WriteRN Ramblings

I’m 64 miles from my father.

When Daddy was well, just five weeks ago, the distance didn’t seem far.

We spoke frequently on the phone, and texted quips and pictures back and forth.

I’d make the drive to visit occasionally, when I was able.

I feel such an urgency now.

I hate being away from his bedside, while at the same time I know I cannot remain there at all times.

I also need rest, and I need to ensure my Mama is resting, and eating.

My logical brain knows this.

In the middle of the night, I know this is when he wakens, confused. I stay in prayer for his safety.

I find myself grateful for the technology of bed alarms – something I never saw the importance of until my loved one was apt to try and stand when he is unable to.

Normal is gone.

In its place is a nightmare that is morphing daily into a situation so unrecognizable, I can barely handle it.

I have to, though.

It’s part of being the daughter. The caregiver.

I want to do so much more, but he is in the hands of medical personnel- the very career I worked at for nearly three decades.

I am at a loss.

This is way beyond me.

I just want him better. I want him home.

As I type this, I wonder…is this a long and horrible setback, or is this the fading away?

So I sit here, 64 miles away, praying for my Daddy.

My body is here, but my heart and thoughts are in another town, in a hospital, and my constant prayers are lifted for him.

Three generations, resting after lunch.

The patriarch is having open heart surgery tomorrow.

I’m the only daughter, at the bedside again, watching…waiting.

My baby, the only granddaughter, is resting on the stiff couch by the window.

It is calm. Peaceful.

I’m glad.

I’m trying to keep my mind calm.

Memories of cardiac patients I have had, and open heart surgeries I have observed, rush in like waves, and I breathe and push back, letting them retreat back into the dark place they came from.

This is different.

I know the questions to ask the doctors, but I don’t. I let them give me the information as they see fit.

It’s enough.

More is too much.

In this transitional day from anticipating surgery to tomorrow’s actual procedure, I need peace.

Peace of mind.

Peace of heart.

So we rest.

They sleep.

I pray.

We wait.

My therapist said to be present as it unfolds.

This is my goal.

Waiting.

It’s time to go to bed.

We are in the hospital, and it’s only nine pm, but we are both exhausted from the very stressful, long day. 

The hospital bed has five layers of sheets and blankets. He’s frustrated by this, and asks me to straighten every wrinkle and stretch them over his feet, and under his chin. I patiently comply. 

Look, I say – we are full circle. You used to tuck me in, and now I am tucking you in. 

My 84 year old father chuckles, and continues to futz with his bedding for several minutes before he calms down. 

We came in for a routine test. 

We are staying because now he needs open heart surgery. 

I find it hard to sleep – and not just because of the rock hard surfaces I have to choose from to lay on.

I don’t want to miss a minute.

I don’t want to miss helping him if he needs me, and I know I have to remind him to unplug the IV, use the urinal every time (he forgets), and not to use his right hand, where the radial artery is forming a clot where they punctured it for the cardiac cath. 

No history of heart disease. Yet here we are. 

I repeat to him what the doctor said several times during the day, between breaking the news to the family. 

I don’t want to do this. 

I’m not ready for this. 

I ask the nurses about the surgeon, desperate for reassurance. 

After settling him in, I’m trying to settle my troubled mind. 

I’ve slowly slid into a pseudo caregiver role over the past few years. My mom is smart and sharp, a natural advocate – an informed consumer of the health care system. 

Her body, though, is wracked by arthritis, osteoporosis and neuropathy, and she is getting tired. The ADL’s are wearing her down. 

Daddy is old school. He goes to the doctor when he’s supposed to, and comes home with vague “everything is fine” pronouncements.

Except now it’s not.

I have been doling out support and suggestions from my home 40 miles away, or an hour and ten minutes as the tourist traffic rolls.  

Now I’m pressed into service.

Nurse. Daughter.

Daughter. Nurse.

I feel helpful and helpless at the same time. 

It’s an uneasy line to walk. 

There won’t much sleeping for me tonight. 

The sparrow was sitting on top of a parking sign, pecking at the metal.

I was inside a local business, and I love birds, so I watched him for a while.

He started to look around, and his beak was frequently opening and closing.

I knew he was chirping, but I couldn’t hear him.

His head tilted too and fro, opening and closing his beak over and over.

I strained to hear him, but the sound of steady traffic passing just behind him was louder. The bubbling water near me was louder. The talking inside the business was louder.

Then, everything stilled for a couple of minutes.

Sweetly, faintly, I heard the sweet chirps coming out from his beak.

I smiled.

Immediately I had two thoughts.

First, how often I feel unheard. I’m expressing myself with all my heart, but no one can hear me. No one is really listening.

I know this isn’t true, though. God sees me crying out, and He hears my every plea – even the ones I can’t find the strength to speak aloud.

In Psalms it says this:

“I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.” – Psalm 116:1-2

He is always watching. Just like I watched that little sparrow, He was watching as well.

Then I suddenly realized the most important part for me …. Being still. Only then can I hear the still, small voice of God.

As long as I’m caught up in the business, the noise, the problems of others, I can’t hear Him.

I must get still. Quiet my inner dialogue. Settle. Then I can hear His voice.

I Kings 19:11-13 says:

^“11 Then He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before the Lord.” And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; ¹² and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire ^[a]a still small voice.”

There may be no apparent response to my cries.

Yet the God of the Universe is always attuned to them.

There are always distractions, always noise, there is always strife.

I can’t hear Him there.

I hear Him when I still myself, quiet my heart.

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” – Matthew 6:26

God is taking care of this house sparrow at a strip mall on a cloudy spring day.

How much more he cares for me!

How much more he hears me!



If you want to keep your horse in a small area and you don’t have anywhere to tie the reins, you hobble it.

This way, by incapacitating one leg, the horse cannot run off. You do what you need to do, and the horse stands by.

I’ve been hobbled.

I had a knee replacement last year.

Everything went very well (after the failed spinal anesthesia nightmare, waking up with 10/10 pain. But I digress). I had prehabbed for months in preparation, and was a very compliant patient with my physical therapy.

I was ready to get back to normal.

Then things changed.

My last day of PT, my thigh seized up in the worst charlie horse of my life. I iced, elevated, bit a bullet – and hours later it finally released, leaving me feeling beat up and exhausted.

Life went on. Occasionally this would happen, but rarely – and never when things were crucial.

The new year brought a new job, and excitement for ministering to families again.

Then came March.

Six times in one month, the leg seized up. The hip protested. The back cramped.

I went back to my surgeon. He tested everything on my knee, and it was great. It is, in fact, in much better condition than my native knee.

He was perplexed. He had never seen my set of symptoms in his decades of practice. I cried. We hugged. He referred me to sports med.

As I sit waiting on my lumbar MRI, I’m talking to God. Why am I hobbled?

Surely there must be a reason we paused on this path, in this exact place.

I should be resting in Him, but I am not.

I’m frustrated. I’m in pain. I’m exhausted.

I want answers.

Even as I sit here, I know I may not get conclusive answers.

I need to stay with Him. I can’t go far.

I’m hobbled.

Only He knows if or when the hobble will be taken off.

I left home nearly 15 hours ago.

The sun was rising, casting pastel hues across the clear sky. The cardinals were singing, and a gentle breeze brushed past my face.

Praise music on, I opened the panoramic sunroof to the glass, letting the peach and pink ambient light in. I sipped my protein shake between singing my praises and prayers.

The shift.

Long. Full of new experiences and charting and call bells and admits and discharges and meds and treatments and and and and

Fifteen hours later, I cross the threshold of my home. I set down my heavy backpack. I pull out tomorrow’s uniform. I set up tomorrow’s lunch. I eat dinner at nine pm – delicious, but unappreciated due to the time. It’s rote.

I spend a few precious moments with my husband.

I put my face in a bouquet of white roses on the book shelf and breathe deep. Life exudes from those soft petals.

I warm the bed and crawl in.

I’m too tired to sleep.

I hurt from my shoulders to my feet.

The shift.

Things have changed as another decade looms.

The walk from my car to my unit at the hospital I where I just started working is a quarter mile long.

The sun is up when I arrive, so I always walk in to work along the sidewalk, saying my morning prayers, preparing for the day. The frequent employee buses pass me by, and I smile as I get my steps in.

My favorite part of the walk is the entrance to the hospital space.

I take a deep breathe as a see the pergola – I exhale as I see the two live oaks on rather side just beyond, with limbs stretching toward each other, yet not touching.

The oaks are festooned with garlands of fern in every dark crevice, and hanging between the trees is a large, metal wind chime.

This is the space where I feel myself surrendering to the call of caring for others.

Most days, a breeze is twisting the tubes of the chime, and I breathe in its sonorous, deep tones.

On days with no breeze, I’ll reach up and brush the circle that hangs lowest, and elicit at least one deep tone to hum into my soul.

I take a deep breathe as I pass under the branches, and lift my face to head into the hospital.

Grounded, centered, and at peace.

Every month, I go to the infusion center at one of my local hospitals to get a giant shot to suppress estrogen post breast cancer.

Every month. For at least 3 years – maybe 5.

I circle the parking lot for at least 15 minutes every month, stalking those who might be walking to their vehicle.

Then the hospital decided registration must be done with the masses, so that’s another 15-20 minutes of unnecessary time wasted.

Onward to the infusion center waiting room, where inevitably someone or two will have their phones up full blast, watching reels or talking on face time.

Another 30 minutes on average before I am called back.

Then, I wait for the shot. It has to be ordered, and can’t be until I am here.

Cue another 15-20 minutes.

Finally it arrives, and it takes 30 seconds to scan and administer.

An hour and a half for a 30 second shot.

I’m grateful for the medicine.

I’m grateful for the sweet girl at registration.

I’m grateful for dependable transportation, for relatively good health, and for a job that I can schedule around my appointment.

Most of all, I’m grateful that I am one month closer to not having to go through this.

Hallelujah!

On April 26, my beloved Australian shepherd, Mitzi, passed away in our home, with my husband and I at her side.

I went to the vet a week later and pick up her cremains, and she has stayed on my bedside table ever since. I run my fingertips over the carved wooden box daily, telling her she’s a good girl, and that I miss her.

Her collar is front of the box, and if I touch it or pick it up, my dog Heidi will appear in an instant, anxious to see Mitzi when she hears the tags jingle. She will then smell the collar, and walk away slowly.

She remembers.

Our Christmas tree is up and fully decorated now. Mitzi and I spent many hours in the early hours of the day over the years sitting together in the living room, together, silent.

No one else was up, and the only light was from the tree.

It was always a magical time together for us.

Today I moved Mitzi’s wooden box for the first time since April.

I took it into the living room, setting it on the bookshelf that faces the Christmas tree. Next to the box is her puppy picture, and my favorite picture of her.

She now faces the Christmas tree, and it feels right.

Every morning she will be with me near the Christmas tree again.

I miss her.

A female cardinal on the porch rail

Hops and chirps, unaware of the 80lb dog just behind the window glass –

Her muted colors disappear

Into the Boston fern she dives into

House finches peep, with a flurry of wings

Fluttering into the hanging geraniums

Fussing in the little nest they have hidden

Before setting off to light on the magnolia

Squirrels run circles around the oleanders

Hopping onto the roof with a clutter

Running along the edge noisily

Before leaping onto the back fence

The morning sun pours through live oak

Filtering it through the blinds –

I’m distracted by the life and energy

Just outside my windows to the porch