Patience

Ministerial Meandering

Patience

There is a point in most illnesses where you get sick and tired of being sick and tired.  This does nothing for my patience or ability to be a quiet and compliant patient.  I don’t do illness very well.  I think it turns me into a nasty, crabby old bear who growls and coughs at anyone who tries to come near.  That doesn’t engender a lot of sympathy - but then I don’t have a lot for myself either.

Enforced inactivity is not normal, and Gracie has been unbelievably tolerant of me, and faithful to a fault.  She looks hopefully at me every morning before my dredging, graveyard cough assaults the morning air, and I reach for her on my bed.  She then knows it will be yet another day of looking after the old fool and staying by his side.  I try to get to give her a groom every day, but confess that I don’t always manage it.  She says, “OK, I’ll do it myself today then.”

Whining is also not one of my favourite habits, and being inconvenienced by this respiratory virus has set me to thinking of how lucky I am not to be chronically sick with a debilitating disease.  I think particularly of my sponsor and friend in AA, who is suffering from asbestosis and needs to be on permanent portable oxygen.  He struggles to put a sentence together, but always makes the effort to attend meetings when he can.  Clearly, I don’t wish to share my bugs with people so compromised, but his example is one to follow.

Then there are the more physically handicapped; those with crippling arthritis, for whom every movement is significant pain; or those with chronic heart conditions, for whom the miracles of modern cardiology have ceased to work; those with cancer that has raised its head above the parapet once more, just when they were beginning to think they might have got long-term remission.

I think, too, of how things and expectations have changed from when I was growing up in the 50’s.  Industrial lung disease was a given for the majority of miners, and a life-expectancy of over 50 would be unusual.  Tuberculosis was also common and a ruptured appendix was often a killer.  Heart valve replacement was in its infancy, and cardiac transplant unheard of.  By-pass surgery was only just being experimented with, and was still in animal trials.  Even when I was training later in the 70’s, a triple by-pass was a whole day event, and I would be up all night looking after the patient in the cardiac ICU - not in frequently having to take the patient back to the OR for one complication or another.

The pathophysiological responses to trauma were only just beginning to be understood, and the specialty of Trauma Surgery and Trauma Intensive Care were yet to gain recognition.  Even now, in this country, trauma is frequently very poorly managed, with the result that the usual entry in the papers is, ‘the victim was shot/stabbed - and died later in hospital.’  That is unacceptable - if a patient arrives in the ER with a pulse, then he/she should leave hospital with one too.  But here is not the place to bemoan the poor quality of medical care Canada provides its people.

The thrust of my Meandering is to place my paltry respiratory infection in perspective - and to do so for my own sake.  Writing this has been - at least a little - cathartic.  Thank you for putting up with it.

Philip+