Tuesday, October 29, 2013
THIS ARTICLE IS being written from my mom’s bedside in the Cardiac Surgery Intensive Care Unit (CSICU) at the Mississauga Hospital. My mom, Marie, is in day three of her recovery from a triple bypass.
Marie, who has always been the strong, independent, healthy, hard-working person, had a series of mild heart attacks this fall and so she and our family entered into relationships with many doctors, nurses, hospital volunteers, etc., to go on the journey of repairing her heart.
There have been so many moments where I have been in awe of the care she has been given.
I’ve only been in the hospital when I was born, and when my daughter was born, and maybe a couple of times to visit friends. I don’t have a lot of experience in this setting.
I’ve spent a lot of time sitting, watching, waiting, reading and observing. I notice all the little things around me. I notice the young, bright, caring, kind, beautiful nurses in the CSICU who encourage Marie all day long. They are so attentive and positive and they give my mom hope every second of every day.
I watched as they gave Marie some blood to boost her system. I looked at the bag of blood and instantly thought of two of my friends who have given blood regularly for years. I laughed and said to Marie, “do you taste any curry as the blood is going in?” My one friend loves curry, and it could be his donated blood. There could be a Haliburton-Mississauga connection.
In this hospital, and in the Milton Hospital, the staff have taken the time to give all of us the information we needed to feel informed and reassured. The ambulance drivers who took my mom for tests and for her bypass were two young friendly men who referred to her as the “cool lady” the second time they picked her up.
From the yogic perspective, the heart is where we store and give our love. In Buddhism, the heart is considered to be the brain of the body.
I can’t express how supportive it has been for me to watch my mom being taken care of in such a caring way. It is like the energy from the hearts of her caregivers extends to her physical heart that needs heeling. The yogis say the energy of our heart radiates 10 feet from our bodies and people can feel when you care about them. I truly believe her heart will heal faster because of the support, the environment and the attention to the details she has experienced in her hospital stays.
She has felt cared for and important and that makes all the difference.
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