The Tenth Year Should Be Significant

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Change and Continuity
Time goes... Sometimes the hours and days just disappear without a trace and sometimes similar moments mark a life.   I thought that my 10th anniversary deserved a "significant" reflection, but like empathy, it is the other who determines my grade.   I'll have to let the ten years of "my" students give me a mark.   And I'll just return to my usual insignificant ramblings.

This year certainly had the usual and familiar continuities: heat, flooding, energetic and grateful students, chicken and rice [though there was more chicken-and-noodles this year], the miracle of my mattress with the dinosaurs printed on it  (a miracle because I am sure that the mattress had been made before the Thoracic Period), and old friends...

There were enough changes to make it a distinctive year.   You know about my two volunteers, Bev Clarke and Dennis LeBlanc, as they each took up their "first" blogger pens.   I found their presence exciting and exhausting.  It was exhausting as they both had way more energy than I did and as "first timers" to Guyana wanted to experience as much as they could jam into their three weeks each.    I did get to see and do some things that I hadn't done before.  And really when it came down to it, I just missed a few naps.   The students loved Bev and Dennis and their contributions to the course.   I could not have run the course nearly as well without them.

A little autobiographical background:   I grew up on a street around the corner from my Grade School, Our Lady Help of Christians, in Brooklyn, New York where I had my first friends.  Then, I went to Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception for the Brooklyn Diocese, High School Department - a  Roman Catholic Seminary where I found new friends. Then, after four years, I went to Maryknoll Fathers College, Novitiate and Major Seminary where I had a whole new set of people who knew me [and that may have been a good thing].  After six years, I ended up changing religious brands, getting married and living in Ontario, Canada, where I became a pastor of a small German Lutheran Congregation, St. James. After another six years, I went to McMaster Medical Centre as a Chaplain  and stayed long enough to get a 25 year pin.   In 2002, I became a refugee from middle management in the hospital-turned-corporation and skipped into retirement, then soon began my semesters at Mercy Hospital, Georgetown.

The "constructed" bio above was part of my reflection from living for 7 years in Middle West Pubnico, Nova Scotia.   This small and tight-knit Acadian village is a place where most people my age knew their friends from school days... and knew their friends' parents, grandparents, siblings and how they are (ALL!) related.  No one there could escape their past.  I sometimes envied that harmony of years as there have been none who have journeyed with me through all my changes of place and person.   So being in the Guyana context with Dennis and Bev was a gift -- just to have them to chat with (and Charlie in previous years) and remember stories from our past selves.   I know I am not the same "Lefty" of  my childhood home on 28th Street, nor "Champ" of  High School, nor "Jo'c" of university, nor "Pastor" or "Chaplain" or the "Mr. O" of soccer, but it was good to feel connected to all those apparitions of My Self.

 

Now that I come to think about this theme, I realize it has been with me for some time.   When Maryknoll celebrated its 100th Anniversary, I wrote a reflection called, "The Accidental Missionary".  (I have attached a link to spare my students reading more than a few paragraphs; I suggest reading it to all those who are having trouble sleeping.)   And this year I celebrated 40 years of being ordained, at a service in my old church of St. James. To tell you the truth, even I can't remember what I said; I do remember being overwhelmed by all the people who showed up from my fractured history.    I guess I am just getting old -- the stage where remembering is more important that dreaming - Sh-t, I hope not.  

And you may remember the whirlwind visit of the Mental Health Canadians - Peter, Sujay, Ram and Brenna. In trying to get their visit planned I had the opportunity of spending a lot of time with my friend, Bhiro Harry, who is the Chief Psychiatrist in Guyana... It is always a joy to connect with someone who is "like you" in many ways.   And we "used" the Canadians to help us have a few beers together.     This month, Bhiro visited the Canadians at Grand River Hospital, Kitchener, not far from my home... Unfortunately I was out west in Calgary attending to a death in my family.  I had planned for him to come and visit in my home with my wife, Anne (I had been a guest in his home and met his wife, Georgia) and to take him out for a nice meal -- and to pay for it.   (He usually ends up paying when we go out in Guyana, so I was to buy here...)    Oh well, next time he comes to Canada .....

Events Worth Picturing in My Last Week

Azalia Luke [m.] who was a first year student many years ago
and a tutor in the PBL course this year graduated from University Guyana
with the highest grades in the entire Faculty of Health Sciences.
Of course, I have taken credit for setting her on the right path!

Judge Rev (I couldn't find my white powdered wig, so housekeeping helped me out) presided over the ethics final exam, "The Assisted Death Trial of Jessie".
The students write about how each of the ethics principles applied to a case of an elderly woman
who put her husband with advanced dementia in a car to die.   They showed growing understanding of all the principles -- even when they got them wrong!
In the afternoon I assigned different roles, ranging from Jessie through defender, prosecutor, Jesus .....  Hey, it is just a role play!
They each had three minutes to present their viewpoint ..... and they almost came to blows this year.
They served as jury too and the vote was split evenly for acquittal or  life imprisonment.  So I broke the tie.

Amazing!  The Sisters of Mercy, including many octogenarians like Sisters Judith and Noel,
took up supporting the Guyana Women Miners’ Organisation and their leader, Simona Broomes  (left at top) in their fight against human trafficking in the interior of Guyana.   I wonder where the leadership for so many social issues will come from after these "tough" women die.

The students have formed the first Nursing Student Association in order to improve their schooling
and working conditions at Mercy Hospital.   Denzil Hernandez was elected the first president.  
They sponsored the trip to The Creek  (yea!) and are the ones behind the project of tiling the classroom floors.  
I do hope they succeed and gain a sense of power to take on other needed projects.

And the mandatory "Farewell Gift".  This time it was a carved turtle
as I had said more than once as they took forever to get into their small groups,
"A herd of turtles can move faster."

 My Florida Interlude

My slightly younger sister, Kathy and her partner Mike,
for many reasons too long and too crazy to explain here
are adopting a  baby, nicknamed "Jack".
And I thought the people of Guyana needed your prayers!

Speaking of prayer.. I spent a few days golfing with my brother, Tony.
I had not golfed at all in 2013, so I was prepared to yield the Family Championship.
He needed a win as he lost last year and so golfed 5/6 times a week.
I am practicing my humility, so I can't brag about who won.

The End 

Certainly it is the end for this tour.  I (and no one else either) do not know about the future and whether I'll get back.  As per my tradition, I'll celebrate Christmas and Old Year's Night with Anne, then start thinking about No 11.

I want to thank you all for reading these stories.   I do hope that they have conveyed some of the meaning the people of Guyana provided for my life, and some of my contributions to them.   I cannot do what I do without the support of many people who contribute their thoughts and support.   My most important supporter is my wife, Anne, who almost wholeheartedly encourages my time away.

Thank you.  John JSPS

And the Big News is...

A first for my time in Guyana:  never in my nine visits has so significant an event happened in Guyanese history .....  Are you ready?  Drum roll, please.

Guyana Golden Jaguars beat Trinidad and Tobago 2-1 to proceed in the group play for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil!



And we were there on the pitch...well almost.



Denzil, one of our nursing students, served as our host for the game. 

Last night, we were at the National Stadium to see Guyana beat its arch-rival Trinidad, to go through to the next round of the2014 World Cup for the first time in its history.   We were picked up and driven to the match by one of our more enterprising older students - Denzil Hernandez.   He used his taxi-driving skills to get us to the game on time and on the only road ..... it could rival the Long Island Expressway or the Q.E.W. from Toronto at rush hour - except that some of the road is just dirt.   He had arranged for our tickets and was going to get us our official yellow Jaguar shirt, but the scalpers had put up the price to $2,000 Gy [$10 Cdn] and he was not paying that much for a shirt .....  I thought about our NHL jerseys! 

The National Stadium was built for World Cricket a few years ago ..... and we entered through lots of security and pat-downs as they were looking for guns.   Once we were inside, Denzil led us to the field entrance with a short piece of BS about who the two old white guys were... and I guess we were now medics as we sat with the ambulance.

Looking the part.

I love watching soccer from ground level as one gets a sense of the speed and power of the young players...  It reminded me of my youth -- although actually I was never a very good  soccer player, even in my memory!   Guyana played a good attacking game and TandT was content to sit with four at the back until they went 2 down in the last part of the match... and then the referee gave them  a mercy call outside the box so that they scored in extra time.   I have mellowed some and was not coaching as the referee gave 90% of the 50-50 challenges to TandT -- I just noted it as an observation .....   Of course, old coaches never really die ..... and I had my very helpful opinions, though no one asked me for them.   We ran into other students and people we know, though Denzil was clearly "the man" as he seemed to know everyone!  

The parking lot had cars parked bumper to bumper, six deep .....  it was unlike the parking at the Polo Grounds in Wellington, Florida, where my sister lives .....   And just for good measure, Denzil's brother and his wife were there, so we fought through traffic going the wrong way to drop them off, and then back through gridlock going the right way.   We were back before midnight, dropped at our gate by our chauffeur.    A great night ..... I have always liked winning better than losing!

And speaking of winning:  Tony designed a test for the PBL sessions that we did in Anatomy and Physiology, on "the knee" (remember the blackboard diagrams?).  We gave it to our first year students and to the second year students who had the traditional pedagogy ..... AND .....  I think the results will really interest you ..... when we publish, eh?   Or, God forbid, you might have to read Tony's blog to see if he leaks the results.

This was another week over-packed with responsibilities, both in the classroom and in our social life. We had to "steal" a few extra classes to get all our PBL pages completed so we can get home to our special, loving, gracious, talented, beautiful, supportive, etc., wives on the 26th of November.   The students are seeing us very often -- I hope that familiarity doesn't breed contempt.   So far they are playing well with us and seem engaged in all our efforts.

Friday saw us all meet at the Public Hospital Morgue, the Rite of Passage for all First Year Mercy nurses -- at least since I have been there:  the visit to the autopsy lab of Dr. Nehaul Singh, the chief and only pathologist in Guyana.   (On the first day of classes the students ask, "Are you taking us to the morgue?" sometimes even before they know our names .....)   As in all other years, this year there is a range of students from petrified to curious...  There were some who had their gloves on as soon as they got there and some who found it all a little much ..... including one student who was trying for an Academy Award in the Drama category .....

This year there was a Guyanese pathology resident who spent a lot of time with the students showing them all the internal organs and cross sections.  Almost all the students participated as he suggested -- after the organ had been removed from the body.   He was a most excellent teacher, and I said a short prayer that he will consider staying in Guyana when he is credentialed.  There have been others before for whom I had said the same prayer, but the salary dollars overseas seem to them more like heaven than just another country.  I know if had asked him he would have said, " I need to feed my family."  And thus spake Qoheleth!

We returned to the classroom without any fatalities and spent the next two hours in an engaging discussion of life, death, body, respect, smells, suicide, lack of resources, amazement at the "insides" of real bodies, fervent promises to study anatomy harder -- and to get back on diets so as not to have all that fat showing when they hit the morgue tables.   It is truly a rite of passage as they will not be the same again -- hopefully!  

The organs that they explored in detail were those of a young woman about their age who had killed herself by ingesting poison.  The poison of choice was farm insecticide -- and you don't want to know what that does to a body.    The despair of the woman got hidden in the science talk, but all the class knew it was there.    I suggested that she had given them gifts... the chance to see the wisdom of the body, the reflections on the meanings of living and dying, what is precious in life, and why they are not going to have tomato soup ever again!  I said that if they can remember some or any of it, then as another old preacher once said (actually he said it so many times everyone lost track) then her life will not have been entirely in vain.  She has been our teacher in death in a way she could not accomplish with her life.   It was also Remembrance Day .....  I hope the students will remember her, as I remember Jim Bishop, Boston City Morgue, 1968.

Walking back from the morgue... and stopping for a pop at Paul's - a tradition.

Reflecting on life and death and nursing

We also had an "ethics trial" in which Dr. Tony was the Honourable Judge.   The students reflect on a case of assisted death and on whether they understood the actions and whether they might ever do the same ..... and how the ethical principles that I have been beating into their heads might apply - autonomy, justice, etc.   Then I assign roles -- such as the wife who kills her husband -- and we even bring her husband back from the grave, as well as a defence attorney and prosecutor, so that every student gets a character.  We even had Jesus appear before the court!   (He could only talk in scriptural quotes.) 

I get the most satisfaction out of having the people most violently opposed to the killing be the wife or the defence attorney .....  stretching their minds, eh?   They were very imaginative and dramatic, if not very reflective ethically -- well, you can't have everything.   The jury ruled that she was innocent because she wasn't in her right mind.   The decision reflects the ambivalence of society in general to "mercy killings" and the 'mercy killers"... It doesn't seem "all wrong" nor does it seem "all right"!

This was a week with a death theme. It was not only the morgue, but in our paper problem young Rajah is dying from an astrocytoma, and we had also visited the funeral home.   Mr. Claude Merriman described the roles that funeral homes play in the practical side of dying as well as the psycho-social supports provided to grieving families.    The students were disappointed there were no bodies in the cooler, but they did get more than enough the next day at the morgue.

One similarity with northern funeral homes is that you have to walk by the expensive caskets first before you can find the cheap ones.

We took one of my young girlfriends, Johanna, out to a fashion show.  I had promised to buy her a burger, but thought that she'd like the show better.   Now she has a lot to ask her parents to put in her stocking for Christmas.   Tony and I  were more preoccupied with the models -- and of course how much they reminded us of our wives .....

I forget whom she looked like more .....

Johanna with a runway seat.

 And to continue our full social life we were invited to join Tabitha and Sekhar as they had invited a dozen or so persons from their home state in India, Andhra Pradesh.  They had prepared traditional Indian foods so the new people wouldn't feel so homesick.    (The food was very good, but we need to work on our Telugu language skills ..... )  All the guests except us had come to work in the Information Technology  areas.

Almost like Pubnico -- the women were all huddled on their own.

And since my butt is telling me that I have typed long enough, just a final word about the girls' pictures from St. Ann's.   I have come to grips with the truth that they love my camera more than me .....  usually they take a couple of hundred pictures each time I am there; however, this time they took more than Aldric at a concert (Pubnico reference) -- some 400 plus!  I have trimmed them down to a dozen or so.

Tessa [left], a Mercy Grad and a St. Ann's Grad.  She was in my class longer ago than either of us could remember.  She was visiting her sister, Marissa, who was feeling under the weather.

Finally ....... Did I mention that GUYANA WON?
Thanks for coming this far...  John.