
“What happens if people swipe without having taking their temperature?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “they will have lied.”
“Do you think they will?” I said.
“Oh yes, people do.” She responded matter-of-factly. “Of course that is not the right thing to do.”
Later I was in Same Day Surgery responding to a Code Blue – called when someone is in danger of dying. The teamwork of the medical staff, their intense dedication, never ceases to amaze me.
I prayed. They worked. The patent lived. Glory!
Afterwards, when the adrenaline had dispersed I overheard a conversation between a couple of nursing assistants who had been observing this medical miracle.
“Did you take your temperature this morning? Really?”
“Yes, I did,” responded the other nurse just behind a curtain and out of my sight. There was a long pause. And then she added, “I really did take it, but after I did, it broke. I managed to break the thermometer!”
I have a feeling that this taking your temperature at home development might not go as smoothly as first envisioned.
In the meantime, the front foyer seems peculiarly empty without the lovely rotating teams who used to sit beside the white, ginormous space divider, greeting people on their way in and out from work.
Let me tell you about that divider.
Several weeks ago, a long, tall, white, narrow, temporary construction structure – a Goliath-sized divider - with a tent like ceiling, sprung up in the hospital’s airy main foyer. It appeared almost overnight like a giant field mushroom and snaked from the covered car park entrance to the main front door. It is still there.
At the time I thought it would have something to do with providing a private space for temperature testing. This was a couple of days before the procedure began. But no, as I was to discover, the screening happened at a station in the shadow of the behemoth.
The screening that is now no more.
For ages I had no idea what that divider was dividing or why.
Then I discovered that a shoulder height, decorative wall that will be topped with plants is being built. Thus ensuring that all visitors and staff with have to pass by the main security desk on their way into the hospital. No more taking a short cut through the Same Day Surgery waiting area.
The project is shrouded in a construction shell to keep debris contained. Unfortunately, this doesn’t stop the intense building noise that seems to happen sporadically.
A few days ago one of the wonderful hospice nurses, that I admire so much, grabbed me.
“I need you,” she said. “Come with me to the foyer.”
It turned out that an older patient had died, and his fairly young offspring wanted to sign the necessary papers without entering a clinical area.
Not everyone likes hospitals.
These young people were shaken. They had seen their father the day before. They knew he was near the end. Everything that needed to be said, was said. He let them know he loved them. Was interested in them and what they were doing.
That’s how they wanted to remember him.
Still, they were grateful when I suggested praying for them, and also committing their father’s spirit to the Lord. We settled in to pray. A hush came over the group. I was about to open my mouth and let out the first word when ferocious drilling and clattering started up from the white edifice directly behind us.
“Wait one moment,” declared the nurse, her face above her mask displaying grim determination.
The noise was so loud we could hardly hear her.
“I’ll get that to stop.”
Much to the amazement of the security guards, the temperature testers, and all in the foyer, she succeeded. This nurse is a tall, elegant, willowy figure, with beautifully coiffed hair, white before its time. She swept across the space, found a door into the construction shell, and swung it open. Then with a finger slash across the throat and a palm raised with five fingers displayed, conveyed to the astonished workmen to lay off the noise for a little.
They took one look at the determination on her face and obeyed.
They definitely did the right thing.
Don’t mess with a hospice nurse when she is looking after the welfare of her patients and their families!
This is the same nurse who told me a couple of weeks ago that she was astonished and perturbed, when going into public places beyond the hospital, to see that people weren’t wearing masks.
People in the hospital are used to wearing masks. It was always normal for the medical staff – but now everyone has to wear a cloth mask to enter the building, and walk through its halls. (However the rules have been relaxed, which means chaplains no longer have to be double masked when seeing patients. My N95 is gathering dust in a shelf in in our office – and I am grateful for that grace.)
Back to the intrepid Hospice nurse.
“I felt unsafe when I was outside and saw people milling around without masks,” she said. And I felt afraid for them. Maybe it is because we have insider knowledge. We know what Covid-19 will do even to a healthy body.”
The same thought was expressed to me recently by a charge nurse on 3B, the section of my floor that now has Coronavirus patients.
“We wear masks everywhere we go outside the hospital because we know the suffering the virus can cause,” she said. “It’s the right thing to do. And besides, if other people saw what we see daily they’d all be wearing masks. Truly”
This section of the hospital has only had the virus patients for the last few weeks. They were originally housed in a sealed off section on the same floor. That has now reverted back to orthopedics, and the Covid-19 patients have all moved to one corridor of this unit.
I asked one of the nurses on 3B what it was like to come late to the party. So much focus was given to the medical staff in the isolation wings at the beginning of the pandemic. Food and gifts poured in, given by grateful hospital staff, and the local community. As we have all become adapted to the pandemic in our midst, that is no longer happening.
It always amazes me how the human psyche adapts.
The nurse smiled. “One of my floor supervisors said that we got the Covid patients when Covid wasn’t cool.” We both laughed.
“But seriously,” she said. “The medical staff in the isolation wings were the ones who took on all the risks – when we didn’t know anything. They paved the way for us. We are learning new things every day. We were frightened at first, but now we have got into a routine and just get on with the work.”
Another nurse joined in. “We have to put on all the PPE when we go into the rooms. It can get very hot and uncomfortable, so we try to get everything done at one time and really space our visits. The patients are really, really sick when they come in. But once they start to get better they are lonely. We organize face time for them with their family, but still, when we enter their rooms they don’t want us to leave. It breaks my heart.”
The way these nurses adapt to different situations always showing grace, care, and love continually impresses and inspires me.
Talking about adapting.
During these last few Coronavirus months we have all had to adapt enormously. We have been hit with a barrage of information – some of which seems to contradict itself.
These are exhausting times.
We have had to give up so much that was familiar, reassuring. Things that we never thought would be taken from our lives. Hugs, church services, toilet paper.
There have been so many sacrifices.
Not seeing vulnerable family members when everything in us ached to see them.
Endlessly using our talents so that we can share with others – baking, making masks, gowns, face shields.
Cancelling plans for festivities, festivals, rights of passages and vacations that have sometimes been years in the making.
Sheltering in place with too many people, or no one, and the frustration or loneliness that come with those scenarios.
Incomes slashed.
Loss upon loss upon loss.
And it seems like just when it was safe to go out, in some areas of the nation the virus is starting up all over again.
Many of us are asking how long? How much more can we endure?
There is a huge desire to have it all behind us. Burst out of confinement. Shake off oppression of all kinds. But, as I keep reminding myself - Geraldine, you’ve come so far. Don’t give up now.
May none of us stumble at the last fence.
I believe this is a time of reaping and sowing. Some people might call it karma.
All the sacrifices, the tears, the determination to carry on amidst emotional pain, have not been for nothing. We are being changed. Prepared for our futures – the futures that have always been ordained for us - in a boot camp that we didn’t see coming.
I want to sow good things. Because I want to reap good things. I don’t want to lie or steal someone else’s health. I’d hate to reap those consequences.
So I’ll take my temperature every morning to make sure I don’t infect anyone at work.
And wear a mask in public for the same reason. Let us all do so.
Although it’s a pain, a hassle. It is the right thing to do. Who would willingly send anyone to be under the care of the wonderful nurses in the Covid-19 wing of any hospital? Or be a patient there themselves.
The Good Book says in Galatians 6:9 – “… let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.”
The Lord’s promises are yes and amen. He loves us with a love that is more than we can possible comprehend.
Let us all hang on in there. The future is close.
And it will be good.
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