humbled

(Just a warning:  this will probably be a tl;dr narrative of what went down today. I just had to put it down... and I end up rambling a lot.)



Bering-Omega was not easy today.

For those who don't know, Bering-Omega is the HIV/AIDS hospice I volunteer at (Ben volunteers there too!  Yay!) once every other week or so (sometimes every week, sometimes there's like a 4 week gap) since Sept.  I was actually planning on going to CSA Banquet, but on Friday, Bering called me and asked if I could possibly help out on Easter night.  I'd forgotten that Ashley had signed me up for the CSA Banquet, so I said yes, but then I later remembered... regardless, I would've rather gone to Bering anyway to help out.

I decided to volunteer there to get better bedside manners, learn more about HIV/AIDS, and maybe connect with some of the gay population.  Oftentimes, we do things like make/serve lunch/dinner, do their laundry, sweep and mop the floors, clean the toilets, clean the bathrooms, chat with them, help out with whatever things the residents need.

So anyway, today a couple of the residents were kinda in a grumpy mood.  I'm also not the most thoughtful helper, although I feel like I do have the passion for service.  I just don't always have the brains or experience.  First off, I'd kinda messed up on giving a correctly-sized plate to M and forgot to give him a paper towel for a napkin, and he had some snarky comments for me about that.  Then, I gave T, who was a small, thin Hispanic man in bed, a glass of ice and asked him if there was anything else he needed.  T said he wanted some of his juice from the fridge, which one of the earlier volunteers who had left mentioned.  I was pretty sure it was the one that had T's name on it, but after I got him the juice, I asked him if it was the right one, and he said it was the one in a gallon jug (which it was in, like those milk carton gallons), and I told him that I thought it was.  Then he described what the jug looked like, and said (i think... sometimes he was difficult to understand) that it had a handle, and I said that it did have a handle, and then he looked at me and threw his hand out, exasperated, asking me if I knew what a gallon jug looked like.  I said yes, and I asked if it was see-through, like if you could see what color the juice was inside, but I don't think he really remembered.  He face sunk, because I guess he assumed I got the wrong juice, but I told him that I thought I got the right one, but I could check again, but he told me not to.  (basically, communication fail.)

Anyway, I apologized a couple times throughout all of this and then kinda just slunk away.  I told myself not to take anything personally, and that he was probably grumpy due to pain/lack of sleep/HIV/AIDS.

So I continued on, until at one point the nurse-call rang for his bed.  I thought that I could just let the nurse take care of it, but I felt like I should check just in case.  The nurse was actually there by T's bed, and she asked me to take off his sweater for him.  He was telling the nurse that his sweater was hurting him, and he seemed fairly pressed to get it off.  I said sure, put some gloves on, and she walked away to go help another resident.

My experience with taking people's clothes off has been mostly limited to my kids at summer camp, and oftentimes it was more just me prompting them, and they've usually been quite mobile.  Although I do remember putting on shoes with my first site director on a new camper in a wheelchair, and he was visibly pained as we put his shoes on (we were a little harsh since we were in a hurry, and I had no skills in putting shoes on either).  We apologized of course, but I don't think he came back to our camp... =(  dunno if it was that incident or other extenuating circumstances, but I'm sure it didn't help.
Anyway, I wasn't sure where to begin.  He was lying on his bed, and I reached behind his back to maybe try and sit him up.  He told me that I wouldn't be able to lift him up, so I said that I would go and raise up that part of his bed.  He said sure, with a feeling of "-_-" and slight displeasure, but I went to the controls for his bed and raised him up.

I imagined taking his sweater off with his arms raised up and then taking it off straight from his head like I'd made my campers do before, so I asked him if he could raise his hands.  He didn't respond, so I told him I was going to move his arms since they were kinda crossed by his chest, and as I moved his arm in front of him, he said "Ow!" and told me to be careful with his elbow.  I gingerly moved his other arm, and then decided to take his sweater off head first.  Looking back, this makes only marginal sense, but I was still imagining taking it straight up off of his head, with his arms following, I guess.

I put my hand behind his back and lifted him up a little off the bed, and began to pull on the back of his sweater neck.  As I was pulling slowly, his face was partially covered, and he was probably uncomfortable, so he told me to hurry.  I pulled quickly, and then he shouted in pain, because the sweater had caught his chin and so I stopped what I was doing.  His hand moved the soothe his chin, and in between the "ow"s... he asked me why did I pull so hard, and that it had caught on his chin, and that now his neck was going to be hurting all night long.  I apologized profusely, and he told me in pain and anger, "Sorry doesn't change anything.  Sorry doesn't make the pain go away." I stood there awkwardly, as he said "ow" and was in obvious pain, holding the back of sweater neck to support his sweater from collapsing on his head, and just said nothing, waiting for him to feel better.

After he was ready, either he told me, or I decided to try pulling on his right arm (I was standing on the left side of his bed) to take that off.  Seeing that it was more difficult that I thought, and it didn't seem like he could help much, I went back to pulling on the back of sweater neck.  He asked me why I was pulling on both, as his face was once again partially covered.  So I apologized and I went back to his right arm.  His hand was partially covered, and he told me to pull his arm out... which confused me, so I asked him if he meant like take his hand out (the opposite of taking off the sweater... i thought maybe he had gotten tired of me messing with that arm and wanted me to work on his sweater body?) or like pull the sweater away.  He meant pull the sweater away, so I did that and he shrank his arm into his sweater, and it went pretty easily.
I then moved onto his back, and made sure to watch out for his chin this time, although
 This time, he shrank his arm into his sweater, and that went pretty easily.  I went to his sweater body again, and pulled it up slowly, this time struggling to push his body away from his bed and pull the sweater off.  Once the body was off, all that was left to take off was his left arm, and I slowly pulled that off too, and got the sweater.  In the midst of this, he asked me if I was gonna help him (this was when I would stand there, trying to decide how to take off the next part without hurting him) and he was still in pain, punctuating the sweater taking-off with "ow"s.

At the end, he told me to tell the nurse that his neck was going to be bothering him all night, and I apologized, and he told me to stop saying sorry, because that didn't make the pain go away, and it only made him upset.  He said he didn't meant to be mean, but he was in pain.  I held his sweater in my hands, and watched him massage his neck and chin.  I looked away, beginning to tear up.  I thought to myself, "Don't cry, David, don't cry." and tried to cheerfully ask him where he wanted his sweater.  He said that on the chair would be fine, so I placed it on the chair, and then stood there again, with no words to say.  I told him I would go find the nurse and tell her about his neck, and then I left.

Searching around half-frantically for the nurse, the tears were starting to well up even more.  I thought about going into a bathroom and crying there for a bit, but I knew I had to tell the nurse first.
I avoided the other volunteer there, not wanting her to see my tears, until at last I gave up on finding the nurse.  I asked her if she knew where the nurse was, and I told her what I'd done... she told me that sometimes the residents are a little grumpy like that, to not take it personally (which I'd been trying to tell myself), that in a few minutes he'd probably calm down, and she told me that the nurse was probably in B's room, one of the female residents.  I went there, still occasionally brushing away the tears and trying to push back the thoughts of how I had hurt him, the pain that I'd made him go through, and how inadequate I was.
As I was walking towards the room, the nurse came out, and I hardened my voice, hoped my eyes weren't too red, and told her about how T's neck would be hurting all night because I had pulled too quickly and it caught onto his chin.  As I was saying this, she rolled her eyes, and told me, "Don't worry about it," letting me know that he'd be ok.

I said thanks, and then I walked to the guest bathroom (the bathroom for any overnight guests and for us volunteers).  I told myself not to take it personally.  I told myself that it was my first time, and I didn't know what I was doing, and I was just ignorant... but I began to cry anyway.
I thought to myself, "Maybe I can't be a doctor." How could I possibly handle accidentally hurting a patient or having a patient die, even if it wasn't really my fault?  I'd always known this could be a potential problem for me, but I thought I would just deal with it as it came.  I thought by then I would learn to emotionally distance myself enough so that that wouldn't affect me as much, while still being able to care about the patient.

With tears blurring my vision, my hand stumbled to find the light for the bathroom and I closed and locked the door behind me.  I took the nearest paper towels, sank down, sat on the ground and continued crying, beginning to sob a little, feeling horrendous for hurting him for not knowing what to do, and for feeling so worthless.

I knew I was overreacting, but of course, that only added to my tears because then I was also angry at myself for crying, angry that I was so pathetic.   I told myself that I should've asked the nurse before she left to help me or give me guidelines on what to do.  I'd been on and off trying to pray through all of this, but I couldn't get very far into my thoughts before I started feeling like crap again, and being alone in the bathroom sobbing didn't change much.
Eventually, I prayed some more and cried some more, and tried to demand that I collect myself.  I looked at my eyes in the mirror and noticed how red they were getting.  I thought to myself how emotionally unstable I'd been this weekend, just crying all over the place, and that I couldn't stay in here forever, so I washed my face a couple times, and took a couple deep breaths.  While I was struggling with keeping the tears at bay, I reminded myself of God's love for me, and just that it was good that I at least tried to do things with love.  But if I didn't know how to love, then was trying to do things with love worth it?  I guess I could only try my best, and know that God would bless that, so I tried to collect myself again and then I walked out.  I decided I could go clean the dishes because that required minimal human contact and therefore my eyes could go back to being white again.

I put on "Stronger" by Hillsong to encourage me, and began cleaning.  Even as I was washing the dishes, however, if I thought back to the incident, I would tear up again.  I stopped myself, since I didn't want my eyes to be so red, and the other volunteer was kinda talking to me and I was too afraid to turn around for fear of judgment.  I eventually reasoned with myself that I'd rather have a doctor who cares too much than a doctor who cares too little, and that I shouldn't be afraid of judgment, so I occasionally turned around and faced her as I was cleaning the dishes.
I'd imagined changing the song to a more pop-y Christian song and having the other volunteer remark on it and us getting into a talk about Christianity, but it turned out that she remarked on the Hillsong that was playing anyway.  I'd met and worked with C about a month or so ago, and that time we talked for a bit about Christanity.  She said back then that she went to a church by her apartment once in a while.
Anyway, this time she said that she noticed that I was playing some Christian music and that it sounded nice. I told her how great Hillsong was and that she could look it up on YouTube if she wanted, and she said she appreciated me telling her that.  We continued to talk about Christianity since I kinda pushed the topic, she expressed her gratitude for me wanting to talk about it, and we chatted about the church she went to, and then later about a problem at work she was having.

Overall, the shift turned out much better, and when I went to go check on T a bit later, he was fast asleep.  While I was starting to take off his sweater, he had remarked that he was really sleepy.  So at least his neck didn't hurt so much that he couldn't sleep...

The sweater incident was definitely a humbling experience, and I feel better about it now... especially as my memory fades of exactly what happened as I was trying to take off his sweater.  Had I not had that humbling experience, I probably wouldn't have come into talking with C with as much vulnerability as I had... knowing that I was kind of on the brink of tears for a while.

It was all kinda ridiculous, but also illuminating about myself.  I hadn't expected to break down like that... so I guess I'm not as thick-skinned as I thought.  I've known since elementary school that I always end up taking things personally and that words cut very deeply into me (I would tell my friends that the "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" adage couldn't be further from the truth for me).  I thought I'd gotten a bit better at keeping words at bay, though.
That kinda bothers me that I didn't, since it's kinda crazy-excessive-self-pitying... and it just shows that I place way too much worth on myself and what others think of me.

Ah well... as Deanne said when someone remarked that Deanne would be the last person he thought who would care what other people thought of her style... I'm human.
I will naturally be somewhat influenced by people's opinion.  After all, sanctification is a long journey.  Once again, this is why I always really admire the people who I feel don't care about what other people think of them (but of course, they still have some societal etiquette in the sense that they're not selfish and they're not obnoxious about not caring about what others think).  Much like Jesus.  He didn't care what people thought of Him.  He did His own thing, and He did it with love and with the intent of serving the people He was with.

May I be that kind of radical for God.