#150 / 2010 Winter: San Destin: Sacred Heart Hospital

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 21

#150

It is Sunday morning. Joe slept most of the night, Saturday he didn't sleep at all. We just settle a day's routine, nothing can be planned or learned until after tomorrow's biopsies, so I work on having a good attitude and just get the day going.

I find that I am comforted by rituals. I want the best to happen and in my  mind I must keep moving in a positive manner. I see all these other people at the hospital in the same situation I am in.

Being positive is the most important thing. I am making sure my appearance and attitude is as attractive as I can make each of them. I am not hanging around the hospital slovenly looking with a defeated expression on my face, nor a sad one. I flash all the nurses and attendants bright smiles. I keep Joe in good spirits with magazine articles and TV shows I think he might be intertested in.

I walked around the hospital with ritualistic intent. It's over a 20 minute walk so an hour's worth of walking puts me near my average workout. I look for meaning in the smallest things. When we were admitted to the hospital on the ninteenth I just found that so important, it's Joe's lucky number. And he was placed in room 219. So these two small events meant so much to me and gave me hope.

  

I went out to the van and thought of some small improvements I can make. I am going to put some nails up to  hang my tea strainer. It's seems silly to even say it but that gave me such a little rush of pleasure, just attending to small details.

I picked up a little piece of glass bead on the ground. Actually it is something that fell out of the van, a round shiny green rhinestone. I picked it up and seemed to find meaning in it. This beautiful green reflection of the stone in the Florida sunlight looks like the ocean to me. I decide this insignificant little bauble represents our dream of going to Mexico on Jan. 7. 

It’s a trip we have already paid for and I have never said one word about Joe and I not being able to fulfill this long planned for dream. I have decided this little green stone represents our trip to Mexico and I am going to hold on to it, this thing I almost threw away, hold onto it like my dream. It’s silly, but again, comforting.

When I walked laps around the hospital I crossed myself in the Eastern Orthodox fashion and gave thanks to God and my mother for directing us to the hospital devoted to healing the poor. Can you even imagine such a place existing in this day and age: Sacred Heart Hospital, Emerald Coast, Sandestin, Florida.

I will do everything I can do to keep the positive energy flowing. When I got back to the room Joe said Michael Elliott our mechanic AND best friend had called. He had Father Gabriel bless one of his little holy biscuits, I say this facetiously because I don't know what they are really called, but in our Eastern Orthodox church it is something Father Gabriel bakes himself, he is a master baker, and they have a special name when you take them up to the altar for a special blessing. We did a similar thing for our friends Tim and Susan when they were trying to have a baby after many years of disappointment and a miscarriage.

Father Gabriel's biscuit worked for them after I set in on a shelf that I turned into a pseudo altar in their home, and now there is another one for Joe placed on a shelf in Michael's home. So the positive energy is flowing.