Everybody has hope
My wife called me tonight from work to share a story. She’s a respiratory therapist at our local hospital, where she does things most of us don’t even want to consider, like resuscitating patients, monitoring respiration levels, giving breathing treatments, and exchanging your blood gases. I have only a vague idea what the latter is, but I do know that if I’m going to exchange my blood gases, I’d rather my body do it on its own. I’m sure you feel the same. Often over the course of her career she was assisted patients who have no idea what she’s doing, because these patients are comatose, unconscious, or otherwise not fully in control of their faculties, as with Alzheimer’s patients. Still, she talks to all of them — you never know when one of them is going to come to.
Tonight she said she was giving some sort of life-saving treatment to an old woman with Alzheimer’s who didn’t seem conscious. Something came on the television in the room about Barack Obama, and Valorie, talking aloud as usual to a patient she was sure couldn’t respond, made some comment. “I sure hope he wins,” said a weak voice. It was the old woman, suddenly responsive, catching Valorie by surprise.
“Do you like him?” Valorie asked.
The old lady said, “Oh, yes,” and then once Obama was off the screen she drifted back to wherever she normally resides.
So who knows? Maybe he is a miracle worker.