Johnny the bagger

Johnny is a grocery store bagger who has Down syndrome. He heard from
one of the grocery store people about how people can make a difference
but he thought he couldn't do anything special for the customers
because he was just a bagger. But then he had an idea:
'he decided that every night when he came home fro work, he would find
a 'thought for the day' for his next shift. It would be something
positive, some reminder of how good it was to be alive, or how much
people matter, or how many gifts we are surrounded by. If he couldn't
find one, he would make one up.
Every night his dad would help him enter the saying six times on a
page on the computer; then Johnny would print fifty pages. He would
take out a pair of scissors and carefully cut three hundred copies and
sign every one.
Johnny put the stack of pages next to him while he worked. Each time
he finished bagging someone's groceries, he would put his saying on
top of the last bag. Then he would stop what he was doing, look the
person straight in the eye, and say, 'I've put a great saying in your
bag. I hope it helps you have a good day. Thanks for coming here.'
A month later, the store manager found that the line at Johnny's
checkout was three times longer than anyone else's. It went all the
way down the frozen food aisle.
The manager got on the loudspeaker to get more checkout lines open,
but he couldn't get any of the customers to move. They said, 'That's
okay. We'll wait. We want to be in Johnny's line.' One woman came
up to him and grabbed his hand, saying, 'I used to shop in your store
once a week. Now I come in every time I go by--I want to get Johnny's
thought for the day.' Johnny is doing more than filling bags with
groceries; he is filling lives with hope.-excerpt from 'When the game
is over it all goes back in the box' by John Ortberg

VALUE: Love and Respect

There is a GREAT marriage and relationship book titled: Love and
Respect. The premise of this book is simply: "...each individual
among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife
must see to it that she respects her husband."-Ephesians 5:33

It is very interesting that the author of this letter, Paul, doesn't
ask the wife to 'love' the husband. Men, in general, feel loved by
being respected. We all want to be loved. We all want to hear the
words: 'I love you.' But men in particular need to hear that they are
valued. Most men would prefer to hear the words: 'You are my hero.'
Strange as this may seem, I have seen this truth played out in my own
life and in the lives of the vast majority of men.

It is important for ALL of us to feel valued, to be respected. It is
important to treat each other and our patients with R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

No one dies alone initiative

Volunteers fill in for family
Dying patients 'without anyone' have friends at Mission Hospital.

By ERIKA I. RITCHIE

The Orange County Register

Rich Brown sat at his dying sister's bedside, exhausted and
grief-stricken after his father's death 20 days before.

Grasping her frail hand, he spoke softly, hoping she could somehow
give him the strength to find the answer. But her liver was failing,
and she was unconscious. Doctors at Mission Hospital In Mission Viejo
told him there was no chance of recovery.

For 36 hours Brown, 50, kept vigil in the darkened room.

"I didn't want her to die alone," said the Aliso Viejo resident and
father of three young children. "The night nurse told me, 'You need to
go home,' but I wouldn't leave."

Another nurse told Brown about the hospital's new program, No One Dies Alone.

Mission Hospital, part of St. Joseph Health System, put No One Dies
Alone in place in February. St. Joseph Hospital in Orange started its
program last year. The volunteer program, the first of its kind in the
county, provides companionship for dying patients who would otherwise
be alone.

At Mission Hospital, seven patients, including Brown's sister Shari
Sexton, 55, have benefited from the program in three months. Almost
100 hospital staff members and volunteers have signed up to be
companions to the dying.

Volunteer Stephanie Hickey, 50, started the program at Mission.

"We projected it would serve about six patients a year," said the San
Clemente resident. "In the first month we served four."

Hickey said studies have shown that even in death people have some
level of consciousness. "There's nothing more alive than being with
someone who's dying," she said. "Nothing matters but the next breath.
I feel like I'm at heaven's door."

Mostly the program serves people who have outlived friends and
relatives, people from out of town who've been critically injured,
those abandoned by family, some who've alienated themselves and, in
cases like Brown's, people whose family physically cannot stay by
their loved one's bedsides.

Demographics play a role in demand, too. According to the Census
Bureau, about one in four households consists of a person living
alone. Among those 65 and older, the ratio is one in three. Baby
boomers will double the elderly population in the next 30 years.

No One Dies Alone was founded by Sandra Clarke, a nursing supervisor
at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, Ore., in 2001. Her inspiration
came in 1998 when a terminally ill man asked her to sit with him. She
promised she would be back after she checked on other patients. When
she got back 90 minutes later, he was dead.

"I felt guilty, angry and frustrated," said Clarke in a phone call
from Oregon. "I really hadn't done anything wrong, but it was an error
of omission. He just wanted something so simple – companionship."

When Brown finally left his sister's side to get a few hours of sleep,
he felt at peace. No One Dies Alone volunteers took his place.

"This woman came in with books and music," he said. "I didn't feel
like she was a stranger. She hugged me and said, 'I'll take care of
her.' … It takes a special kind of person to do that."

In Sexton's case volunteers rotated every few hours. Brown came back
to the hospital only to be sent home by the nurses again when he was
physically exhausted.

Denise Foster, 51, was the last one to sit with Sexton. She started
volunteering at the hospital three years ago as part of her church's
outreach. Foster's mother died alone.

"I saw the program and said, 'I can do this,' " the Lake Forest
resident said. "I can sit here and hold her hand."

When Foster walked into Sexton's intensive care unit room at about 11
p.m., she was struck by how young she looked.

"She was breathing really loud," Foster said. "I rubbed her arm, held
her hand and read something from Psalms to her from the Bible, and
then I sang under my breath. Her breathing slowed, and she became more
peaceful."

About two hours later her breathing was so labored the bed shook. Then
as Foster took Sexton's hand and prayed softly, she took her last
breath.

"I felt so relieved that I was just present," she said. "I was able to
comfort her in silence by my touch. I sat there for a while afterwards
just thinking about how peaceful she looked."

Brown never met Foster, but he says words can't describe his gratitude.

"I don't know what I would have done without them," he said. "I
physically couldn't stay there anymore. My sister would have died
alone, and I wouldn't have been able to deal with that."

LOVE: Vital Signs of Healing

SHOW our patients that THEY are LOVABLE:

GIFTS: blankets & 'Can I get you anything?'
ACTS OF SERVICE: clean & 'Are you comfortable?'
WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT
PHYSICAL TOUCH: hand shakes & hold their hand
QUALITY TIME: 'Sorry for your wait.'

and THEY will SHOW you YOUR BELOVEDNESS!

LOVE languages

We all hear and feel LOVED in different ways.  In his landmark book: The 5 LOVE Languages, Gary Chapman explains that there are 5 main ways that we hear and/or feel LOVED.  If we can take the time to learn our LOVE language (the language that makes us feel LOVED), and learn our spouse, family members, neighbor, and patients LOVE languages, we can 'speak' to them in THEIR LOVE language.  This is VERY important because we often can only feel or hear LOVE when people speak to us in the LOVE language that we can hear or feel.  If your spouse's LOVE language is QUALITY TIME, then you can do the dishes and clean the house for the REST of your life, and he or she may NEVER feel LOVED! Strange but VERY true.  So STOP spinning your wheels and learn that her or his LOVE language is QUALITY TIME and see how it transforms your relationship by simply spending TIME with her or him!  Yes, it can be that easy.

The 5 love languages are:
QUALITY TIME
GIFTS
ACTS OF SERVICE
PHYSICAL TOUCH
WORDS OF ENCOURAGEMENT

Are we all Nazi's at heart?

1 of the 4 Vital Signs of Healing is Virtue. Virtue is the representation of morality. It is the act of doing the right thing. Unfortunately, we often do the wrong thing. One of the reasons that we do the wrong thing is caused by judging others. "Stop judging so that you will not be judged."-Matthew 7:1

The original Greek word used here can and may be best translated 'condemn'. When I first learned this, it brought this quote to life for me. I chose judgment(condemn) as a vital sign of healing because we so often condemn those who we see as unlike us: poorer, thiner, fatter, smarter, stronger, weaker, sicker, cleaner, dirtier...

A friend of mine shared with me a conversation he had with a man who immigrated from Germany in 1945. The man was a Nazi youth member. The story that he chose to tell my friend was of his experience with the Russian soldiers who took over his town at the end of World War 2.

He proceeded to tell my friend how barbaric, stupid, and primitive these Russians were. They had never seen toilets and used them as sinks, and they had never seen showers and took down the nozzle and put it up in a tree to shower outside thinking that the water would still come out. They raped and pillaged the German people.

How ironic, the Nazi, whose country men systematically tortured, mutilated, and annihilated millions of people, telling how stupid, brutal, barbaric the Russian 'mongels' were. The Aryans, the strongest, smartest, most technologically advanced Germans at least knew how to use a toilet. It reminded me of the Romans, the Pharisees, the Stormtroopers vs. the Christians, the Ewalks. In God's economy, up is down and down is up. The weak and stupid so often overcome the the proud, strong, and smart. Let us not forget to walk in the other person's shoes!

It is human nature to point fingers, to condemn, to think and say 'look at those people...' or 'at least 'we' don't do that...'.

I am challenged in my own life to acknowledge that I have a 'Nazi' heart-a heart that can condemn, that can point fingers, that has evil in it in thought and deed.

My 'Nazi' heart continues to slowly 'heal' by constant reminders that, although I am a beloved child of God, I am a loser that has the capacity to think and do bad, corrupt, and stupid thoughts and things.

Love

I will periodically be sharing excerpts from a GREAT blog/website done by the author of Sacred Work. His blogs continue to encourage and challenge me. Here is one about Love:

New Thinking About Love?
from Journal of Sacred Work by Baptisthealingtrust

The task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think as nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees. - Arthur Schopenhauer

Love One of the fascinating things about Love is that everybody sees it, most feel they know about it, but so few think of it in anything but conventional ways. As I travel the country speaking about the need for loving care in health care, I often experience a polite but indifferent response. "Yes, we know about love," many hospital executives say, "Of course, we agree with Love." And then there is the powerful, toxic backwash of the status quo and its companion, heartbreaking inaction.
The idea that Love might require a way of thinking that "nobody yet has thought" seems like a waste of time to many. Yet, what subject is more important than Love?...

Among the most important thoughts about Love is the idea of integrating its practice into regular medical treatment. But the medical establishment remains skeptical. Esther Steinberg is quoted in the New_medicine PBS book, The New Medicine, as saying "[Doctors] could not understand in scientific terms how something like a thought...could affect something as concrete as health." And this lack of understanding remains.
One of the goals of medical treatment is to restore our sense of well being. And what is our sense of well being but a pattern of thoughts under girded by hope?
Medical care can be delivered without Love and with a disregard for the role of thinking. Healing, however, is never advanced by such a disregard.
Today, thousands upon thousands of executives, doctors, and other health professionals will gather in meetings to discuss the health of patients. Will any of those discussion include the role of Love in the healing process?
For that to occur, it will be necessary "to think as nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees." It will be essential to think of Love as crucial to healing.
In the future, caregivers will be called to engage the forces of Love as a regular part of treatment protocols. In the future, caregivers will discover that treatment without Love is a shallow exercise. In the future, Love will be the underpinning of the New Medicine.
In the meantime, patients can only hope they are lucky enough to engage that rare caregiver who, in addition to curing tools, understands how to be a channel for Love's healing energy.

-Erie Chapman