The absence of time
With each passing day in which I divide my time between the general medicine and stem cell transplant floors, I am stricken with a confounding sense of reality. Mostly, reality is synonymous with waiting. Waiting for a loved one to heal, waiting for the next med rounds to suppress pain, anxiety, or fear, waiting to be seen, to be heard, just waiting… How much of our individual lives revolve around this concept, even when we aren’t ill? We wait for both the expected and unexpected, for something to come and miraculously alter our everyday, for us to surmount an ordinary existence. How little of the vast “extraordinary” we miss when hopelessly ensnared in this paradigm. It’s this very moment, our presence at this precise snapshot in the infinite span of time that ultimately takes precedence. Whether it’s holding your wife of 46 years in your arms while she undergoes dialysis for renal failure, or it can simply be bending the rules a bit to let a son visit with his father before regular visiting hours. These acts of compassion are ones that I encounter almost every day, and hope that I never lose sight of their significance.
posted by Sheila @ 11/16/2004 08:23:00 AM
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