Perspective

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been a number of "heavenly discharges" from the hospital - some more of a surprise than others. One in particular was quite a shock, perhaps because of his young age ("Young" includes anyone under 80 on my ward) and because of the progress he had been making with me functionally. For this particular patient, he went from being unable to move his legs in bed to being able to stand for a few minutes in the parallel bars after about 2 or 3 months. It was a reminder to me how tenuous life can be. Although he was making great gains physically, other issues were unseen or unrepairable by modern medicine.

This got me thinking about perspective. In the day to day life of things, it's easy for me to focus on what's directly in front of me and lose sight of the bigger picture. For example, I have x number of people I need to see so I want to get through them all; however, with the elderly it's often hard to do things quickly and I lose patience. They can tell if you're trying to rush them and I try not to - afterall, they are people and not just injuries to be fixed up or medical problems to be solved. The weather painted a good picture for me recently as the lower mainland's been in a huge cloud for the most part of the past couple weeks and sometimes I could only see a few meters ahead of me.


Although the fog was quite dense in the city, I'm lucky enough that my house was above it all so I was greeted by a beautiful sunrise each morning before making my way down. Here's picture from my house with Mount Baker in the background and a sea of clouds underneath. I'm glad I got that sunshine every morning to remind me that it's there even when I can't see it during the day.