Week 6 Reflections

Contrary to my beloved husband's statement, I have not abandoned this blog. I have, however, been very busy. To help you stay connected, I thought I'd begin posting my weekly reflections. Each week I am required to write a one-page journal of sorts about any major relationships, events, or realizations from the week. My supervisor is the only one who sees this reflection, but I'll share it with you. However, if there is information that I deem too personal, I'll edit it out before posting.

FYI, we're all assigned a few floors, where we do rounds every few days among the patients and staff. Mine are: Labor/Delivery, Mother/Baby, NICU (neonatal intensive care), Pediatrics, Hematology/Oncology (Hem/Onc), 4 West (oncology), and 5 Annex (orthopedics).

This week I’ve felt like I’m making progress with the Labor & Delivery staff. I’ve now received three referrals for pastoral care, including one on Wednesday evening. A young woman had miscarried at 14 weeks gestation, and was still holding the fetus in her hands when I arrived. It was so tiny (about the length of a credit card) and very red, yet was fully formed. The more death calls I attend (whether they be for a 14-week old fetus or an 87-year old adult), the more I realize that pastoral presence, prayer, and words of scripture are the best gifts that I can offer a family at the moment of death. Anything else seems so trite.
Now that I’ve been doing my rounds for over a month, I’ve realized that 4 West and 5 Annex pretty much compete for the majority of my time. In general, I can visit all my other floors within 90 minutes, because there are either very few patients who need my attention or (as in the case of Hem/Onc) the patients either don’t want visitors or are sleeping. This week I was able to have some very meaningful visits with patients, including two women dying of cancer. One had just been told that her cancer was untreatable and all they (meaning the medical team) could do was make her comfortable. She went home on Wednesday. The other one is still a patient (according to my census, since I haven’t made it to the floor yet) and has pancreatic cancer. She knows that the disease is terminal, but she has gone to amazing lengths to stay alive and be with her family as long as possible. She currently has a feeding tube and can’t eat solid foods. She has not been home since April, when she was diagnosed. She’s been in and out of several hospitals and has been staying in a nursing home. I wonder what her quality of life is and if I would go to those lengths to stay alive.
Among other reasons, I wanted to do a residency program so I could figure out what was "wrong" with me and fix it (in a manner of speaking). Even four months ago, I felt like a failure in many areas of my life, especially professionally. My learning goals and early experience in this program have been shaped by my experience in the parish. While I still think my learning goals are good ones, I am gaining perspective on my parish experience and am realizing that it was not ALL my fault, or even mostly my fault. Was I partially responsible? Of course, but a lot of it had to do with dynamics of the system and factors beyond my control. My interactions with patients, staff, and colleagues have been very encouraging and affirming. I’m not perfect and can certainly grow in some areas, but neither am I a total loser. As I’ve slowly begun re-gaining my self-confidence, I’ve had the exciting realization that I am not a failure and definitely have many gifts for ministry. Furthermore, in my next ministry setting (wherever it is) I have confidence that I will be able to use my experience and knowledge to become an effective minister.

Hijacking the blog for some cooler vibrations...

Well, since apparently my wife has abandoned this blog like yesterday's underwear, I'm going to make some use of it. Since we've moved into the house, I've been slowly doing repairs each weekend. Today's adventure was the thermostat, which is an old crusty 1970ish style model that is original to the house. You can see what I mean below:

Since I was already at Home Depot today to get an air filter, I stopped by and surveyed the programmable thermostats and got a significant upgrade. This model allows you to program it for 4 different time slots per day and each day can be controlled independently. It's also nice since it will also support a heat pump with backup heat supply, which we'll probably be having to do in a year or so(The A/C and heat are about 14 years old and original to house as well). It took me about an hour to install it, mainly testing it to make sure it was working properly and to program it. The final result is shown below:



Maybe by next weekend I can have the doggie door delivered and installed for Simon. I"m planning on installing an in-wall unit from PetSafe at this point unless I can find another alternative. He can really annoying about going in and out at times and I want to leave the back door closed as much as possible.