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Care in Progress

Dispatch from Forbearance Presbyterian Church

by Charlotte Johnstone

When Forbearance’s Deacons decided last month, with Rev. Hustisford’s encouragement, to add hospital visitation to their roster of duties, it seemed prudent to Carl Joyner, the board’s chairman, to establish some guidelines. After all, not everyone was adept at that sort of thing, he thought, remembering in particular the occasion of his back surgery, when his extended family virtually set up camp in his room and never stopped talking. Perhaps, he asked his fellow Deacons, you have some ideas on the subject? Well, they certainly did, although their ideas took the form of personal anecdotes about the rigors of being trapped in a hospital bed at the mercy of sometimes-misguided compassion.

“Last year,” Barbara Rusk told them, “when I had my gallbladder removed, my Aunt Edith nearly drove me crazy with her visits. She came every morning and stayed too long, fussing constantly about everything, and regaling me with tales about the dangers of secondary infections and all the people she’s known who have died from that. I was doing quite well, but she nearly did me in.”

“Well,” said Frank Harper, “last year, when I had my heart attack, a couple of women from the church stopped by when I was on the bedpan. The door was closed with a do not enter sign, but they entered anyway. Didn’t even knock. Pulled back the curtain around my bed and there they stood, gazing at me. Very embarrassing. First rule for our guidelines: When the door says do not enter or care in progress, ask the floor nurse for guidance.”

Charlotte Johnstone is a member of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She (and the cast of Forbearance Presbyterian Church) welcomes comments. Write to her at Horizons, 100 Witherspoon St., Louisville, KY 40202-1396 or email wjohns4949@aol.com.

Can the Forbearance deacons create a guide for hospital visitation? Can you use a guide like this in your congregation? Find out in the January/February 2005 issue of Horizons.

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