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April 7, 2008
The Chaplain-Patient By Connie Hill
“Don’t worry,” said the smiling but very tired resident, “You’re doing fine and I am going home now. I will see you in the morning.” I glanced at the clock and with its big numbers, I read, 2:00 AM. Then the Chaplain in me tuned in and said, “Yes, you look so tired, please go and get some rest.” Then I closed my eyes, punched my morphine button, said a prayer for the resident and blissfully drifted back to sleep. Some three hours later I was awakened by the doctor; the team of residents that had done the surgery and follow-up, and their news was good. They had removed a basketball-sized tumor and various other parts from my abdomen and the preliminary report showed that it was not cancerous. A tear slipped from my eye with that news. Yet, that good news would slip from my mind as I faced the reality found in the hours, days and weeks to come.
Here I was a Chaplain and had been one for about twelve years. And even before that, I had been one who seemed to always have the right thing to say when people were down and hurting. I didn’t know what to say at this point except thank you to the doctors and thanks be to God. Yet by 4:00 AM the next morning, I was a mess and I wanted to scream. I was terrified and I was in excruciating pain, but I could not find words, prayers, anything or anyone that would bring comfort. What was I to do?
I got up. Went to the door and looked down the hall for a nurse. Low and behold, there was one directly across the hall just coming from another room. I asked her to please get my nurse for me and I went and sat in a chair. Two hours later someone finally came into the room. It was the same resident as the night before. When she asked me to get back into bed, I could barely walk. By the time I got the pain medication I needed, I could walk and talk, but the terror had not diminished and then, the doctor came in and said I was going home that day. I asked for one more day, just to calm my nerves. The answer was NO!
Suddenly, I began to hear in my mind different patients who had begged me for one more day, one more time, one more hour, and I had prayed with them and gently smiled and walked away thinking nothing of it. But now… but now… I understood things from a different perspective. You see now I knew what it was like to be a patient.
I survived that day and I am recuperating. I have new eyes and ears for patients and families. I have words of wisdom to offer to those that have become set in their ways as a Chaplain -- spend some time in the hospital as a patient!
Do you know what it means to be on a bedpan when the Chaplain comes in? When you want so badly to speak with the Chaplain that you keep sitting on the bedpan until after the Chaplain leaves? After the Chaplain leaves, it is only then that you discover that you are stuck to the bedpan.
Do you know what it means to not be listened to? Think about it. We are all compassionate, caring people or we wouldn’t be in this business. I would gently ask us to consider the question, have we grown too accustomed to our work? Are we truly listening to the patients and our family members as well as the staff members that we see each day, or are we thinking about the next committee meeting or the patient we just left or what we get to do when we go home. Do we bring our own agendas into the patient’s room and never give the patient the opportunity to have a voice?
As a patient, I discovered that I wanted just a few basic things.
• I wanted the best medical care possible
• I wanted to be accepted as a person of worth and treated with dignity and respect
• I wanted to be believed
• I wanted to be listened to and responded to
• I wanted someone to pray with me when I couldn’t pray for myself
I was fortunate that I had the best in healthcare treating me and I had the best Chaplains as co-workers. Still, I found myself dealing with the difficulties involved when these very basic issues popped up day and night. I believe that I am not unique as a patient. As people entered the room I had been assigned, they entered the room with a “Hermaneutic of Suspicion.” I, as the patient, was doubted and wasn’t listened to. It did not matter what, or whoever entered the room, because everyone had been taught or learned the hard way, to take everything that was said with a grain of salt. It did not matter that I was a Chaplain because to them I was a patient and patients were suspect. I believe that patients go through this each day, day after day.
Since I have returned to work, I have had this verified again and again. So, if my experience just helps one person to simply be aware and to take the time to listen to those that they may meet in a new way, maybe they won’t need to experience fully what it means to be a patient after all. However, some of us, like me, have to learn things the hard way and if you are one of those, I know some excellent surgeons. Whichever way, just remember that as we have been called to serve those that we come in to contact with, we should come as God’s representative to a needy and hurting world, wherever we serve.
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Posted by Perry Miller, Editor at April 7, 2008 5:26 PM