I've made a number of hospital calls in our new hospital with the new name (the Williamsburg Regional Medical Center) since being back to activity. Generally, I have been in a "pastor" mindset, there to bring care to the person in the hospital bed.

Yesterday's visit was different. I think it's because the person I was visiting had just been settled into a chair next to the bed, and I was there as the nurse worked with her to get the phone and call button within reach. It made me remember, vividly, the days when it was a major physical triumph to "walk" the two steps to a chair next to my bed (helped by two nurses). Then, in the chair, before the nurse left the room, I remember how important it was to have everything I needed within reach -- because I couldn't just jump up to get what I needed! So, in my conversation with the parishioner I was visiting, I was there as pastor. But I was also in the mindset of a patient.

That continued, as I walked out of the hospital after the visit -- past the waiting area where I've spent time waiting to be called, for chest x-rays and C-T scans, and past the other waiting area where I've spent time waiting to be called for blood work. Yesterday afternoon, I felt very glad that I wasn't at the hospital for those purposes!

I don't remember much about the overnight I was hospitalized at the "WRMC." Patty has told me where my room was, on the third floor, and where my ICU room was. She has told me about the night she stood there and watched the paramedics transfer me into an ambulance to take me to Sentara Norfolk General, and about the ICU nurse who decided to ride along in the back with me, because their patient census was low that night. (Unfortunately, Patty does not know who that nurse was -- it was such a stressful evening that she just didn't pick up the name! -- so I cannot offer my thanks for going beyond the call of duty. It did show how worried they were about me.)

I haven't yet made a call to a parishioner in either of "my" hospital rooms. Sometime, I surely will. I wonder how that will affect me?

Meanwhile, I do hope to make hospital visits in a dual mindset -- that of pastor, and also that of someone who's been a patient, so that I might be more alert than I would be otherwise to the needs that are beneath the words that are spoken.