November 14 – “Hospital games”

The other day I discovered a new game to play in the hospital room while waiting for our friend Jennifer to head into surgery.  It involves all those wires and leads and IV tubes and whatever that thing is they clamp onto your finger.  I mention them all because I have no idea which one does what function, so sometimes they can be a little scary.  And they all lead into that little machine next to the bed that beeps a lot and displays numbers that actually mean something to the medical personnel.  And any time you move just so, it gets confused and starts with that loud beeping warning signal designed to get the attention of the hospital operator down on the first floor. 

In an effort to dissuade some of those fears while waiting for the anesthesiologist to arrive and do his thing, after which the patient doesn’t really care about much of anything and fear becomes distant memory, I chose to focus on the one set of numbers that I did understand – blood pressure.  Imagine all the opportunities for humor related to blood pressure rising or falling in response to certain external stimuli.  We soon realized as well that the machine automatically took a reading every four minutes.  And from that thought arose the now classic game of guess the blood pressure.  I know.  Sounds dull.  The excitement just didn’t last long.  Hence arose the much more stimulating version that we played.

 Knowing that a new reading would appear every four minutes, we decided to engage in a game of manipulating the results.  Would it be possible to control external stimuli to such an extent that we could actually make the numbers increase?  All in the name of science, of course.  Science and impatience.  We fixated on the first number to appear, the one on top.  145.  Good place to start.  We had four minutes to say just the right things that would cause that number to rise.  And who better to know just what to say than your husband and your pastor?  Of course we just talked about puppies and kittens and fluffy clouds and peaceful green fields and still waters.  (Read in that just a bit of sarcasm.  I suppose we were just a little more aggressive in our imagery).  The end result of our first attempt proved quite successful.  The next reading jumped to 156.  We certainly had to step up our efforts after that.  I’m sure the patient was appreciative of our redoubled efforts.  Her attention was effectively diverted from the surgery long enough to get a new world record reading of 167.  Certainly deserving of a high five, if I must say so myself (and I haven’t met anyone else willing to say so, except maybe my cohort, the husband).  We weren’t able to go for another try because the operating room personnel began to arrive.  But the record has been set.  The gauntlet is down.  Let me know how you do at your next hospital visit.

Psalms 37:30-31 says, “The mouth of the righteous man utters wisdom, and his tongue speaks what is just.  The law of his God is in his heart; his feet do not slip.”

Father, thank you for good news after that surgery.  Speed her healing.  Amen.