127 - Intensive Care Unit

Three years ago this week, what had seemed only a summer cold escalated to pneumonia. I have been disabled and oxygen dependent for a long time, the result of radiation treatments and chemotherapy that spared my life in my twenties and thirties. For me, then, pneumonia was a challenge handled poorly by my body. When I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit, I found that those days lost to me had been busy ones for my caretakers. It is with thanks and overwhelming gratitude to the One Who made us all, that I share this psalm with you, my prayer as I lay mute, attached to a ventilator. Time has forced change, time has healed, but God is constant.

One Hundred Twenty-Seven

Intensive Care Unit

Hooked, Holy One, linked and lined,
To openings divine and necessary;
Hooked, Divine Healer, to computer pads and data recorders,
Divining and refining every breath and beat.

Hooked to kind friends arriving,
Greeting Shabbat with electric bulbs,
Their voices joining as I weep.
Linked to lines, to them, to You.

Hooked, as choking, terrified,
Calm nurse hands move efficiently,
Setting aright, clearing, relieving,
Aligning me toward recovery.

I am hooked, Divine One.
I am hooked to this medicine and this mystery:
The human hands in Your stead,
Guarding and rehearsing my complete healing.