Hospital ward 111

Some drawings, a meditation practice and a poem

“Live life when you have it. Life is a splendid gift-there is nothing small about it.”
[from Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not by Florence Nightingale}

“Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.”
Florence Nightingale

“No stride is lost when we keep walking!”  Vassilis Vasilikos,  prolofic Greek writer, served as MP and Greece’s ambassador to UNESCO.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My husband has landed himself in hospital for a few days after falling off a ladder while working on a pergola, which resulted in his breaking several ribs.  As a result I’ve spent many hours in a hospital ward with six beds all occupied by men with different health issues, some having undergone surgery and others in the process of going into surgery. While sitting quietly by his bed as he naps I’ve had time to observe and think. Mabel Osgood Wright wrote that there is no greater garden for human-nature study than the flotsam and jetsam of the hospital.  Hospital contexts easily bring us in contact with an inescapable vulnerability that has to do with our often having little control in relation to our health, which is also a significant aspect of our common humanity. Despite our individuality, our diverse identities and backgrounds, experiences, personalities, characters, neuroses and defenses we all share this deep vulnerability and we are all inherently susceptible to suffering.  Hospitals are places where circumstances bring very different people together and where we experience or become witnesses to how things we often take for granted, when we are more or less healthy, like our bodies, our moving our limbs, showering, peeing, getting dressed, eating, breathing, swallowing, can suddenly fail us or may require strenuous effort and assistance from others.

Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD, is a clinical professor of medicine and one of the foremost voices in the medical world today, shining an unflinching light on the realities of healthcare and speaking passionately about the doctor-patient relationship. She is also a founder and editor of Bellevue Literary Review, the first and now an award-winning literary journal to arise from a medical setting. It provides a forum for poetry, fiction, and nonfiction about health and healing. Ofri reads poems to patients and hands out free copies of poems and this literary journal to the medical and nursing staff.  One of the poems she often reads is a poem written by John Stone, a cardiologist and poet, for a graduating medical class, who believed that literature could instill in young physicians the importance of their patients’ and their own humanity. He created one of the first medical school courses combining literature and medicine. Below is a short extract from his poem: Gaudeamus Igitur [Therefore, Let us Rejoice]

For the sun is always right on time  / and even that may be reason for a kind of joy

For there are all kinds of / all degrees of joy

For love is the highest joy

For which reason the best hospital is a house of joy

even with rooms of pain and loss    /    exits of misunderstanding

For there is the mortar of faith   /   For it helps to believe

For Mozart can heal and no one knows where he is buried

For penicillin can heal   /  and the word   /   and the knife

For the placebo will work and you will think you know why

For the placebo will have side effects and you will know  /   you do not know why  /

For none of these may heal

For joy is nothing if not mysterious

For your patients will test you for spleen   /   and for the four humors

For they will know the answer   /   For they have the disease

For disease will peer up over the hedge   /    of health, with only its eyes showing……..

I also like to think that in hospital settings for many people on both sides of the fence good wishes for others arise spontaneously.  So, I will end this short piece today with two versions of a loving kindness practice, which cultivates unconditional goodwill for all.

A loving kindness practice / meditation by Sharon Salzberg:

May you live in safety

May you have mental happiness /peace / joy

May you have physical happiness / health / freedom from pain

May you live with ease

A loving kindness practice by Jon Kabat Zinn:

May she, he, they be safe and protected and free from inner and outer harm.

May she, he, they be happy and contented.

May she, he, they be healthy and whole to whatever degree possible.

May she, he, they experience ease of well-being…