13 hours

some days are just long. today was one of those days. i left my room at a quarter to nine this morning, and i'm just getting back at a quarter to ten tonight. thirteen hours. lovely.

actually, to be perfectly honest - i don't mind the long days. sometimes i prefer them. i feel as though i have accomplished something, i don't get sucked into watching mindless television, and i really enjoy coming back to the room and my roommates - like coming home after a long day of work.

so what filled my day? all beautiful things, really. i had my maternal/child health nursing theory class from 9-12, which is has continued to be the highlight of my week this semester. then i had a break for lunch (tuna sandwich - wonderful). then i met up with one of my bosses - the project coordinator for a research initiative that i help out with. it's focused on maternal/infant bonding and communication in mothers with post-partum depression. absolutely incredible project to be on. the work can for sure get tedious (who really adores data entry?), but just knowing what i'm working on/toward is so incredibly exciting, and the people are so great.

then i was off to my theology class: ethics in international relations. so interesting - definitely over my head a good 85% of the time, but really engaging and pushing me toward greater awareness and real critical thinking. not just the analytical thinking of high school or some of my underclassman classes, but real critical thinking which demands that i personally engage in the material being discussed. today we talked about inter-religious dialogue and its role in international communication. like i said: so interesting. that class lasted until five, and then i headed off to babysit.

after quite the rigamarole to find a babysitting job (including going out for an interview which i never made because i got on the right bus only to find that it was taking the wrong route and ending up in the middle of nowhere) - i stumbled across a family right near campus with three adorable boys, an equally adorable mother, and beautiful, healthy, organized home. tonight was my first night, and i got acquainted with the boys and their habits while they ate dinner, did some homework (the oldest is in second grade), read story books, and went to bed. they are 7, 5, and 18 months - and i realized over the course of the evening how much of a blessing it is to get off campus and into a home, especially a home with kids. i loved every minute of it.

so now i am back in my room and have in one sense very little to show for my day except for sheer exhaustion, but in another sense i was blessed with many beautiful moments - where i was encouraged again and again that my heart's beat lies in maternal/infant care, where i was challenged academically and personally to look again at how i view the world, where i was able to catch up with a superior that is quickly becoming a friend, where i held a baby in my arms as he drifted off to sleep...

i can't think of a better way to spend 13 hours of any given day.

the scale of suffering

for about a week now, i have been meaning to post on my blog - talk about the first week of classes, my roommates, the transition, etc. but i'm glad, in a sense, that i'm such a procrastinator because thursday was my first day of clinical rotation for the semester, and it was such an amazing experience.

on thursdays i am at a hospital here in boston on a medical intermediate care unit - we generally have strictly medical patients who present with end-stage heart disease, post-stroke, renal failure, or end-stage liver disease, waiting for a transplant. they are very, very sick people often on upwards of twenty-five different medications for all of the complications and complexities of their diseases.

my patient on thursday was one such patient. she is fifty-five years old and dying from lung cancer. she's been fighting the cancer for a few years now, but then a few weeks ago, everything was complicated by a massive stroke which left the left side of her body paralyzed. when i saw her, she was continuing to have many issues including a decreasing mental stability. she was seeing people in the corners of the room or standing above her chair - people who she hated or people that had hurt her or random strangers. it was relatively overwhelming, to be sure - especially because i haven't taken the psych nursing class (that's next fall), but i was definitely blessed to have the help of another girl in my clinical group.

i was just so struck by the fragility of our human lives. i saw her lying there, staring off into the corner, the left side of her body completely useless to her, and i imagined what she would have been like only a few weeks ago. she was young and vital, completely bowled over by a series of severe and crippling diseases. seeing her and caring for her didn't make me never want to get old or never want to be in the hospital - maybe that's still the adolescent sense of invincibility in me - but it did make me take a minute and fully appreciate what a blessing my mind and my daily functionality is. i did yoga on friday with my roommate, and i'm still incredibly stiff and sore, but at least i can still move, at least i can still determine reality from hallucination...

it was difficult, in a way, to be in the hospital state-side again - to see everything that is made available for these patients, and then to think back to my own experience or to read the blogs of my friends still in sierra leone and hear about the struggles with equipment and medication and even more fundamental things like electricity and water...but, in the end, i have to enter into the suffering of the person i am with. i couldn't deny that woman the support, respect, and love that she needed just because she happened to have access to top notch healthcare.

suffering and pain cannot be measured on some absolute scale...

my heart was singing

yesterday i took a trip to the grocery store, and it was absolutely lovely. i rode the t out with lisbee who was headed down to new york for the weekend, and we were both sitting next to each other when a young mom and her three children came on the train. a little boy, noah, jumped on first – probably six or seven years old. following him was a little girl, leila, who i would guess was just a few years younger than her brother, perhaps four or five. then came mom pushing the youngest in a stroller – a bright-eyed, super friendly toddler with just a small tuft of hair crowning her chubby, round face.

the next thing i know, leila is standing in front of me: ‘can i have a seat, please?’ her small face was full of all sincerity, completely ignorant of how rude or odd that question might come across if asked by an adult yet in full faith that because she asked, her question would be answered in the way she wished. i quickly hopped up from my seat and stood nearby, holding on to the bar and swaying with the train’s sometimes gentle, sometimes jerky motion. the trees and brownstones passed by, and lisbee and i fought outright smiles to hear this little girl have a conversation with her brother while the mother stood there and the toddler smiled away.

sitting here and thinking about that moment, i am struck by the raw innocence which i encountered that morning. a living example of what it means to approach the father with child-like (not childish) faith. i think i might have to name my daughter leila someday...

the grocery store itself was wonderful. i’ve been going more an more to trader joe’s a really inexpensive co-op, mostly organic little place which has spotty selection but always great, healthy food. it was so exhilarating to have my list and my little basket and walk the aisles again picking the things i need from the shelves. i love grocery shopping. i love buying produce and seeing all of its potential. i think of all the ways i’m going to prepare it, and i get so excited. i also purchased canvas grocery bags yesterday – to take a page from my sister – and it was so absolutely lovely to walk out of that grocery store, my two bags full to the brim with promise and potential, feeling one with the earth and god’s creation and his people. my heart was singing...