ICU Waiting Room

Preached at Prescott Baptist Church
December 4, 2011

Isaiah 40:1-11
Mark 1:1-8

Hospitals are places where we go when we are so sick or so injured that we have no choice but to let go and allow the professionals to take control of our lives. They say when we will eat if we get to eat at all. The hospital controls when the lights will go out and when we can have visitors. Nurses and respiratory therapists control the beeps and buzzes that indicate patients are still alive. Nurses, therapists and doctors follow protocols, pump us full of fluids and prescriptions, roll us from x-ray to surgery and keep their eyes on the monitors that measure how we’re doing. We wouldn’t go through all of this unless we had no choice.

The ICU is a particularly fast paced unit in the hospital. ICU nurses live in a face to face struggle against death. A heart stops beating and the nurse instantly starts chest compressions while reaching with her foot to drag an IV pole closer to the patient and at the same time holding a bag of normal saline between her teeth. ICU nurses don’t really have time to focus on compassionate communication. This is not to say that ICU nurses are cold hearted but it is to say that they have lots of courage. They’re equipped with adequate confidence. Have to be. Because they’re fighting Death.

As patients, family members and visitors—we feel lost and intimidated by all of the sounds, smells and the absolute authority of the hospital system. This is no Sunday picnic or holiday parade. We’re scared. We’re grateful for the treatments, medicines and healing. But we’re anxious and fearful the entire time we’re inside the hospital system.

St Joseph Hospital was a special place here in Memphis. The sisters ran St Joseph as a healing center, a place where people mattered. All people who entered the doors were to be received with respect and compassion. I worked weekends in their ICU Waiting Room. I was the liaison between the family in the Waiting Room and the nurses in the ICU. I made coffee, kept the waiting room neat and listened to people’s stories.

Communities would form in that small room with chairs around three walls.
One of the great fruits born of suffering is compassion. Tolstoy said that our great duty as humans is to sew the seed of compassion in each other’s hearts. This happens—for the most part—in ICU Waiting Rooms. Everyone is suffering so everyone becomes family.

I remember a tall Texan, Stewart, a middle aged man who was at the hospital because his wife, Elizabeth, had had a stroke while they were visiting in town. They had been walking on Beale Street when her speech suddenly slurred and she slumped over. Stewart sat and waited. He had a successful real estate business in Austin. He sat with his arms crossed, his long legs and fancy boots stretched out across the floor. He heaved great sighs of exasperation. His mantra was forceful and clear: I really don’t have time for this!”

Sue sat and waited too. Sue was short and round. She looked comfortable in her sweat pants and house slippers. She read romance novels or stared at the TV. Her husband’s kidneys were failing and his heart was struggling too. Information about him from the nurses wasn’t encouraging. Sue cried easily and often. Her mantra was painful: I wonder if I am to blame. I wonder if I fed Howard the wrong food. I should have made him stop drinking a long time ago…

Crystal, a beautiful ballroom dance instructor whose husband had been in a motorcycle accident, had a large group of friends and family who poured through the room in support of her and her husband. Even the media paid attention to Crystal. It was a dramatic story, a hit and run, and the journalists kept it in the papers for a few days. People brought sandwiches and drinks for her. There were people scheduled to keep company with Crystal around the clock. She was wrapped in a blanket and propped with a pillow. Her mantra: Why? Why did this happen? Why did this happen to us?

Crystal was gracious and generous. She shared with the other people in the ICU Waiting Room. Tuna sandwiches, potato chips, Oreos and lemonade. She had a huge cooler stocked at her side. Stewart, the Texan, was finally convinced it would be OK for him to accept a sandwich from Crystal. It was easy to see how difficult it was for Stewart to need something from her, from anyone. He gave his business card to everyone who came into the waiting room. He wanted to be seen as a man at work, not a man who was frightened half to death that things could get worse for Elizabeth—and him.

Sue accepted a sandwich, a bag of chips from Crystal. Sue’s lips trembled when she said, “Thank you.” She didn’t feel as though she deserved kindness and generosity. That was painful to see. Sue’s self esteem was so low it was almost a medical emergency on its own—there in the midst of this ICU experience.

Rhonda sat in the corner all alone. Her hair was long and stringy. One of Sue’s grandsons backed up to Sue and whispered so we could all hear him. “Is that lady a witch?” Sue hushed the boy but we could all see why he had made the connection. Rhonda was bony and her nose was sharp. Rhonda kept her eyes on her lap and the needlework in her hands. She was busy constantly-crocheting.

The nurses told me that Rhonda’s daughter, now thirty-five yeas old, was born with cerebral palsy. The daughter was on life support in the ICU. Rhonda didn’t accept sandwiches. She wouldn’t accept prayers when the chaplain stopped by. People in the waiting room learned quickly to stay away from Rhonda. She didn’t have to speak for all of us to know her mantra: Who cares? Who really gives a rip?

Sometimes suffering brings a deep darkness. The light goes out. Faith fades into the distance. Sometimes pain takes people into a place of desolation.

Catholic school girls came through the waiting room, whole classes of them came through wearing their nice uniforms and sweet smiles. They gave boxes of Kleenex and packages of thick socks to people around the room. Rhonda shrugged them off with a sniff and a scowl.

An odd little man, skinny, wiry and wearing a brown suit that was at least two sizes too big, scampered through the waiting room twice a day, morning and night. He brought tracts, slick Christian pamphlets that asked: If you were to die today do you know where your soul would spend eternity? Sue’s grandsons made paper airplanes with those tracts and flew them around the room.

I made coffee and carried the trash out. Church people brought newer magazines to stack on the coffee table. They took the old worn ones away. I went back to the unit every hour to check with the nurses. I looked in on patients. Respirators whirred. Vital sign monitors beeped. Air beds whooshed. Human beings were hard to distinguish under the machinery and the steady activity around them. “No change!” The nurses knew what I wanted to know. They didn’t have to stop working to give me the necessary information.

People can be poor in so many ways. Poverty affects our pocketbook and bank accounts. But poverty can affect our spirit. Anxiety and fear can open a door in our soul and drain away our hope. I fought that kind of poverty of spirit sometimes while I worked in the ICU waiting room. So many people didn’t get better. And if I was fighting to maintain hope—those family members and friends were fighting twice as hard.

I went back to the waiting room and family members scooted quickly to the edges of their chairs and looked at my face—searching for something of hope, some news that would claim a miracle was happening for them and their loved one. I spoke with what I hoped was a reassuring smile and tone: No changes yet. Everything is stable right now.

But then there were the times when I was summoned to the back by way of the intercom system. “Ms Blanchard, could you come back here please?” That was never good. The unit secretary only called for me when someone’s condition went from bad to worse. The family members were alert for the intercom and its messages.

I straightened my shoulders, took a deep breath, glanced around the room with a nod and went back. Norma, the nurse, was doing chest percussions. She was yelling at the patient, “Come on now! Come on now! Don’t you even think about giving up!” The on-call doctors and respiratory therapists were surrounding the bed. Norma shouted, “BP is dropping!” The doctor shouted orders. A nurse took a small bag from the crash cart and hooked it to Elizabeth’s IV line.

Elizabeth, the wife of the tall Texan. I saw Stewart in my mind’s eye, sitting out there in the waiting room, and sitting up as tall as he could sit, eager to take his wife out of here and get back to normal. He had told us all repeatedly about important real estate closings that required his presence and signature back in Austin. Normal would never be the same for Stewart.

I watched as the activity slowed down around Elizabeth’s bed. Shoulders slumped. Dr. Cook called it. Norma cursed. She hated to lose in a struggle with death. So she moved on to the next room, the next patient. Somebody else pulled the sheet up over Elizabeth’s face.

It takes a minute for people to get it together. Hands were washed. Other patients needed stat meds. There was always that burst of energy after a death when the nurses and staff wanted to escape, to do anything other than the inevitable—tell the family: All that could be done was done. It is over. We’re sorry.

Dr. Cook and Norma followed me through the locked doors and I motioned for Stewart to follow us into the small Family Room, a closet sized space reserved for bad news. Stewart groaned. I think he was trying to say the word: No. I looked at him and anger filled his features, made him look like a mountain lion crouched for the pounce. He didn’t make a sound but his face said so much: No it can’t be. No! I won’t allow it! No! I won’t follow you into that tiny space to hear that nothing more can be done, that I am all alone.

It was Sue, the one in her baggy sweat pants, who found the strength and courage to move quickly to Stewart’s side. She gently put one hand under his arm and lifted the man out of his chair. The two of them walked across the room to the doctor and nurse who reached out to support Stewart. Sue stepped back. It was a dance, a sweet dance initiated by somebody who has total confidence in her capacity to share compassion.

I stayed in the waiting room with the others while the doctor, the nurse and the chaplain gave Stewart some time and space to begin taking in the news. It didn’t take long. They all had more patients to see, more work to be done, more lives to save. Stewart came back in the waiting room and sat back down in the chair that had faithfully held his anxious hopes and fears for days.

One of Sue’s grandsons, an eight year old, was the first to notice Rhonda. She had put down her needlework and she was looking around the room. Tears were running like two rivers across her wrinkled cheeks. The little boy ran over to Rhonda and put his head in her lap. “It’s Ok, lady. It’s gonna be OK.” She cupped his head with her bony hand. And then she stood.

Rhonda walked over to Stewart and wrapped the man in the afghan she had been making all these days. The bright colors focused us. And the kindness of Rhonda’s gesture gave Stewart permission to cry. Leaning into Rhonda’s belly, he allowed all of us to carry some of his terrible grief. We clumped up in a tight circle and held each other.

Comfort, O Comfort my people, says your God. Prepare the way. Make straight a highway. Every valley shall be lifted up. Every mountain made low. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together.

It is a universal human need: to belong, to be part of a sacred circle, to be comforted by the compassion of others, to have our own compassion stirred in the circle of human connection.

We are all in some sort of waiting room. We need the comfort of community while we wait.

We are here together in this place and time. And for the journey we have been provided with food and assurances that our journey together is meaningful and full of hope. Our journey will lead us all home. And so it is that we gather together at this table where all are welcome and all are included and all are connected to eternal life and love. The way is prepared. You are invited to belong to those who journey on the way.

Amen