Wednesday 5 May 2010

Food for my spirit

I'm 3 days into my new assignment, and "overwhelmed" is it, in a nutshell. Overwhelmed from the shear speed I need to have, which leaves me hardly any time to think... Overwhelmed from the realisation that I do need to know just about everything, cos unlike working in specialty units, anything under the sun can turn up in my room!

However, overwhelmed me was thankful that I managed to end the day with Mass on my 1st day... a luxury I haven't had all last year. And it did make a difference... it was a settling time... as if the "oh my gosh, what a day!" exhausted me turned up at His table and was fed... It was also a time to come before the Divine Physician to ask that whatever work i do, that it is Him doing through me... a reminder that in such a rushed setting, I need Him to watch my back. And with this current assignment, i can look forward to more of such days of reclining at His table at the end of the day!


Today, I also saw another need for this food... the need know how to do the right things... not just the life-saving or disease-curing decisions, that are more or less universal... but harder than that, those surrounding what our faith teaches us. What do i do when a 45 yr old woman turns up wanting a pregnancy test, and asking what i can give to cause a "natural miscarriage"? Evidence tells us that she's at a high risk of foetal abnormalities like Down's, and many other complications herself, so logically it's the way to go. But faith tells me that if it was a positive, that is God's life giving love created in flesh! It makes sense to me... but how do i make that sense to others? Do i then send her next door to another colleague who has no such dilemma? Especially when i don't have the luxury of time for a long counselling session? At that point I didn't know what i would have done, but thankfully, being towards the end of the day, the lab had closed so I had to ask her to return tmr for the test. Though i'm hoping she might not turn up in my room again, i have to be prepared. I don't know... I've just been feeling rather unsettled since then... I just hope that when the time comes, I may know what to do.