3:00am in the ER

A couple of weeks ago I was away with some of the students from my youth ministry at the Michigan Statewide Teen Convention in Kalamazoo, Michigan. It was a great time away with them, though it was not void of its own challenges.

By Friday evening at the convention, I had two or three students not feeling well. Some of that can be contributed to the convention hall we were in. When you put almost 600 students in one room and add a good worship band like One-5-Oh, you get a smelly room full of stagnant air at the end of the praise time. It's just one of those things that always happens. This year, the hot, stagnant air made a couple of our students a little woozy, though it was nothing too serious.

That evening after the main session, our group met in my intern's room to talk about the evening and to walk through the rest of the weekend. That's when Aaron told me he wasn't feeling well. No big thing in my mind--it was the effects of the hot, stinky room mixed with the fact that he ate something he shouldn't have at dinner and was paying for it. Unfortunately, that was not the case. By 1:00am, we called his parents to let them know what was going on and headed to the emergency room.

This was my first trip with a student to the ER, and for the most part, it went very smoothly. If you have ever been to the emergency room, you will know that checking in, being evaluated by nurses, and then put in a room and evaluated by the doctor is normally a long a painful process. We got checked in quickly and within a half an hour or so we were in a holding room. Aaron got medication fairly quickly and ended up sleeping through most of the rest of the night while the doctors tried to figure out what was going on with him. While he slept, I got to take in everything going on around me. The most notable was a drunk guy in one of the other stalls in the room. As I sat there, I could here him singing. I don't know what songs they were, they were barely intelligible, but you definitely could tell he was singing. After belting out a few bars, he was thirsty and wanted a drink of water. The nurses were busy with other patients in the room, so his request went unheard. This made him mad and belligerent. He left his curtained area and started yelling at the nurse. It didn't last long--she threatened security and told him he wasn't the only one in need of care in the room. He quickly quieted and went back to his bed and began singing again.

Eventually, the doctor came to see what was wrong with this man. He asked him how he got to the hospital. The man could not remember. He said someone had brought him there from Jackson (which wasn't logical since we were in Kalamazoo). The doctor asked him what was hurting and the guy said he had fallen on his arm a week earlier, but that it had healed and did not hurt anymore. Pulling at straws, the doctor asked if the man would like to get some help with his drinking problem, to which the man responded, "I don't have a drinking problem."

The whole experience made me appreciate the work that doctors and nurses do dealing with everyone who comes through the doors of the emergency room. Not only do they have to deal with the physical ailments that people come in with, they have to work through the emotional and personal things going on with some of the people they attend to, like the drunk singer. By listening to the conversation between the doctor and the man, and by talking with the nurse later after everything happened, I could tell that there was a want in them to help the man get some real help and not destroy his life as he was. It helped me to realize that there is only so much you can do for those who hurt and need help, but don't want it. That night my mind chewed on that a lot, thinking of instances in my ministry where similar conversations had happened where denials of problems were made and help was refused.

Fortunately, the doctors don't stop trying to help people. They have pledged their allegiance to a code. We as Christians have done something similar. We have pledged our lives to the God of Heaven and Earth. We are partnered with Him as He works to bring the whole of His creation back under His reign. We have put on Christ and live with an endless hope, an endless love, and endless compassion for all because God has shown us the same endless hope, love, and compassion. We need to evaluate and make sure we are living in this way.

If you are wondering about Aaron, he's fine. The doctors diagnosed him with appendicitis at 4:00am. I got the privilege of calling his parents then to tell them they needed to drive to Kalamazoo to authorize surgery for their son. Even more exciting was calling one of my elders to make sure someone else other than me knew what was going on.