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I haven't been a very good blogger lately. Not much updating and all. The thing is, all I do lately is CPE. And CPE is so full of self-examination and self-disclosure that, frankly, the last thing I want to do is come home and self-examine and disclose to the world wide web. What am I feeling? Stuff it. When I say that all I do is CPE, I'm close to literal truth. Sure, we're done at 4:30pm. Then it's the TTC home, 5:00pm at the earliest. (Hah!) Dinner of some sort, 5:30 or 6:30pm before that's made/ordered and eaten. And then? I settle in to read, which is all I can think to do with so little energy. As sedentary as it is, after maybe ten pages I start to droop. My eyes get heavy, I have trouble holding the book, I keep having to re-read paragraphs and soon... Friday is a bit better, since I get home earlier. Saturday I slept in, which was lovely, but then I had three assignments due on Monday. Sunday I'm up early for church, so no rest there and rest is what I really need right now. Meh. So I'll just have to spend a sleepy summer, chin on my chest and book dropped on the floor. Oh, July 21st...when will you come? The day after July 20th, I'd imagine. Sigh. The sad truth about hospital chaplaincy is that people get better. OK, that's not sad for them...but it does mean that, just as you get to know someone and really enjoy them as a person, they're gone. On the other hand, you also see the backs of a lot of real bastards. (Why is that somehow awful to say? Just because someone is sick they can't be a jerk?) And of course, when someone really kind and sweet has been in hospital for a while it's wonderful to see them finally get to go home. If they were kindly souls in the hospital you know that they're probably much loved and missed at home. Besides, there is always the blessing of a new face, a new story, a new person to fill the vacancy. There's no end to sick people. It's interesting that there's always the same basic proportion of bastards, sweethearts and in-betweens. Guaranteed, in my unit, you'll find two or three real turds (or patients with turd relatives, which is worse) about the same number of angels, three or four patients who are so hopeless you could cry, one or two who don't seem to need a hospital, three who are always sleeping (or getting a bath, or on the phone, or away for tests) so you don't know what they're like and a few who are so drugged up that everything to them (including the chaplain) is either beautiful or terrifying...or both. I could make the same comments about the staff...but I won't. |
