I had hospital visitation duty earlier this week, here right before the holidays. I usually don't mind the duty, in fact I somewhat enjoy it- being an encouragement to people, being out on the road, being out of the office. This on-call rotation was difficult for me, though. It wasn't the miles or the number of hospitals our people were in- although covering about 250 miles between about a dozen hospitals in two days was exhausting!
What made it difficult were the people I visited. To name a few, there was a teenager who had been hit by a car while waiting to catch the bus to school, in ICU on a ventilator with probable brain damage; a smiling 3 year old boy with anxious parents, waiting on test results to find out if their son has cystic fibrosis or not; a 50-something man who had undergone his 2nd heart bypass surgery, and was lonely and discouraged. But the most difficult for me was a lady I visited up in Gainesville, who is slowly dying. I had visited her last month, and she was up sitting in her chair in the hospital room, smiling & happy. We talked, laughed, prayed together, and I just had a great visit with her. This time I came to see her, she was on life support, tubes and IV's running all over her, and she was comatose, unresponsive with eyes half opened. I was shocked and saddened. I spoke to her and prayed over her anyway, in case she could hear anything at all. She is only 11 years older than me, and likely will not see the new year.
It was a sobering couple of days, and I really have not talked about it much. I guess I am reminded that, in the midst of the wonder and fanfare of the Christmas season, even with the hope that the birth of our Savior brings, we still live in a world of suffering and pain, and this will be a sad, painful Christmas for many, and for those they love. All the more reason to look for opportunities to commit "Random Acts of Christmas", like my last posting describes.
Following the Reason for the Season,
Rob