Can AWE and WELLBEING be found in Matrons office ..?

Nikos Kazantzakis said : " the highest point a man can attain is not knowledge or virtue or goodness or victory, but something even greater, more heroic, and more despairing _ Sacred Awe"

Perhaps the greatest example we have of that this week in NZ is the presence of the emporer penguin. Why did he arrive in this time on that shore and manage to be so at one with the crowd and the relative heat - compared to his chilly and dark normal surroundings? From my own perspective I see rolling out a burgeoning force for good ( there are examples all around us if we but open our eyes) and have been a conscious observer of this since I was 16 years and 10 months old. ( In case you are wondering that was my age when I did my first bed bath of a real patient.!)

Picture if you will....it's 1970....my first day as a student nurse on the Clifford Green Ward at Fairfield district Hospital NSW. I am about to do my first bed bath on a real patient. His name was Bob Hall. A crane had fallen on Bob literally squashing him. He had over 35 broken bones. There actually was not much to wash as his legs were in traction and both arms suspended. Just his face and hands and ..'down there" ..( I was 16 !! )

Some 3 months before they stood around him in casualty and said quietly..." he's not going to make it" . Well, 4 hours passed and he was still alive and they said " Well, if we did take him to theatre he would probably die on the table". But they took him to theatre anyway, and he did not die on the table. Wheeling him back to recovery they said " Well, poor fellow will probably be a vegetable". Bob woke very quickly post -op and revealed he was indeed NOT a vegetable!!!

Then they said " Well, he will certainly never walk again"
Bob Hall was in hospital the entire 3 years of my general nurse training and I saw him every day I was on duty, even if not rostered on his ward. He had the occassional weekend at home, and ... much to my delight Bob walked on 2 sticks to my graduation ceremony at the end of 1973, and stood up the back till the ceremony was over. Then he shouted out.." I actually have something to say " and came forward. He had a huge scroll which he opened out and started reading out all the tricks and pranks I had played on him during his time in hospital.

When he had finished reading them off he turned to me and said " you dont know what you did for me with your impish ways and absurd and outlandish behaviour! " The thing is , it is only some 30 years on I really get what he meant. To be good humoured is to be appropriately responsive. Now that is not about being NICE. It is about being present and communing at a deep level. Responding and callibrating at the same level.

To this day I am in awe that Bob endured all that he did; that he became the inspiration for others who were ill; and that in being my innate good humoured and impish self I supported him to heal. Here's an interesting fact....At a cellular level in the krebbs cycle in the cells of the body ...when Adenosine Di-phosphate meets oxygen a small 'explosion" occurs and it becomes Adenosine Tri Phosphate. ( I am simplifying things a little ) So 2 become 3. And so we have the energy source of the cell and...the body. The more he breathed and laughed the more oxygenated he became and the more he sourced extra energy.

We energise each other ! And it's not just through the krebbs cycle...I am in AWE of that.

Kim Knight from Art of Health http://www.artofhealth.co.nz/ was on my radio " Radio Improv - Joy in the moment "this week. We talked about awe, and chi; we spoke of depression and fatigue; we did an inner smile meditation..or rather she did! And we too communed and were in awe of what each of us in the room knew and how we used that to each be a contribution to the other. www.planetaudio.org.nz/radioimprov

Now back to my opening question " Can AWE and WELBEING be found in Matrons office ?" Yes it can! 10 years after my graduation I became the Matron of a 79 bed hospital and we became the first Rest Home to conduct its own ongoing education program and also became the first provider of Geriatric Nurse experience for Wollongong University Gerontolgy students. Remind me to share the poem they wrote when I left!