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Yin/Yang
Well, Day 19 came & went. The blog didn’t happen but I’m writing it now. Day 19 wasn’t a lack of discipline, or not making the time or not being bothered. Day 19 is late because life happened. I’m writing Day 19 at 2am on Day 20, determined not to fall behind because then I might be tempted to say oh well! I give up then! But I’m learning today that any challenge we set ourselves has to be flexible. So what happened?
Anyone who’s been reading my blog might have noticed that some of them appear rather late in the day, close to the deadline. On busy days late at night is the only time I have to write. Yesterday (it really is 2am) was a busy day. There was the flat tyre to sort out, the Yule Fair stall to set up & run, the Centre to open & lock. Then a drive to Preston for a 7pm service. The blog was always planned to be a late in the day effort. Half way to Preston I got a call. My auntie was unwell & her neighbour had called an ambulance. I’m my auntie’s next of kin in these circumstances & although some family members are closer to her I know she settles better if I’m around. So no hesitation. I turned back to go across to her.
I arrived at the same time as the ambulance (it was, apparently, already a busy night). We got to the hospital about 7.15pm, went into triage, then joined the queue in the A & E Majors corridor. The ambulance crew had to wait with us to keep an eye on my auntie until they could do a proper handover (& so nursing staff weren’t taken away from their work inside Majors to supervise a queue). It meant they waited it out too. At one point the queue of 6 cases had 12 ambulance crew plus assorted relatives with them in the corridor too. Sense did prevail on occasion as a more senior ambulance person arrived to organise crews to take 2 cases each so other crew could be released. Still – a lot of ambulance downtime. At 10.15pm my auntie was moved into a cubicle and 90 mins later saw the doctor. It was decided that she might need a short hospital stay but there were no free beds in the hospital at all.
So as I write we are still in the cubicle until a bed comes up. Please don’t think this is going to be a complaining blog. I have great admiration for the ambulance crews, A & E staff, nurses & doctors who were working hard to attend to people. I’m sure there were others on the wards trying just as hard to find beds so A & E could be freed up. The staff did their best in the limited time they had to make sure my auntie was comfortable. What strikes me is that the elderly lady with dementia, the young man with mental health problems, the diabetic lady, the toddler with a high fever, all received kindness & attention though the staff were hard pressed.
Do we recognise this enough? In all the healthcare debates & the talk of running medical care like markets where only some people profit what about the dedication it takes to work in these conditions night after night, day after day? Somehow, surely, we must be able to provide healthcare to everyone speedily & with compassion. Not by putting extra pressure on the people on the ground to live within meager budgets. Or by putting profit into the hands of people who already have so much money they can afford to forget about the consequences, for ordinary people, of the financial decisions.
Dedicated healthcare people serve their communities because they have a passion for helping (I’m not sure I could do what hospital staff do). And it’s that idea of service to the greater good that the Spirit World try to communicate to us. If we want a better world, they suggest, we would be more likely to achieve it if we were all mindful of serving others needs as well as serving our own. I work in Spiritualist churches & centres, or anywhere I am invited actually, because it is a way of serving the greater good. Hopefully I can bring comfort & healing words to others in that way. Yesterday I had to make a choice of who to serve – what would be the greater good? I’m sure I made the right choice. It gave me a chance to reassure a poorly lady, time to send out Reiki healing to everyone in A & E and some space to write this blog on a bit of paper donated by one of the nurses. I also got to chat to her about blogging – she has been asked to start one. Who knows – what she has to say in her blogs may also turn out to be for the greater good.
My psychic life has many twists and turns. Never dull. Never boring. Very often unexpected!
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