This week’s column is difficult for me to write. However, I wish to dedicate this week to every grieved family in America. You see, we are in serious danger of losing our grown son. We and many, many of you are praying and we rely on that prayer to strengthen us and to hopefully turn this situation around. We do have faith, and we do trust God with His Will.
We are in Wichita at St. Francis Via Christi sitting in the trauma unit where he is hooked up to many machines. We are observing the machines do their job and watching the fluctuating numbers indicating to us how badly or how well things are going. And for us things are not going well. But this can turn around, and we do thank you for your support.
I read the obituaries. For years I didn’t but most of us who are in our senior years now pay attention to such notices. I recently read where a young man, a boy really, just lost his battle with cancer. I hear about policemen shot down unmercifully, leaving their shocked families to cope with no dad or husband. Our living in this trauma unit for days reveals so much of the human tragedy of accidents and illnesses.
We are certainly not the Lone Ranger. Many of you have suffered the sorrows and others experienced the victories that are common in these hospital situations.
But there’s good news here as well. I see doctors, nurses, physician assistants and aides struggling and fighting for the lives of their patients. These patients are not numbers to these professionals. Not at all. The sick and broken have names: people for whom they develop attachments. Watching and caring, the teams are unbelievable in their care and loyalty to do all that they can to save lives.
I am deeply impressed and although our struggle here is the most important task to us I marvel at these medical professionals and the care of all these different needs. They care for many and once their group of patients moves on they start all over again with the same compassion and care that they had with their previous patients.
They feel and share the burden with the patients and their families.
How in the world do they do it?
We possess the same care in our local hospitals as well. The staffs are a Godsend, and just the fact that they are there, efficient and caring, hardworking and knowledgeable, is a comfort to us all. Can you imagine an existence without these facilities and people? What would it be if there were no docs, no nurses, no emergency workers, no aides, and on and on.
So here we are in a very precarious and helpless situation, strangers in a big environment. But we are so not alone. And we have caring, knowledgeable, help.
God is here in this place.
Judi Tabler lives in Pawnee County and is a guest columnist for the Great Bend Tribune. She can be reached at bluegrasses@gmail.com.