Jesus Doesn’t Wear A Tux

Fr. Dale Matson

I couldn’t complete my morning walk Thursday and turned around for home while my wife and dog continued on. I collapsed in our garage and managed to get to the living room couch. I received a phone call from the doctor just then from the lab where I send my routine blood work. He told me he had just emailed the preliminary results because my hemoglobin was 7. Sharon took me to the emergency room at St. Agnes in Fresno and I had a copy of the lab report in my hand to verify that I was in trouble. Their hospital lab work showed that I was at 6 which requires a blood infusion. I was put in a temporary room and given two units of blood. Thursday morning, I was hospitalized with a severe G.I. Bleed. My Hemoglobin had dropped from 17 to 6. Since this had happened before, we suspected it was another bleed from an ulcer I have that has resisted healing for the past 3 years. I was put in a semi private room with nothing allowed including water for the next 24 hours. An endoscopy was ordered for the following day.

My own Gastroenterologist performed the procedure early in the morning and said the ulcer was no longer bleeding but was probably the source over weeks. I was issued the usual meds and hoped to be discharged the following day. The hospitalist Dr. Wang said he would have released me Friday but my troponin levels needed to come down. They are enzymes that can be predictive of a heart attack.

In my case, the elevation was simply the mental stress of being in the hospital, So I did what I could to calm down and hoped the next day I could be released. I turned the closed circuit tv to the livestream view of the hospital chapel and ate the empty calorie meals since I was still on a liquid diet. All would be fine I assured myself.

My roommate was discharged and later a new roommate was brought in. He was a street person admitted for a diabetic crisis. He was a mess with only a torn tee shirt and tattered jeans and a long beard. He immediately turned on his tv to the 24-hour baseball channel and promptly fell asleep.

I thought to myself, “God, why have you done this to me? There is no way my enzyme levels will drop next to this wretch of a man who could care less about me, my privacy or needs. I may never get out of here.” It seemed my veneer of sanctity was slipping with every hour. At 11:30 last night I called the nurse and asked if he could turn down Jeff’s tv so I could sleep. What a long night it was.

As it turned out, my levels did drop and my hemoglobin stabilized. The hospitalist released me mid-morning and I began to dress. I watched the nurse Tamara work with Jeff and saw the compassion and care with which she treated him. I was ashamed at myself for my own thoughts and judgments toward him. He said to her, “I could leave if I just had some clothes to wear.” They had none for him. He also had a flip phone to call some of his street friends and cuss at them about this and that, but received no offer of help from them.

As my wife and I awaited the discharge papers, I asked him a few questions. He was the same age as my oldest son. He once had a normal life with a job but had gotten into drugs and taken to the streets. This life is especially difficult for a diabetic. He said that he was once hospitalized for a blood sugar over 500.

As we left, I thought to myself that I had plenty of extra clothes at home but…” I just want to get home again.” After a lunch and long nap, the phone rang and it was Tamara the nurse. “You left your computer charger here on the unit. I’ll keep it at the nurses’ station.” I said, “Is Jeff still there?” She said, “Yes, he is.” I said, “I’ll round up some clothes for him.” She simply said, “That would be nice.” Sharon helped me on the errand of mercy and drove me back to the hospital. She obviously knew the way to my former room better than me also. Sharon fetched the charger from the nurses’ station while I dropped off the clothes and some money.

Thank You Lord for a second chance to serve You in Jeff.