Patienthood

To be a patient means losing a lot.  What do you lose when you're a patient?

You lose space.  When you're well, your world consists of houses, fields, streets, open spaces--all kinds of space.  As a patient, your world is ten feet by ten feet if you're lucky.  It may even be smaller.  Your world really shrinks.

You lose mobility.  As you get better--IF you get better--they may let you move around, up and down the hall.  For some patients, being allowed to go the john on their own is a privilege they look forward to for weeks.

You lose control over who invades your space.  At home you don't have to let anybody in.  Nobody.  Unless he has a search warrant.  When you are a patient, dozens of people suddenly have the right to come right up to you and touch you, and there's nothing you can do about it.  Most of them don't even say, "excuse me."

You lose control over time.  You do things when other people want you to, not when you want to.  Have you heard the old bitter joke about being awakened at midnight to take a sleeping pill?  It is not a joke.  It happens.

Our patients who are well acquainted with the Bible often remind me of a passage in which Jesus says to Peter, "When you were young, you fastened your belt about you and walked where you chose; but when you are old you will stretch out your arms, and a stranger will bind you fast, and carry you where you have no wish to go."  (John 21:18)  Jesus wasn't really talking about what it feels like to be a patient, but to many patients the words ring true.

You lose control over what's done to your body.  For most healthy people, the skin is a kind of barrier; nobody can get inside your skin unless you want them to.  But being a patient means that people get inside your skin with tubes, needles, liquids, and probes.  

You lose contact, and maybe that's the worst of all.  You can't go to people; they have to come to you.  And sometimes they don't come.

What does that add up to?

It adds up to words like this: lonely, isolated, shut in, caged, helpless.  That in turn adds up to words like this:  angry, suspicious, irritable, demanding.

from Hospital Chaplain by Kenneth R. Mitchell