Two hands

So we're wrapping up the upper limb in Gross Anatomy.  Today we discussed the hands and how the small intrinsic muscles move our fingers to allow for fine motor movement such as holding a pencil or picking up a coin.  

While we've been discussing the forearm and hand, I've become more aware of the slight numbness on the 4th and 5th digits on my left hand. I’m pretty sure it's due to a superficial cut slightly distal (below) my medial epicondyle of my humerus which is the inner part of my elbow.  That cut happened in the fall of 2007. Even if the faint scar wasn't there I could still place the cut because that fall of 2007, I made that cut among many on my upper and lower left limbs.   

Studying the hands made me think of the song "Two Hands" by Jars of Clay. I realized that for a good part of one year, I was using one hand to praise/ serve God, and another hand to literally destroy His creation - of my own limbs. Studying the hands also made me realize I am lucky to still have use of my left hand. The ulnar nerve is rather superficial and I could have easily damaged it during that time which would render my fingers useless. 


More importantly, studying the hands made me think of God's restoration and healing. The scars along some of the superficial vessels have faded greatly and I no longer self-injure. In fact, I realized that I have used my hands to help my clients at a group home avoid self-injury. This is really cool to think about - that I have come this far, and God has redeemed that experience so I can help others. 


The residual tingling in my fingers that I feel sometimes is a reminder of all that, but when I am able to use BOTH my hands to serve others and praise God, I have a much more powerful reminder of God's healing. 


I use one hand to pull You closer 
The other to push You away 
 
If I had two hands
Doing the same thing 
Lifted high 
Lifted high 

-  Jars of Clay

 

Indescribable revisited

In my last blog, I mentioned the song Indescribable. Thinking about it more this Sunday, I realize that I cried during that song for several reasons nearly all of them having to do with how my work in the hospital changed the way I view God. Like I said in my last blog, images of God's broken creation in the form of sick/injured patients came to my mind, but my mind's eye also saw those patients who praised God through their illnesses and/or made tremdoous strides in their recovery. Indescribable joy and praise to God was the feeling I felt when I walked into a room and saw a patient sitting up in bed talking to me when the last time I saw her, she was heavily sedated with a tube in her throat to deliver oxygen rendering her unable to talk. I couldn't take my eyes off of her as she sat up smiling as I bustled around putting up the rails and preparing to move her by bed (she still wasn't strong enough to walk) to a procedure. I was so worried that she wouldn't be cognitively intact because she had several scars running down her scalp, but yet we were talking like two people getting aquainted on a bus or over coffee.

Indescribable was the same awe for God's restoration when I saw the mended face and eyes of a patient who for a few weeks was blinded by severe facial trauma.

Indescribable was my feeling of how God comforted me as I transported several patients I had known after they had passed. He was my calm as I carried out my work duties, and He was my shoulder when I did have that moment where I could just cry. And He was my joy when I realized that the patients may be with Him with no more pain and sufering.

Indescribable was my sense of how God truly did use me when a high-school aged volunteer told me how he had learned so much from me when he told me at my going-away potluck. This kid wanted to pursue the premed track in college, and I did everything I could to explain what he was seeing in patient care and how that would relate to his high school and college science classes. I also told him that being in this field was hard at times when patients suffered, but God would be your strength and theirs, and even in our job as transporters, we could do what we could to try and alleviate their pain. I never realized what an impact I had made until he told me. Knowing I had impacted one of the next generation of doctors was rather humbling and I thanked God for it.

My understanding of God, His blessings, and His character grew as my exprience in the medical field grew. Yet, God is still a mystery, and the medical field brought that out as well. When I struggled as to how to pray for patients wanting them to be healed but yet not wanting their suffering to go on, when I wondered how someone in the position of healing can be so demeaning to those lower on the 'medical totem-pole', when medicine sometimes seemed to put more money into a technilogical arms race and the latest archetecture for clinics while patients still crowded into the ER and the acute clinics because no one else would see them - These times were the times where God's hand seemed a mystery. Yet I never stopped praising Him or trusting Him with the medical field.

So, why did I cry when I heard the song Indescribable? Because I knew more of the goodness, the comfort, and how muc more God is a mystery now then I did before.

From the wards to the lecture halls

I return once more to CSU. From wandering the halls where antiseptic and other smells waft from different rooms to halls where people sit and wait for classes to begin. Going from helping a patient who is in a lot of pain move to helping a study buddy who is stressed out. Campus and the hospital seem like they are a world apart.

Working in the hospital has changed me in ways I think I might just be figuring out. Like today at church during worship, I reflected on the songs "Joyous Light" and "Indescribable" by Chris Tomlin. I had always liked the song Indescribable in undergraduate but now when I pondered the song, I pondered God's creation in the human body, but images of the human body sick and broken came to my mind. Tears flowed down my face because I knew now the pain of watching another human suffer illness and injury, but yet through that, I could see God's hand still. This same song that had me jumping around joyously because pictures of perfect molocules from my textbooks ran through my brain now had me in tears because I had seen the other side of my premed classes: the pain and suffering in the patients I saw. That aspect change me, yet my praise of God never changed. However, I feel apart from the world I knew because of so much happening. WIth work and with helping a family member who had lost her job.

That crisis plus work was my life for a good 10 months with me clinging to God through it all. I left my undergraduate year happy to be graduating, progressing in my walk with God and recovering from two recent losses. The year off the family crisis and being immersed in a clinical setting changed me and maybe even scarred me again. So, who am I now? Who is this graduate student here in the Library where I had sat as an undergraduate? I still access that joy I had my first 4 years of being Christian, but now I also understand what it means to cry out to God when I am in pain or when I see the pain of others and it makes me hurt inside too. God shaped me somehow through all this. Now with this new shape, I must somehow fit into the world of campus I had once walked before.

Medical Small Group

Last Sunday I worked, so I went to church at the chapel there. I felt, as I've felt many times before, this connectedness with them as I have not felt since leaving the Small Group I was in at CSU. After the short service, my co-worker and I chatted with another member of this small 'congregation' as we headed back to work. About 10 employees are regular attenders. Most are custodial staff because they can be free of their duties for 15 - 20 minutes while the nurses and people higher up on the patient-care ladder can't.

I wondered why I felt so much closer to this small band of people than I did to the people in the large evangelical church I attend on my weekends off. Then it came to me: Fellowship. Fellowship daily on the job, fellowship when we talk about a patient together, fellowship when we talk about our own lives among each other. We are connected in all levels: as co-workers, as caregivers to our patients, and sharing our lives with each other.

This is exactly what the Small Groups at CSU strive for: unity in service, unity in being open to each other, and unity in living. That is how the apostles lived in the book of Acts and what Paul asks the churches to stive for in his epistles. I am thankful to God for our Medical Small Group in the hospital because we feel this strong unity. With the Great Physician overseeing the hospital, we can gain strength from Him and trust Him with our day to day tasks and the patients He entrusts to us with their care.

The Threshold

fromMy other blog

Today I had to take a patient from the front entrance of the hospital to the Emergency Department (ED). As I was talking to the patient just to find out how she was feeling and everything, I passed a large room (one of like 4) that is labeled "Resuscitation Room." They can hold two patients and they are huge rooms. Patients only go in there if they are in really bad shape - need lots of medications and help breathing and everything. One of them was occupied. I heard the sounds of a heart monitor. But it wasn't the normal small beeps that indicate that the patient's heart was beating. The machine was literally screaming - that little beep turned into one long blaring beep. That meant that the patient's heart was stopped. I knew that was what it was, but at the time, I was focused on the patient I was bringing in.

After dropping her off, I passed the Resuscitation Room again. This time it was quiet. When the patient was there, the curtain was drawn. But this time, there was a space where a stretcher had once stood and around it lay wrappings from syringes and other equipment. The room was still, but yet, I knew that a few moments ago, it was occupied and probably full of people trying to get this patient's heart started.

But where was the patient?
Was he or she in another part of the ED?
Or had he or she died?
Right there? In that room? Right by where I was walking with my patient?

Chills just hit me along with just this feeling of how odd it was that I was on the threshold of a room where someone may well have passed away. And they too were on the threshold. When the machine was blaring instead of rhythmically beating - when their heart was stopped instead of normally working, that patient was on the threshold between life and death. Medication and other techniques could've brought him or her back, but God had His final say ultimately.

I left the ED and my dispatcher said that I didn't need to do any more transports for the moment. So, I went to an isolated corner by our office and knelt to pray. For the patient whereever he or she was, and for the family wherever they were. And for myself, that God would calm me down so I could finish my shift. I cried right there - just me and Him. God - the Creator of all, may have taken demanded the life from one person, but yet at the next moment, comforted one of His children.

"....The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised." Job 1:21

Equilibrium of the Heart

I took a patient who was on the Labor and Delivery floor down to an exam twice. Both times she was nauseated, and when I took her the second time, she could barely stand, and felt even worse. She and her husband looked visibly scared. The second time down, I asked her husband how he was doing, and he told me how scared he was. I told him that I understood having a family member in the hospital with complications. As I took my patient to the exam the second time, my hands were gripping the handles of the chair so tightly, I figured my knuckles were white (that is, if I could see through my gloves). My muscles in my forearms were contracted so tight that they hurt. I was scared for them. I was upset that her labor was being complicated by something the doctor sent her down for yet another exam to try and find out what it was. Both times to and from the exams, I helped her in and out of the wheelchair. Both times I was with her when she got sick on us. Both times, I got out damp paper towels for her face.

My last transport of the day was some medicine she had to take before yet another different exam. I inwardly cringed when my dispatcher told me to do that transport because I knew from my 5 months working at the hospital what the medicine was for, and because of that, I assumed it was for my patient. Tears came to my eyes. How could she drink this medicine when she couldn't hold anything down? How could she go to yet another exam when she thought she was done when I brought her back to her room for the second time? Would the doctor finally figure out what was wrong? Just don't cry, ok? a part of my mind said. God's still in control. You just need to give this patient to Him. I was able to explain to my newest co-worker what the medicine we were getting was since he came along with me. Giving a mini lecture helped me not to cry. Yet even as I write this now, I wonder if my patient was able to take the medicine, if she went down to that final test, and how far along she was in labor. I knew that if things got any worse, she would just have a C-Section and then surgery to find and fix the other problem. But it's not what she or her husband expected, and she was in so much pain.

I told my mom who has her BSN about the case. She told me basically that the equilibrium of a healthcare worker's/ nurse's / doctor's heart is this: You feel for the patient, but you still focus to do your job. You empathize with the patient, but you must still be able to leave him or her and care for others. Yet it is still ok to cry at the end of the day. My third week at the hospital, I saw a doctor sobbing on another's shoulder. She had come out of a patient care conference, so she had done what she needed to do. But she also had to let her heart go toward that patient. She could be a good doctor and yet still cry. And I am learning that too: You can do a good job of whatever God wants you to do in medicine, and He is there for you when you pray for your patient and yes, He is there for you to just cry.

Accurate Cures

Today on the radio, there was this commercial for a neuro-peptide supplement. It seemed correct: Take this protein normally found in your brain to help your brain function better. However, peptides degrade in your stomach (hence why we can eat steak - mmm.... steak...) and therefore, the protein would only serve as a source of amino acids the body could utilize. The cure sounded like a good idea, but it was flawed at the level of ingestion rendering it possibly ineffective.

Before we in the medical community prescribe or recommend anything to patients, we must know what they do, and how they interact with the body. To do this, we must know the fundamentals of how the body works, chemistry, etc. etc. Basically, we must draw from the basics learned in pre-med and medical classes. If we don't have that foundation, we can't assess these new cures.


That is the way we should interpret other doctrines, religions, or philosophies. We must have a firm grounding in the basics of Christian doctrine and of God's Word. We may find a philosophy that on the surface seems compatable, but when it is examined against the fundamentals of Christianity, those basics may reveal a fundamental flaw in the philosophy in question. But how often do we examine other philosophies? Do we understand how to 'dissect' and evaluate new ideas against Scripture? More importantly, do I know enough scripture to analyze the ideas around me so I don't treat myself or another believer or an unbeliebver with an inacurate cure?

Just as physicians can make medication errors because they may miss a fundamental flaw with the medication - for example drug-drug interactions, not considering how the side effect will affect the patient, etc. we as Christians can give advice or follow philosphies we miss fundamental flaws that may alter the way we think of God or His word, or we may find that the philosophy clashes with Christiaity. That forces us to choose one side or another.

Just like every disease has one 'true' treatment regimen that works, God thorugh His Son has sent Himself to redeem and cure all Creation and those that follow Him. Just like there are a million different medication errors and false treatments in medicine, there are many false gods and doctrines apart from God. And just like a good physician has to discern between the right cures and not make errors, the Great Physician can perfectly understand what we need and has provided it in His right time.

God in a Shattered Mind

I transport patients with a variety of mental statuses. Some are near asleep, some are in a presistant vegitative state, some are groggy, some are grouchy, some are elateed because after the exam I take them to, they get to go home.

I transported a woman who really wasn't all there. She could talk, but her thoughts were extremely tangential, and she often kept asking me where we were going. I would explain to her again what procedure we were going to. We passed the hospital chapel, and her eyes lit up. She sat up straighter in the wheelchair and said, "You know, God doesn't want religion. He just wants people to love Him and His Law." The rest of the way going to the exam, we talked about who God was, she listed off the 10 commandments, and we talked about how much we loved God.

Through this, I saw past this woman's shattered state of cognition into her spirit that God had probably pruned (Jn 15:6) and sanctified over a lifetime. For a Christian, the body does deteriorate, but what remains is the soul wrapped in the glory of God. The grey matter of one's brain looses mass, the neurochemicals may be at a lower concentration, the neural pathways may start to become more disconnected, but the love for God was not present in this woman's mind. It was present in her soul, for she had accepted Him as her Savior, and in keeping His commands and remaining in His love, it was Him that sanctified her - and it was evident that He was her reality when she could make sense out of nothing else.

I look forward to the day where we may meet again in the new Creation, with whole bodies, but more importantly, in that unity with Christ that, by her love that reached beyond the capacity of her mind, she gave me a mere glimpse of.

Oh, God, may I love You so much more, that even when my cognitive abilities fade, my heart for You remains. I can't imagine the type of faith, love, and obediance this woman had toward You. May she be an example of what I hope to be - broken yet completely Yours.

The beauty of staph

Admittedly I thought it was weird: A scrub top print as "Pewter Staph." I am NOT making this up. Go to Smart Scrubs and brows under the clearance items, and ye shall find (and ye shall laugh if you like nerdy pre-med humor!) Yeah. Most definitely weird. Then I thought: Why would anyone make a scrub top design out of an organism that is a pathogen - lethal in some cases?

Bottom line, there is something aesethetic about those bacterial colonies branching out in all different directions. Just as there is something aesthetic about the human body - at the macro and microscopic level. There is beauty even among the most medically vruelent things. Such as the HIV virus: Google a picture of it, and you stare in wonder.

What does this say about God? Does even the deadliest bacteria and virus declare His glory - yes, even His beauty? If so, then something made it change from a beautifully complex entity to a beautifully complex deadly organism. Christians know that 'something' was sin. Was the Fall of Creation.

How much more beautiful will these bacteria and viruses be - assuming they are present in the New Creation? How much more will they reflect the glory of the One who made them if now, they are only a poor reflection of what He originally created them to be?

And that is how we are as well. Broken sinful people, aesthetically beautiful anatomically as Body Worlds II has shown us and still reflecting the fruits of the Spirit though inadaquately? Once washed by Jesus' blood and once comitted to walking in His way, in the New Creation, we will no longer be a reflection of the image of our Creator. We will be with Him and He will be fully reflected through Creation - incluuding us.

Medicine's Water

There is a such thing as Transporter's High. I discovered it unwittingly when we were seriously really busy and I must've done ten transports back-to-back which is actually rare considering there are six of us on day shift. Transporter's High is equivalent to runner's high. The biological mechanism is probably the same: the excercise and the adrenaline rush plus the need to block muscle pain causes the release of endorphins. I got the feeling I could work for two straight shifts. Of course, this feeling didn't last the whole shift, just for maybe like 20 minutes or so.

It also gave me an understanding as to why many doctors and medical students and probably anyone in the medical profession can get sucked into this world of medicine and forget what's 'outside.' Working in a hospital feeds a person. For me, it gives me a reason to get up in the morning. Aside from te paycheck, I get to see patients that have been there a while, help them get better by taking them to procedures, and also, I can be there for a patient when he or she just needs to talk about how their stay at the hospital is going. There are bad days and bad moments too, but the good stuff keeps me going. Hospitals have their own life, their own structure, their own language. Once I began to work inside the one I'm in, I could feel it start to become a part of me and I a part of it. I could get poetic and say something like: The blood that's in it's people is in me and the pains they feel are the pains I feel and the oxygen that's being given to them is the air I breathe - but I'm not that far gone - yet hahahaha!

But what does the hospital give me besides patient interaction and a community? What does it give all medical professionals, but especially doctors and medical students? A higher purpose. Status. Something to watch over, and yes, even someone watching over them (Hospital administrators, regulators, HMO's, etc.) In the hospital, a doctor has nearly the whole staff at her feet: people to run the tests she orders, other doctors to do her sugery she requests, nurses to care for her patients, and even pipsqueak transporters like me that take said patients to their exams and procedures.

A few days ago, I was reading John 4 where Jesus talks about Himself being living water. The medical environment can be the 'water' that sustains people - ok, me if I go to medical school and so on and so forth (God willing), or God Himself can. If I let the medical environment consume me, then I would be satisfied. At least for a while. But if the healthcare system gets so unfunctional, it's more of a hassle for all of us, and if patients aren't improving like I would want them to, then it would be consuming but also draining. If I loose a patient, it would be even harder to deal with. Medicine can let people down. Medicine has let me down before. Therefore,
medicine can't be that life that consumes me. This does not mean that I can't be a doctor. But I have to be something greater. My life has to take on more meaning
beyond the hospital doors.

Enter the Creator of the universe, the Great Physician. Jesus Christ. If it is His Blood that sustains me, His living water that runs through me and fills me primarily, medicine can be an even more joy since I will walk in His steps and emulate His ways - of course all with His help!!! He can fill the gaps that medicine leaves open: The patient that gets worse, He can comfort, the patient that dies He may receive. He is the patience I need to deal with complaining co-workers and patients, snappy nurses, and later on, the patience and humility I must continue to have if He allows me to be a doctor. He is the comfort I need when I am pretty sure a patient I have transported a few times has died, and the comfort I'll need in the future should I have to actually pronounce a patient dead. He is the One whom I give thanks to when I see a patient improve, and the One whom I'll give credit to when a patient may later thank me for helping him or her recover. If medicine is the life physicians and other members of the medical community draw from to sustain themselves, Jesus Christ is that true Water they truly seek.

The Brain - Brain Barrier

Yes, you read right. The Brain - Brain barrier not the blood - brain barrier. It's what keeps parts of your brain from not communicating or it keeps parts of your brain unreachable. In my own brain, my random musings and daydreams are a barrier to me thinking and praying through stuff that needs to be dealt with. God and I had a chat about that this morning in place of Infusion prayer. It was good to talk with God about stuff that needed to be dealt with (surprise, surprise.)

God also told me that sometimes I pray from my brain instead of my heart. Meaning: sometimes I pray in a detached manner and say stuff that sounds good like, "Use this for Your glory" or "I pray I see Your sovereignty..." which in itself isn't bad, but when I pray it in place of what my heart wants to say, I block my heart from God. God said, "I know you do that because there's things in there that you don't want to say." Uh huh. But once I say them, I know that God's going to take care of them and I truly feel them lifted. :)