Seventy Five
I have been working a lot this summer. It hasn't been quite the summer I was expecting, but I suppose the money will be worth it someday. I sure have learned a lot too...from the most unexpected situations and peoples.
I work in a hospital. I actually have two jobs (well, three if you count the job on campus that I recently started). I volunteer/work in outpatient lab and at the hospital gift shop. One might think that I would get more of a medical education from the former job, but I have surprisingly learned so much more about medicine from working in the gift shop.
Lol, I laugh and recall a Doctor Who episode where they visit a hospital in the future where the Doctor remarks about how it could do better with a shop in the vicinity...how true, Doctor...how true indeed...
It's a nice shop. You can find a lot of random things that you can't really find anywhere else. A lot of times when business is slow, I like to wander around the shop and escavate the treasures that are displayed all around. Some might call it junk...while others might call it "just what I was looking for!" And of course, there are balloons and flowers that families and friends can take over to their loved ones who are in the hospital for whatever reason. Sometimes I get to take the flowers up to them and relay the message that they are not forgotten...not ignored...not abandoned...not alone. :-)
But the material things in this shop are just that...superficial candy-coating (we sell lots of candy too!!!) that more or less serves as an excuse for going into the gift shop during the busy day. The people who come into the shop are often looking for a break from work or from whatever tragedy they are facing. Doctors and nurses come for their sugar rush purchases when the job has consumed a lot of their energy and they need that quick boost to get through the rest of the day. As do family and friends of patients. In the end, it's like an oasis of relaxation in the middle of a crazy busy hospital environment. I do my best to keep that smile on my face and ask everyone who comes to the counter, "How are you doing today?"
But the majority of conversation does not come from the customers. Rather, it comes from whoever happens to be my co-worker that day. Aside from reading Mountains Beyond Mountains during the down time, I get a chance to converse with a fellow volunteer who usually happens to be an elderly lady. Sometimes she's shy and sometimes she's talkative. I especially like the talkative ones. I find that they are usually widows too. They've lived long enough to know what goes on at the hospital and what it is like to lose close friends and family to disease. And they tell me their life stories...fully aware that their life will soon end...and yet in the highest of spirits about the memories they have to share. So I listen.
Today, I got to spend time talking with a 75-year-old who appeared to be in great shape and health on the outside. But she soon revealed to me otherwise once I mentioned to her that I was going to begin medical school soon. She gave me her whole medical history, and described to me, from her perspective, how much medicine had changed and progressed over the years. Although she seemed distraught about how specialized and impersonal her medical appointments had recently become, she was thankful to the close relationship she had had with her physicians who helped her battle cancer and other life-threatening obstacles that came her way in the past.
She suddenly started to digress (or transition rather) to talking about her family's medical histories. There were so many relatives, I certainly lost track of them, but I was amazed that she was sharing all this with me. She then went on to talk about social problems that emerged in her family and among her friends throughout time. Suddenly, family members stopped talking to one another for years...the distance between friends caused by the demands of life...the difficulty of keeping people together despite advances in communication nowadays. She told me about how different some people were (especially in-laws who led a different lifestyle), and how difficult it was to get along with them. She told me stories about her grandchildren and the problems they were facing with their career goals and relationships...and how these matters solved themselves through trail and error. She laughed with me about how strange enough, no matter how bad things were, things eventually turned out alright in the end in the most unexpected ways.
We started talking about how difficult it was to travel these days to meet up with friends due to the gas prices. I mentioned my Prius hybrid car, and she scoffed at me with envy. Coincidently, she had wanted to get a Prius herself, but when she brought this up with her son, her son laughed at her claiming that it wouldn't be a good idea financially because the savings on gas won't make up for the purchase for maybe ten years or so, and he doubted she was going to live that much longer. Wow. What a jerk! We laughed about how ridiculous his remark was, but inside, I think we both knew that he had a point.
She knew perfectly well that despite how much she has witnessed the advancement of medicine over the seventy-five years of her life, she knew perfectly well that she was going to die someday. Everybody dies eventually. Some sooner than others. But she was telling me how it didn't matter to her how long she lived. What mattered more to her was the quality of her life. She told me how she had a few close friends her age who weren't exactly happy with the quality of their life at their old age. She even joked about how her friends had talked about giving one another pills when the other's life because too difficult to live any longer in relative comfort.
She had seen a lot in her life. She had a lot to talk about for sure too. And she was still in surprisingly great shape according to her physical therapist.
I was disappointed when my boss gave her the option of leaving early tonight. I wanted her to stay and talk to me some more.
I'm glad I got to talk to her and hear what she had to say about life. I don't know when I'll see her again...or even if she'll still be alive a few days, weeks, years from now.
I've learned that you can't really tell what's going to happen, so you should always cherish each moment you have with your friends and those around you and listen to what they have to say about their life because you'll never know when it'll end. The stories if anything will always live on if you take a moment to just listen and remember and tell the stories to others who care to listen.
I work in a hospital. I actually have two jobs (well, three if you count the job on campus that I recently started). I volunteer/work in outpatient lab and at the hospital gift shop. One might think that I would get more of a medical education from the former job, but I have surprisingly learned so much more about medicine from working in the gift shop.
Lol, I laugh and recall a Doctor Who episode where they visit a hospital in the future where the Doctor remarks about how it could do better with a shop in the vicinity...how true, Doctor...how true indeed...
It's a nice shop. You can find a lot of random things that you can't really find anywhere else. A lot of times when business is slow, I like to wander around the shop and escavate the treasures that are displayed all around. Some might call it junk...while others might call it "just what I was looking for!" And of course, there are balloons and flowers that families and friends can take over to their loved ones who are in the hospital for whatever reason. Sometimes I get to take the flowers up to them and relay the message that they are not forgotten...not ignored...not abandoned...not alone. :-)
But the material things in this shop are just that...superficial candy-coating (we sell lots of candy too!!!) that more or less serves as an excuse for going into the gift shop during the busy day. The people who come into the shop are often looking for a break from work or from whatever tragedy they are facing. Doctors and nurses come for their sugar rush purchases when the job has consumed a lot of their energy and they need that quick boost to get through the rest of the day. As do family and friends of patients. In the end, it's like an oasis of relaxation in the middle of a crazy busy hospital environment. I do my best to keep that smile on my face and ask everyone who comes to the counter, "How are you doing today?"
But the majority of conversation does not come from the customers. Rather, it comes from whoever happens to be my co-worker that day. Aside from reading Mountains Beyond Mountains during the down time, I get a chance to converse with a fellow volunteer who usually happens to be an elderly lady. Sometimes she's shy and sometimes she's talkative. I especially like the talkative ones. I find that they are usually widows too. They've lived long enough to know what goes on at the hospital and what it is like to lose close friends and family to disease. And they tell me their life stories...fully aware that their life will soon end...and yet in the highest of spirits about the memories they have to share. So I listen.
Today, I got to spend time talking with a 75-year-old who appeared to be in great shape and health on the outside. But she soon revealed to me otherwise once I mentioned to her that I was going to begin medical school soon. She gave me her whole medical history, and described to me, from her perspective, how much medicine had changed and progressed over the years. Although she seemed distraught about how specialized and impersonal her medical appointments had recently become, she was thankful to the close relationship she had had with her physicians who helped her battle cancer and other life-threatening obstacles that came her way in the past.
She suddenly started to digress (or transition rather) to talking about her family's medical histories. There were so many relatives, I certainly lost track of them, but I was amazed that she was sharing all this with me. She then went on to talk about social problems that emerged in her family and among her friends throughout time. Suddenly, family members stopped talking to one another for years...the distance between friends caused by the demands of life...the difficulty of keeping people together despite advances in communication nowadays. She told me about how different some people were (especially in-laws who led a different lifestyle), and how difficult it was to get along with them. She told me stories about her grandchildren and the problems they were facing with their career goals and relationships...and how these matters solved themselves through trail and error. She laughed with me about how strange enough, no matter how bad things were, things eventually turned out alright in the end in the most unexpected ways.
We started talking about how difficult it was to travel these days to meet up with friends due to the gas prices. I mentioned my Prius hybrid car, and she scoffed at me with envy. Coincidently, she had wanted to get a Prius herself, but when she brought this up with her son, her son laughed at her claiming that it wouldn't be a good idea financially because the savings on gas won't make up for the purchase for maybe ten years or so, and he doubted she was going to live that much longer. Wow. What a jerk! We laughed about how ridiculous his remark was, but inside, I think we both knew that he had a point.
She knew perfectly well that despite how much she has witnessed the advancement of medicine over the seventy-five years of her life, she knew perfectly well that she was going to die someday. Everybody dies eventually. Some sooner than others. But she was telling me how it didn't matter to her how long she lived. What mattered more to her was the quality of her life. She told me how she had a few close friends her age who weren't exactly happy with the quality of their life at their old age. She even joked about how her friends had talked about giving one another pills when the other's life because too difficult to live any longer in relative comfort.
She had seen a lot in her life. She had a lot to talk about for sure too. And she was still in surprisingly great shape according to her physical therapist.
I was disappointed when my boss gave her the option of leaving early tonight. I wanted her to stay and talk to me some more.
I'm glad I got to talk to her and hear what she had to say about life. I don't know when I'll see her again...or even if she'll still be alive a few days, weeks, years from now.
I've learned that you can't really tell what's going to happen, so you should always cherish each moment you have with your friends and those around you and listen to what they have to say about their life because you'll never know when it'll end. The stories if anything will always live on if you take a moment to just listen and remember and tell the stories to others who care to listen.