two thoughts from Stu

Stu occasionally operates a spotlight at a local live theater and that's what he was doing last Saturday when he got the call from the transplant team. On his drive home from the theater, he was following a car along the main road that his street turns off of and the driver of that car slowed down, pulled to the side of the road, and allowed Stu to pass him. Then the driver pulled out and followed as closely as he could behind Stu. That's when Stu realized he had probably been following the other driver too closely.

At least the guy didn't follow Stu onto his street or into his driveway, but Stu did wonder if the other driver would have been so quick to anger if he'd known about the call Stu had just received.

~~~~~

During the time Stu spent in the intensive care unit, I spent a fair amount of time in the ICU waiting room with family members of other ICU patients. There was an older woman who was struggling to figure out her cell phone so she could contact the adult children of her companion because the doctors said they needed to make an "end-of-life" decision and she just couldn't do it by herself. She tried to reach several of them and finally made contact with a son who couldn't seem to understand what she was saying because she had to keep repeating herself, finally breaking down in tears, in what became at least a twenty-minute call.

There was a 40ish woman whose husband had been driving his car and did something that annoyed another driver. For some reason the two drivers pulled over, got out, and her husband ended up unconscious, after striking the back of his head on the ground.

There was also a teenage boy in the ICU who had flesh-eating bacteria, which sounds like it was as bad as it could have been, but I watched as his mother and father, clearly no longer spouses, came into the waiting room to discuss something. It quickly turned into a war, the woman spitting venom at the man, him ignoring her, resulting in more venom spewing from her fangs and a total dismissal from him. Later that day, they returned, this time with reinforcements. The waiting room was turned into a sad clown circus production.

It was awful.

The warring parents were still there when we left the ICU for the last time, their boy headed for the hyperbaric chamber again. The wife of the road rage victim/participant was still waiting in the waiting room.

And Stu said that the morning after his surgery he saw a line of adults filing past his room who, it appeared, had just said goodbye to their father for the last time.


~~~~~

It occurs to me now, and maybe I should have realized this a whole lot sooner, but the ICU is an intense place for many reasons. It is intense and scary and overwhelming and not very often joyful. Few patients go in there and come out in a better situation.

So many people. Too much of the tragedy of life.

But every now and then so amazing.