My Days Of Wonder In The Hospital

Dr. James L. Snyder

My plans for the New Year were horribly changed by ending up in the hospital.

Around the middle of the month, it seemed like I may have had the flu. After all, everybody around me had the flu, and I just wanted to fit in with society in general.

I had to cancel my Sunday ministry because of this which is something I do not like to do. But, The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage said I had to do it to protect anybody who would come to the service and catch my flu.

Everybody around me seemed to have the flu, so I went along with her.

A certain incident happened on a Sunday afternoon. It was the first Sunday in a long time that I had not been at our Sunday morning ministry. I was in the bathroom, and on the floor of the bathroom was a little rug so that I wouldn’t get water all over the floor.

When I stepped on that rug, it slipped out from under me, and I went crashing to the floor. It was unexpected at the time. As I lay there on the floor, I could not, for some reason, get back up on my feet. I didn’t seem to have any strength.

With no other option, I had to call out to The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage to come and help me. It took me several minutes to put that all together, and I had no other choice.

She came and was not able to help me get up, so she immediately called the ambulance, who came and helped me out of the bathroom and into my bed. But the situation was a little more than I understood, and so the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage had the ambulance take me to the hospital for some examination.

That was the beginning of four days of wonderment. By that, I mean every day, I wondered if this would be the last day and if I would go home today. I had never wondered so much in my life.

The medical team assumed I probably had a heart attack, and so I was up for every examination known in the civilized world. I had so many needles plunged into my body that I began looking like a porcupine.

I went through one examination after another after another. They were trying to find out some evidence I had a heart attack. But, to my satisfaction, I did not have a heart attack. They did find out I probably had pneumonia.

Because I fell, I was not allowed to get out of bed without a nurse supervising. I had to go to the bathroom so many times, but I needed a nurse to help me get out of bed. If a nurse wasn’t there, a little motion light and siren went off if I stepped away from my bed.

In order to go to the bathroom, I had to call for the nurse to come and make sure I didn’t fall. Many times, the nurse wasn’t available at the time.

Every day, I asked if this was the day I was going to be released from the hospital. Much to my discouragement, the nurses all said that I would have to wait one more day. The next day, the same news came to me: I had to wait just one more day. Oh, just one more day.

I wanted to figure out how I could get out of here.

All of the nurses looked at me and said that I was not allowed to leave the room. I told them I wanted to sneak out, run away, and go home. All of the nurses looked at me and said, “I will never allow you to do that.”

As I lay in bed one afternoon, I thought of how I could escape this hospital room. Then, it occurred to me that if I could harass the nurses enough, they would get so perturbed that they would want to let me go immediately.

I worked on my little plan and tried to figure out ways to harass the nurses to make them want me to leave. However, the more I harassed them, the more they made sure they were not going to let me leave.

There are times in life when I wish I wasn’t so charming, and this was one of them. I wanted to be one of those patients the nurses wanted to get rid of quickly.

Every time I did something to harass the nurse, that nurse would always look at me and laugh out loud, and then, with both hands on her hips, would look at me and say, “That’s not going to work today.” Then, she would leave the room laughing.

I needed some plan to get out of the hospital, and I wondered day after day how can I accomplish that.

Laying on my hospital bed some scripture came to my mind.

“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:2-4).

Either the stress in my life can frustrate me or, I can let it work for my good. I’m anxious to see the good that will come out of this frustration.