By 3:00pm Sunday, I was only able to draw 30% of a fighting breath with each inhale, and that ability was diminishing by the hour. It was the end of a week long battle with what I thought was asthma that had somehow crawled back from my childhood to haunt me. All thanks to Vicki for "strongly encouraging me to seek help in the ER.
Two hours later I was wheeling onto the Covid isolation floor at Ochsner-Baptist, still gasping for each breath with my shoulders. I was expecting a scene out of a TV hospital drama: equipment littering the halls, people in scrubs rushing here and there with iPads, barking orders. Instead, the halls were wide and sparkling clean. Medical staff were standing about in twos and threes, talking quietly. The eyes of the staff told of smiles I could not see behind their masks. It was a visual antidote for the dark fear and struggle taking place in my chest.
In my room, four nurses quietly attached me to IV’s and monitoring gear. From within the glow of her lighted med-helmet, one or the four, Elana, spoke softly to me by name, “ I see you struggling, Mr. Marsden; (placing her gloved hand on my forehead) you are in a good place…” Her Mississippi accent was comforting. “…you just give yourself to us; we are now your crag and your stronghold, darlin’.” I could not hold back the torrent of tears. She was speaking from Psalm 31, cornerstone scripture in our family (read at my daughter’s wedding);
“Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe, for you are my crag and my stronghold.” Ps. 31
Over the next four days, I made a habit of asking my caregivers how they came into nursing, and what was the experience like, nursing here, in the time of Covid.
Elana’ s mom was in nursing school during Katrina; she never finished, but guided her daughter into nursing. Claire had a favorite grandmother who was a combat field nurse in Vietnam; Denisha was a Navy corpsman, as was her uncle. Tina’s dad was a Marine combat chaplain in Iraq… Most had volunteered to be there. All had a sense of professional and personal destiny about the work. All invoked God’s role in the moment.
I began to see my place as a call to feel the heat of Sacred Ground beneath my bare feet. I was in the care of healers who drew their lineage from beneath stones in the generational river of humankind. These are folks who are given a world of pestilence and fear and see Sacred Ground. I was given the opportunity to see clearly a phenomenon that is likely quite normal within communities of healers all over the world. Heeding the call to heal, through prayer, action, and faith is not just for some. It is THE call for us all. Moreover, it is our call to overtly acknowledge the courage and faith and work of the medical community everywhere. NOW.
-Marsden Leverich Moran
