A Beautiful Confusion

I was at work waiting on an email response from a friend and I was wondering if everything in the world (reality), all that I see and hear, is actually just as I think it is. 

I'd like to say my thoughts were inspired by some Taoist-like meditation about the sound of trees falling in the woods and stuff, however, in reality the question came as the result of just another one of my hospital work days, what I sometimes like to call my daily "7 Tower acid trip".        

Nursing is a strange combination of skills.  You have to look for objective facts and turn them into compassion.  It's like starting as a scientist and ending as a pastor.  I was getting my medications for my next patient, listening to my IPhone (on speaker) and I was thinking about the patient I had just seen, (one of the crazies) and how ironic it was to be listening to Floyd right now on my IPhone (dark side of the moon). 

What I remember about the man was that he was blind.... And nearly deaf. I remember how I had to lean way over to within about an inch of his face and then with the best projected voice my diaphragm could manage I would holler hello to him or that he needed to take his meds.  Or sometimes I would holler and asked if he needed to pee. 

He was an old black man.  (Stress OLD-maybe Could have been a hundred).  He looked like he could have been a blues man.  But it seemed that no matter what I hollered he always just kept saying the same thing.  "Yes ma'am", he would say.  And I would say I'm a sir, and I need to know if you've had a bowel movement today, and he'd say "Yes Ma'am".  And I'd say how many times did you go? and he'd say, "yes ma'am".  And then I'd say you didn't really poop at all did you, and he'd say yes ma'am.........  Then as a test, I'd say, "after lunch we're gonna scoot over to the other side of the room and with the help of Physical Therapy we're gonna fly out the window, you and me".  And then after my muffled, barely audible, non-words he would yell out "yes ma'am" one more time, emphatically as if that were the end of the conversation (and it was).  And then I would leave the room and come back to my med cart and begin working on my next patients meds;......... Pink Floyd playing gently in the background.... all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.......  

While I was standing at my med-cart I started wondering if it was true..... that all I touch and all I see are all my life will ever be?  Cause I was thinking about the old blues guy and the modern world and I was wondering if maybe there were things going on around us.... things this modern world with all it's "science-only" business could never hear or understand.  I mean what if all kinds of things were happening but because of my condition I couldn't hear any of it.  (psychotic?).

My email ring tone went off and I checked my messages to find that it was an update of a friend whose daughter had just come out of surgery.   Her daughter had been primarily deaf for most of her young life but for the first time she would be able to hear as the result of these cochlear implants.  And my friend said that the doctor said that they would be slowly increasing her reception because at first sound her world would be mostly chaos, hearing words and sounds and noises that she had never heard before.  He said that she might even be confused for a while but that she would work through it and start to distinguish things, voices and sounds and stuff, and that she would ultimately have to relearn how to live her life on this whole other level, and the email ended with this phrase from the dialogue between me and my friend:

She might be in a confusion?.... but it will be a beautiful confusion, he said.    

As I walked away from my med cart I wondered if some day there might be of a beautiful confusion for us?  And I walked on down the hall with my next patients medications and I tried to open up my ears as open as I could, like I was deaf, or crazy, or like I was expecting some kind of alternate world to break in.  But the only thing I could hear was the sound of my nurses aid asking my old blues man how many children he had, and the inevitable expected response, "Yes Ma'am.  Yes Ma'am.  YES Ma'am".                     

the french connection

Ok. Truth be known. In the past my favorite French phrase has been, Voile vous coucher avec moi. (if not alive in the 70's, google meaning of Voile vous coucher avec moi.... It's from a Patty Labelle song).

As a result, my newest favorite French phrase has become, avoir le bourdon.... (see previous post). There ain't nothin like lovin to teach some'n the blues.