Cancer tip #46

Cancer Tip #46– I hope this isn’t too controversial, but I’m gonna talk about religion and/or spirituality. Be specific in you pastoral care requests when they check you in at the hospital. I know that every BS story starts with, “I swear this is true.” This isn’t like that although “I swear this is true.” When the nurse wheels that computer cart in your room and begins asking you those update kind of questions and you get to “would you like some pastoral care?” Be specific. On one of my trips I’m not sure which block it was, or what was going on, but when they asked me, I was so miserable I just said yeah, yeah, yeah and waved them by with a dismissive gesture. I imagine in the basement of the hospital there is a room full of holy men/women in sprinter starting positions waiting for somebody to answer yes to pastoral and the all dash to the door to see who can be the first one to the room. Oh yeah – that’s how I see it. Because when I gave a non-specific yes, I got a parade of holy people from just about very denomination you can imagine. The only no show was an Imam. I had priests, reverends, rabbis, and some guy who, to this day, I don’t know what he professed. They were all wonderful people, but there were a lot of ‘em. I won’t even go into the offer I had from a wonderful Native American to smudge my room to purify it. Anyway the parade ended with this priest from the local Korean Catholic Church explaining Groupon to me. Be warned.