One of the tasks I do often here is read about medical studies. Have you read the latest medical study released in the news today? If you haven’t, don’t worry. Another contradictory one will be out momentarily.

The problem I’ve found with most medical studies I read about is that they deal with specific drugs or devices treating (or not) such a small number of people with a specific condition, you’re not quite sure what to make of the results. Another study of the same drug looking at a slightly different condition could come up with the opposite result. Therefore, within a short period of time, you could have contradictory headlines: “X drug Reduces Cancer Risk” and “X drug Does Nothing for Cancer.”
Which study do you believe? Your guess is as good as mine. Go with doctors (affiliated with major health systems like Lourdes) and treatments you believe will work and hope for the best.

As a journalist for 10 years, I reported on just about everything. I got to see and talk to people at their best, but more often, at their worst: following the deaths of loved ones or through some other tragedy; during heated exchanges at a school board meeting over some passionate issue; or when they read something in the paper they didn’t exactly like.

I talked to family members of loved ones who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks who remained in denial, thinking those missing individuals would walk through the door again in a few moments. I even visited Ground Zero in New York two weeks after the attack, getting closer than most reporters, inside a building next door, picking up business cards and other personal effects blown in from God knows where.

Over the years, I think I got pretty jaded. I thought I’d seen it all. That’s until I joined Lourdes as writer/editor of publications in October 2005. One of my duties is interviewing department leaders for features in the Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center weekly newsletter. I was interviewing the nurse manager of Critical Care I, a unit where the sickest of the sick people go, when a “code” was announced. Just like on medical TV shows like “ER,” that’s a signal for everyone to drop what they’re doing and proceed to a patient’s room to respond to an emergency situation.

The nurse manager and I got up, but shortly thereafter, the code was canceled. That’s not totally uncommon, I was told; the situation was probably under control. We concluded our interview and we walked toward the exit of the unit. There, outside a room, I quickly found out why the code had been called off. A family was gathered, and a woman was sobbing uncontrollably, crying, “Mommy! Mommy!” She collapsed onto the floor, and two relatives tried to pick her up and escort her out of the unit and into a waiting room. Her elderly mother had apparently just died. I discovered that the woman was in kidney failure, and was quite ill.

The scene hit me like a ton of bricks. I could totally put myself in that grieving woman’s situation. I have elderly relatives. In fact, most of my larger family gatherings are for funerals.

Because the code had been canceled, no chaplain was present. I quickly left the unit and walked through the Chapel and into the Pastoral Care Department. I told the secretary that someone was needed in CC1.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that incident for weeks. It still brings back memories and sad feelings. I never knew the deceased woman’s name, and I’m sure the nurses and others who work in such hospital units don’t recall everyone who comes there. However, I admire their courage for dealing with life and death situations every day.