Archive for June, 2013

CPE Journal #9 – June 7th

Today is the feast of the Sacred Heart.

I felt it today as I went about my unit. One patient wept beside me because they didn’t want to weep in front of their spouse and make them worry. Another fell asleep as I prayed for their healing. Another said, “I quite like talking to you. I shall think of you when I go home.” Another one, suffering from a vast multitude of problems, had me wanting to sing that old song about them being the most beautiful one “in the…room. In the whole wide room.”

The bizarre thing, though, is that I found myself using the skills I have learned in another area of my life today…but doing so, in a sense, under protest, which is to say that I tried my hardest to listen, empower, and affirm in order to build rapport and trust (brokenly) but inwardly wanting to scream. It’s not easy, but it’s certainly more effective, so it won’t be the last time I do so. It did mean that I wept a bit and called my mother later.

My prayer for anyone that finds this kind of work bleeding into their personal lives (and it will – trust me) has the courage and possible foolishness to not scream.

Love is the answer. (I have been writing this at the bottom of every entry in my CPE journal).

-Clarity

CPE Journal #8: June 5th

Today as I sat down after coming off the unit, I let the energy of my encounters roll off of me, through my feet, and into the ground like I do with Healing Touch. As I did so, I felt something in my body shift. Energy spread across my shoulders and throughout my core. I felt like God was present, near me and inside me. The Spirit passed through me. It was so strong. Probably sounds ridiculous to write here, but it’s what I felt.

Later, I finished reading the article on hope one of my classmates had sent to use last week. It was a chapter from a book that teaches caregivers of all types how to be “hope providers.” It was a really great article (I’ll post a summary of the chapter later), and it made me think about how beautifully people are made. The article had a couple of sections on how trust and emotional health is built in early infancy and childhood. From the moment we are born we are hardwired to need love from each other. To me it does not seem like a simple biologically explainable thing. It’s not that we grow up without these things and are merely socially hampered. Many of the babies who do not receive it simply die. We need each other, not merely as food-gatherers, milk producers, and mobile survival kits for each other. We are specifically created to need each other – not just as speechless physical presences but loving, engaged, focused, smiling hope providers. I’ve had two patients tell me how important smiles are from their caregivers.

:)

-Clarity

CPE Journal #7: June 4th

Today I had a pretty interesting revelation. I noticed that, as I went about the unit and into rooms, I was clutching the Bible I always brought along with my patient list very close to my side. I hadn’t even thought about why; I didn’t even really notice until I shifted the books from one arm to the other and noticed how much it ached!

I ended up mentioning it to my supervisor when I noted that I had been entering rooms with my hands clasped and didn’t like the way it made me look. As we worked it out together, I came to find that it had to do with my closing up, perhaps to protect myself from the strong emotions of others. I came to the sudden realization that just because I was familiar with sadness didn’t mean I was comfortable with it! I am beginning to learn that my emotions are not something to be afraid of – they are neutral things that happen. If I am gentle with them and accept them without trying to shove them down or escape them, I do not feel the same need to protect myself from the emotions of others.

Today some of my classmates and I played at a memorial for a nurse that passed away quite tragically. As we played, I became aware of how hard and powerful the grief in the room was to be with. Instead of closing myself off, I decided to let it wash over me. I opened myself up and allowed the energy to pass through me into the floor. I thought of the crucifixion and living a cruciform life. This is not taking on the shackles of someone else’s pain – we cannot do that. We can, however, allow it to pass through or over us and then roll off us, like rain water.

-Clarity

CPE Journal #6: May 31st

Today was a beautiful day. I spent a long time on the unit, much longer than usual. I had some good long conversations, and right now as I write about it I want to go up there again! I might change my tune next week when I spend my first week on-call, heh heh.

I wonder if I’ll have to respond to a Code Blue or arrange a viewing. Several of my colleagues have already arranged viewings. I think I’m ready. There was a little scare this morning when one of the clients seemed to be having some trouble breathing. I wondered briefly if we would be hearing the Code Blue go out – and I was standing right outside the door. But it worked itself out, I think.

It’s all still hard, but I’m beginning to find my groove. I feel a lot less self-conscious on the unit, more a part of the team. Those first couple of times I felt really weird and even illicit – wandering around reading and writing in people’s charts while all these doctors and nurses bustled about looking very official in their coats and scrubs. Now they say hello, or I do, and ask them how their day is going.

I re-connected again with that first client I had and we talked for a very long time. What a difficult life this person has had. The client said that something was different since that first encounter – it’s different for me too.

I feel I still make mistakes sometimes in my encounters, but I don’t dwell on them and fret about them the way I usually do. I feel like I belong, and am where I need to be. Could it be connected to the fact that my supervisor said that very thing to me in IPR on Thursday? :)

-Clarity

CPE Journal #5: May 30th

I have so come to treasure the group. It is a beautiful thing. I am finally coming to accept my emotions and not label them as negative or positive – simply as emotions. Previously, I had labelled things like anger as “negative” emotions, and my supervisor gently challenged me: “Why is anger negative? Why is it not simply an emotion we experience? It is not a bad thing to be angry.” I feel safe; my supervisor is a good, safe pastoral presence.

I am slowly learning who I am, and as I sit and remember the conversation I had yesterday with my spiritual director, he said that sometimes I think and analyze too much when my heart doesn’t need this level of consideration – it just knows and accepts. Today my supervisor asked me who I was, and I said, “I don’t know who I am, but I know who I belong to.” I don’t know what I would do without God.

I have been visiting and making lots of connections on my unit, and I pray for them. They are beautiful and a gift. Am I beautiful and a gift?

My motto for learning in this course was “Share the light of the world.” How can I share it if I don’t believe I have it within me?

-Clarity

 

CPE Journal #4: May 27th

I connected with a few people today. One person could barely speak but was so sweet. We prayed together – and I remembered to mention the Virgin Mary this time!

I think during my first encounter I experienced a form of stigmata – not in my own flesh or even in the patient’s, but in Christ’s. I felt he was in the room, and his palms were bleeding. If it wasn’t stigmata, then it was the Sacred Heart. (Can you tell I’ve been working in a Catholic hospital?) I’ve been doing some reading on the Sacred Heart, and while the penitential aspects of it are a bit much for me, I can get into the pierced, bleeding, immolated heart of God’s love. It may seem unsettling to some, but when you’re on the unit you get used to the everyday reality of pain and being mangled. After all, what is surgery but mangling, to some degree and with the best of intentions? To see God in that reality is ecstatic and beautiful to me – God’s great burning heart, wilfully bared, sweetly pierced. I may have to come up with an Anglican spin on it myself – perhaps I’ll work it into my position paper this fall! I find it affects me most because I had prayed for an experience like this – a true and mystical experience of the sweet pain of God’s presence (pain because of its deep holiness, which leaves us transformed, maybe a little scorched). I received it, and it was not a supernatural thing necessarily, like Padre Pio’s bleeding palms or, flippantly, seeing Jesus in a piece of toast. Such a sight, I think, would only really have been meaningful to me and those who truly believe in that kind of thing. An experience like the one I had would touch all people.

I’m so glad I’m an Anglican! We can take what we like from Catholic tradition that works, but I can still be ordained!

-Clarity