A Trip to the ER

After a five day retreat with Threshold Choir in Healdsburg filled with singing, good food, new friends and camping in a VW van, I came home in time to call 911 when my husband passed out on the way to the bathroom at 3 a.m. We spent 12 hours in the ER and he had many tests before learning that he has a benign stomach tumor and will have surgery Monday. The night in the ER was a particularly busy one and at one point we had to be moved to a different room because they were bringing in a woman who had just given birth to her baby at home and had developed complications.

At one point, when I walked out of John's room, I bumped into one of the choir members I had been on retreat with. She is a hospice nurse and was there because one of her patients was having difficulty breathing and a family member had called 911. Helen came into John's room and we sang him a beautiful song, the words a haiku: Simply trust. Don't the leaves flutter down just like that. Later, Helen asked if I would sing with her at her patient's bedside because the family was falling apart. It was my first experience of singing for someone who was dying.

I was impressed with the great care John got even though the nurses were overworked. Each one treated him with respect, care and some humor when it was called for. In a strange coincidence, our neighbor across the street was taken to the hospital the day after John with chest pains and she was in the room directly above his.

I was set to go to the national conference for professional organizers in Reno next week where the keynote speaker is Peter Walsh, author of Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? Instead I will be hanging out in my husband's room at Kaiser. I am grateful to all the caregivers, the doctors, the nurses, the orderlies who have taken such good care of my husband. And to my family and friends who will be sitting with me Monday as we wait for good news of a successful surgery.