Looking for the Miracles

Looking for the Miracle

Last week, the world around us changed suddenly.  The temperature dropped and a blizzard came.  

How did you respond?  Did you become worried about the roads?  About staying warm?  Did you curse living in a cold climate?  Did you dose yourself on news stories about disasters in Texas and car accidents?  Did your ears ring with warnings about winter storms?

Dogs and children knew what was happening.  They knew that this is Chicago, and we know how to handle this.  They knew that nature was spreading a blanket of quiet, hushing the worry.  They knew that the world was full of beautiful falling snow, protecting the trees and the shore and the lake.  They reveled in freezing brilliant sunlit days reflecting twice as brightly in a world of white.  They knew the snow was an antidote for the gloomy, muddy days of the winter!

We didn’t lose electricity en masse.  We had water.  We had work.  Our patients were safe.  We had enough PPE and supplies to care for them.  And this being Chicago, we were not actually slowed down more than a day or two if at all.  

But did we see the miracle?  

Did we see how every time we pulled back the snow into slush and mud, nature brought fresh snow to make it soft and beautiful again?  Did we walk on the snowy nights watching the flakes falling?  

My dog wanted to play.  In the midst of a subzero windchill and the snow howling – he saw joy where I worried about hypothermia.  He wanted to tug and run and explore this magical change to everything we knew.  

In that moment, I knew he was right.  He saw the miracle.  

When our patients come to us, they see the pain, the fear of future or actual losses.  They see their lives upended in a crisis.  They don’t know that most people in the world will never see a hospital like this one.  Most people will never get access to the medications, the surgeries, the aftercare.  They don’t know how incredible it is for our bodies to recover from serious illness and injury that in the lifetime of our grandparents would have been certain suffering and death.  

In the midst of their storms, we deliver miracles.

We see our patients’ miracles.  One of the most important parts of our treatment is to wrap them in a beautiful soft quiet coat of care to protect them – just as nature does. We try to encourage them to play and celebrate again. We keep them safe through their dormancy until they bloom again.  

Every day we bring miracles to our patients.  Do we see the miracles for ourselves?