Patience

Sisters Hospital, Buffalo NY- Sept. 23, 2009

Beyond Patience 101

Continuing education classes offered on a hourly, daily or monthly basis.

This specific class highlights arriving at the ER with your elderly parents for the third time since July. So you have been educated in the ER essentials which include:

• bringing updated and typed medical history of patient,include patients name, date of birth, and address. Include past illnesses and surgery dates. Include list of current medications,medication allergies, and current doctors phone numbers.
  
• bringing insurance card and other ID.
• bringing patients bag with warm socks, heavy bathrobe,comb and rosary.
• bringing your bag with two sweaters or a heavy jacket, reading material, reading glasses, cell phone, charger, snacks, water bottle,and camera.
• pack computer 

This class will include an arrival time of 2PM.

• It will test your calm as your ailing parent insist they can fill out the admission form themselves.

• It will test your ability to move to a quieter section of the waiting room away from the TV broadcasting a soap opera featuring a scene in a hospital.  
• It will test your ability to discuss stories and topics that have been previously discussed.
• It will test your ability to offer comfort as the time drags on for over an hour and illnesses pain becomes unbearable.
• Once in the patient is in the ER bed it becomes essential to learn the names of the various Doctors and nurses. And most importantly procure blankets, many blankets for your freezing parent, possibly giving up one of your coats.
• As the nurse tries valiantly for the third time to find a vein to draw blood from and administer an IV, you will hold your parents hand and calm them with prayer and breathing together.
• And then the waiting begins, as tests and procedures are painstakingly administered.  
• They drift off to sleep as the pain killers take affect and you may read, or work a bit. 
• After 4 hours you have gone to have dinner at the hospital cafeteria and returned to be lulled into a semi-conscious state by the beeping of the monitors all around you.
•  The next four hours in the ER room are much like the first four except you wish you could crawl in bed with the patient.
• The decision to leave your parent at midnight with nurse Christina feels like betrayal. But as your parent sleeps you realize you must go home and get some rest. Nurse Christina says, "She will be moved to her own room in an hour or so, I will take care of her."  
• At this time you have graduated to Trust 101 - as you are too numb and tired, you will not be able to appreciate all that you have learned.

Patience and calm be with you all.