Loving the Patient - Hating the Flu

My wife is a health care professional. This means that she has a great deal of knowledge about providing for one's health; this also means that when she is the one that is sick - she is not exactly the "queen of compliance".

Though I love her dearly, I must say that my wife is not the best of patients. She just has a way of sort of clamming up when she gets sick so you don't know how to help and there is more than a little bit of denial going on.

In fact I would venture to say that R. is a rotten patient.

Our whole family has been on the "verge of something" most all winter this year. I think we each had our own episode of cold or virus and then whatever it was seemed to linger on, never quite releasing its grip.

This week it returned with a vengeance and R. bore the brunt of its fury.

"It's positive. You have the flu" - R. said the nurse had told her shortly after her test.
Immediately the nurse slipped on a pair of latex gloves and set a plan in motion to get R. out of that examination room before she contaminated someone.

This set up something of a pattern of resentment for my ailing wife, toward any form of quarantine.
I have had to sneak out of the bedroom and wash my hands in private so as not to offend her. I also thought it best to close her door so she could not hear me fogging the room with Lysol after she passed through.

Last night she seemed somewhat put out when I suggested the kids stand outside the bedroom doorway in order for her to get a look at them. This followed my first attempt at appeasing her desire to see them of just bringing in a photograph.

When I discovered that she was pretty much utilizing the entire bed - including my side and my pillow, I decided to be chivalrous and opt to sleep in the living room so as "not to disturb her".

Incidentally, I still have something of a yen for what Opie called "adventure sleeping". For Opie on that particular episode of "The Andy Griffith Show" - Adventure sleeping meant sleeping on the ironing board between two chairs. For me, adventure sleeping meant an attempt at "operation air mattress". First, I tried two different blow driers to inflate it, finally I went into the attic and found the official pump. When all was settled and I attempted to lie down, I heard the s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s of air escaping. There was a leak.
Despite a makeshift patch of Scotch Tape (from Ab's stash, of course) and a second inflation, I was sleeping on the floor by 4:30 this morning.

Today it dawned on me that the idea of loving the patient and hating the flu is a lot like the concept of loving the sinner yet hating the sin.

Sometimes those that are suffering the ravages of sin are put off by our regarding it as undesirable. They feel that it is they themselves that we regard as undesirable.

Perhaps we act that way at times. We seem to have such difficulty with trying to show love while at the same time, not endorsing their choices.

So often times we keep our distance.

We are afraid to get too close; afraid that they may encroach upon our space, or require more than we want to give, or perhaps they will drag us down.

When the Puritans were on their way to America to establish what would later be known as Plymouth Colony, the members of the crew made life difficult for them.

But when the tables were turned and many of those same crewmen took sick, it was the very saints they had previously slandered and persecuted - that came in to help them.
Some marvelled that their former friends were nowhere to be found when the fever struck; yet these brave, loving souls, risked their own health in order to save these men.

Greater love has no man than this.... that a man lay down his life for his friends....

That is true love.

Get well soon, R.