The first thing I do when I get home is to take off my shoes, wash my hands, take off my mask, wash my hands again, wash my face, and then let my hair down. The moment I let my hair down, my body knows it's time to relax, and my mind can start processing. My holiday on-calls gave me plenty to process.
I thought about the phone call I had made to a woman who was preparing for discharge, after fighting through COVID. She had come in together with her husband, and they had initially shared a room. Then, his condition worsened, and he was transferred to the ICU.
One of my colleagues was there when they were parted. That was the last time the woman saw her husband, in person. My colleague spoke of how emotional that was, and how it was worth it for him to go inside the room to pray for the wife, and to hold her hand, wearing gloves and a gown.
Another one of my colleagues had had a phone call with the wife, after the husband had coded in the ICU. According to the note my colleague wrote, the wife was very accepting of reality, and seemed calm in the face of such a terrible prognosis for her husband.
I was able to speak with the wife over the phone during my shift, and arrange for her to Skype with her husband, using hospital equipment, before her discharge the next day. This, we all knew, would be the last time she could "see" him--their final goodbye.
This case struck a chord with the spiritual care department, because a total of 5 chaplains had gotten involved, over the course of several days. Unfortunately, this heartbreaking situation was just one of many. As a CPE cohort, we shared our stories with one another, facing the crisis as a team.
Although some of my peers will refer to patients on their floors as "my patient," I tend to think of each patient as "ours." Especially in the cases of patients who transfer through several floors, spiritual care also transfers from one chaplain to another.
We had a married couple come in through the emergency room together, and the husband was immediately transferred to the COVID ICU, where one of my colleagues was assigned. The wife was healthy enough to stay in the Emergency Department and receive enough care to be discharged, without being admitted to a hospital floor. Knowing she already had COVID, she asked if she could be escorted up to the ICU, to say goodbye to her husband before going home, and my colleagues worked with hospital administration to see if they could make an exception to the visitor policy. Ultimately, the request was denied, and the wife handled it with grace.
But we as a team really felt for this family--and for so many others whose trip to the Emergency Room meant goodbye forever. How privileged we were to be granted access to the ICUs--even if all we could do was pray for patients outside the glass doors of a COVID isolation room--when family could not even have one final look, except over Skype. The harshness of the pandemic saddened us, and it also angered us to see so many outside of the hospital still not taking it seriously. If they had seen what we had seen, would they still put lives at risk with careless behavior?
I had some strong feelings of my own to process, as several of us had spoken with COVID patients who were members of churches who defied the governor's orders and continued worshipping in person. One of my patients survived COVID, while her husband in the ICU did not. And several of their other church friends were also infected. This was another "case" that had passed through multiple hospital floors and several chaplains, and which we processed together as a team. As professionals providing spiritual care, we chaplains showed compassion to all our patients. At the same time, as humans, we were angered by church leaders who put their congregants at risk for this deadly virus.
There was so much going on during the Holiday surge that our CPE model of action-reflection-new action was compressed into an ongoing process-as-we-go mentality. Often, my peers would give a play-by-play of a situation they had just encountered, as soon as they came back into our shared office space. Midway through their narrative, another page would come in, with further developments. As we all tried to catch our breath, we knew we could count one the team to pull through together. We had to, to survive.
Now that I have found some time to breath, recover, and write, I am grateful that through the most recent surge, we all managed to stay healthy, sane, and faith-filled. Each of us has a very different temperament and background, but we have put our differences aside to learn together. One day, we will look back and see how our call to ministry brought us to the front lines, "for such a time as this."
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