I spent this morning standing next to her as her vital signs went all over the map. It was a stomach wrenching roller coaster of a ride. Once she was mostly stable the nurse left as she was covering for another nurse who was going to lunch and the family in "bed 5" needed more attention than we did.
I stood there in the semi-silence of her room, the receptacle that collects the blood from the chest tubes bubbled away like one of those pseudo-zen waterfalls people put on their desks...there was the constant rhythm of cccshhhhh, click, puh-shhh as the respirator forced air in and out of her lungs.
The room is 3 normal walls and one made of huge sheets of glass that swing open in various stages from the size of a doorway to completely open. Inside the glass wall there is a length of hanging cloth that acts as a privacy divider. This was pulled a bit over half-way closed giving the room a sense of quite and privacy it hadn't had before.
I held her hand and put my other hand on her forehead and closed my eyes. "Heal" I thought over and over and over again as I took long deep breaths trying to focus on her with everything I have...I prayed silently "God, be with me, let the energy of the Universe...of all those praying for her, let her feel it" I took another long deep breath and focused, my hand moving over the incisions on her chest and as I exhaled I focused "Heal".
It's so hard to do, my mind keeps popping up saying I'm not doing anything or I'm being foolish or what an idiot I'll look like if someone walks in...and then, somewhere, deep inside of me there was this deep sense of calm and I heard "have faith" and I did...and I focused...but somewhere in the back of my mind I prayed for a sign it was working, something to hush the skeptic of my mind. And even in doing that I felt bad, because one isn't meant to ask for a sign when God simply asks you to have faith.
I felt so young, naked, pure...and I breathed and focused..."Heal" I could see her lungs in my mind's eye...but not in the medical way I'm used to picturing them. Just this sense of pushing that energy into that space and knowing where it was needed. I focused and breathed and pushed and relaxed into it, blending with her...with something beyond that room.
Finally I was exhausted, though it was more of a sense of being done for now and being allowed to feel spent. I slowly opened my eyes...her blood pressure was stable...her o2 absorption the highest it has been in days. I watched the stats in silence, some part of me knowing it was over and that nagging annoying bit of my mind waiting for the numbers to plummet again.
I watched for close to half an hour, I know because the blood pressure cuff went off twice and it's set to every 15 minutes. I looked at the clock as her vital signs looked better and better to me, it had been well over an hour. Suddenly I became aware of my feet hurting and the horrible crick in my low back from having been hunched over.
I hobbled over to the only chair in the room and sat in silence for a long time, just watching her and feeling deeply grateful. "Thank you, God" I said to myself over and over and over again.
When we went back a few hours later, she was awake. Her vitals have been stable, she squeezed my hand and all I could think was "thank you, God" over and over and over again.
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