Difficult Seasons

Help Wanted

Today, I’m asking for some input on two questions.

1.  Is there anything that you haven’t seen in the Hospital Visits series that you’d like to see addressed?  You can review what’s been covered by clicking here to get the summary view for the category.  Note that there are two pages.  By the way, I now plan to turn the series into an e book which will be available here free.

2.  The next series I plan to write will be on family care giving. We’ll talk about caring for parents, spouses, other adult relatives, and even children and grandchildren.  What would you like to see included, what questions do you have, etc. that will help guide me?

Thanks for your feedback, and for the encouragement I’ve received from many.

Photo Credit:  K Nicholl

Sleeping in Car

It may not surprise you that a lot of hospital patients’ family members spend the night in the patient’s room.

Most of the time, this means sleeping on a chair-bed, a device that’s not usually very comfortable as either a chair or a bed.   Some hospitals are more thoughtful in design, and have a built in couch/bed that’s actually quite comfortable.  Still others provide no accommodation for family members.

Family members spend the night in patients’ rooms or in waiting rooms for several reasons. The most common are:

• They feel the need and/or the patient feels the need for them to be there.  I still remember quite well trying to rig some arrangement of chairs in the NICU waiting room while my wife was there after surgery, and failing pretty miserably.  It was important to her and to me that I was close during that critical time.

• If folks are from out of town, they may not be able to afford the cost of hotel accommodations.  I frequently visit with patients who’ve spent weeks in the hospital, and a spouse or parent or adult child has spent every night in their room.  While sometimes the cite the desire to be there, they often talk about the cost of a hotel.

What may surprise you, though, is how many people sleep in their cars because they don’t have the money for lodging.   I occasionally observe it  in the medical center garages, and know that people sleeping in their cars is fairly widespread.

Family members sacrificing comfort to be with family in the hospital is a fact of life, as is people sleeping in cars so their family member can be at a major medical center for treatment.

There are some organizations that work with the hospital social work departments to provide funding on a need basis for housing.  One I’m familiar with is Compassionate Touch.  You can even help if you wish.

Son by the Patient's Side

It’s easy to focus on the patient when you’re making a hospital visit.  After all, that’s the reason you went in the first place.

But it’s critically important to also focus part of your time and attention on family members who might be present during your visit.

Start by taking the time to introduce yourself to them, shake hands, and understand how they’re related to the patient.

Then as you’re conversing with the patient, involve the other family members in your conversation by making frequent eye contact with them and perhaps asking them an occasional question.

I nearly always inquire about how the family members are doing, about how they’re dealing with what’s going on.  I also generally try to inquire about whether they’re getting enough rest and taking care of themselves. Sometimes I even try to catch them when they’re out of the room so they can talk freely.

This isn’t just to be nice.

• Family members who are providing care for someone in the hospital are under a lot of stress, often much more than the patients themselves.  Often they’re sleeping in a chair in the room with the patient (if you can call that sleeping).  They may be eating off the patient’s tray, or grabbing something quick from the hospital cafeteria.

• And on top of that, the family members are the ones who are generally managing all of the information and details about the patient’s care, being an advocate for the patient with the hospital staff, and in many cases having to make decisions about that care.  In fact, someone who is in the hospital without a family member or friend to manage all the stuff and to be an advocate for them is in for a difficult time.

So as you’re ministering and showing love to a hospital patient, make it a point to do the same with their family members and friends who are attending them.

They, and you, will be blessed as a result.

Praying

I am convinced that praying is the most important thing I do.

I’ve lived long enough, been through enough of life experiences, to understand that I’m not in control.  Further, I’ve learned that I’m helpless to fix all the things that are broken, that are wrong, in this life.

But through prayer, I can connect to the One who is in control and who has the ability to fix broken things.  Broken bodies, broken hearts, broken relationships, broken whatever.

Prayer is simply the way I deal with life, whether its joys or its disappointments or its unfairness.

So when I visit people in the hospital, I love to pray with them, to bring their desires which have become my desires to the God who cares and who can do something about them.

But before I do, I ask two questions.

1.  “Would it be okay if I prayed with you?”  You see, not everyone is comfortable praying, or it may just not be the right time, or they may not feel well enough at the moment.  I want to give them the opportunity to say no if that’s their desire, and if they do, I honor it.

2.  If they indicate they would like to pray, I ask what they’d like to pray for.  You see, my guess from our conversation might not be accurate.  Plus, there are often things that are weighing on them that may not have come up before that they’d like to include.

Then, if they’ve agreed, and after I understand what they’d like included, I word a prayer that includes to the best of my ability what we’ve talked about.  That’s the most common style of prayer from my faith tradition, and the one most of the folks I visit are most comfortable with.

You might choose to handle praying with a patient differently depending on your faith tradition and your level of comfort.  Sometimes simply praying the Lord’s Prayer together is perfect.  Many love the beautiful prayers from The Book of Common Prayer or another book of prayers.

But regardless of how you handle it, praying with someone you visit in the hospital is often the most powerful part of your visit, the time when you feel most connected, the time when most healing occurs.  And that just seems right.

Photo Credit: Judy Baxter

Story Telling

All of us tell stories.

What’s interesting is why, out of the tens of thousands of stories we each have stored in our brains, that we choose to tell a specific story at a point in time.

We don’t even think about it.  We don’t do an intentional search of all the stories to find just the right one.  Something someone says or something we smell or something we’re doing or something we’re experiencing triggers bringing the story to consciousness.  So we tell it.

We don’t usually give why we’re telling a specific story a thought.

But the interesting thing is that we’re telling the story because it has something to do with what’s going on in our life right now.

When you’re visiting with someone and they begin telling you stories, listen to them carefully.  If you take the story literally, you’ll probably miss what the person is really telling you.

Here are a couple of examples.

1.  A elderly man was hospitalized who was suffering from advanced cancer.  He told a visitor a story about an old tree in his back yard that was rotting from the inside out, and that he just didn’t know what to do with it.  If you as the listener took that story literally, you might want to suggest he engage a tree expert to help him.  But if you were listening for the story behind the story, you might ask the man if he perhaps was talking actually talking about his situation, and not about the tree.  (This story is from the book cited below)

2.  An older woman tells relatives a story about her youth, when her great uncle lost his mind and her parents had to build a cage around his bed to keep him from wandering off.  If you accepted the story at face value, you might just respond by saying, “I’m glad we have facilities now for helping families deal with relatives with dimentia.”  But if you knew that the woman telling the story was suffering from short-term memory loss, as her relative you might more appropriately respond, “I know you’re having some memory problems.  Is is possible you’re telling me this story because you’re afraid of what may happen to you?”  (This story is from my personal experience.)

The person telling the story hasn’t thought about why they’re telling it.  If you have a sufficient relationship with a person telling a story like this, and if you think you have some insight into why they might be telling it, and you’re comfortable doing so, you might help them consider what’s behind the story.  Doing so can be helpful to the person in processing what’s happening in his life, and can make him feel truly listened to.

To learn more about story listening, I recommend the book Listening and Caring Skills in Ministry: A Guide for Pastors, Counselors, and Small Groups by John Savage. The book also covers listening from a broader perspective, so will be a valuable addition to your library.

Photo credit:  Dave Gilbert