Concentrating the Mind

Illness, pain and such like tend to focus the mind.  One focus for me this past week was where was my next dose of morphine?  I'd had a long standing medical problem is this seemed to be the time to fix it.  I had surgery on a Tuesday, and came out of anesthia  on Friday, plunging into a sort of loopiness, which didn't bother me too much, but which kept the staff on their toes.  I'd halucinated my cousins' visiting the hospital and was quite put off that they didn't come and talk with me.  God knows who they were, but I had a staff person go talk to them.   I was convinced that a Chinese anesthesiologist was married to my cousin.  Much of the time I was certain that i was in a nursing facility in Toronto.  Thank God I wasn't loose on the streets. 

I was greatly touched at the ministrations of the clergy of Trinity, Santa Barbara.  The brethren visited with perfect Benedictine sensibility.  Sometimes it was hard for them to say prayers, since a secular hospital is so busy and crowded. 

Some things occur to me:  Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital is enormus and the potential for error must be great, but the hospital does function well.  The nursing staff I encountered were wonderful, invariably courteous and human, but firm about getting what they needed.  I was deeply moved by the Hispanics of the hospital who by and large had the lowest levels of employment and yet were always polite, sweet tempered, and helpful.  Many of them even gave a wonderful Christian witness not using words.  The poor and the least might well be first in the Kingdom.