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7
Feb
2021
It’s hard to realize that the first COVID-19 case showed up in Canada barely more than a year ago. A patient came to Toronto's Sunnybrook Hospital after returning from Wuhan, China, where the disease apparently originated.
COVID-19 was a brand new disease. We didn’t know how it started, how it was transmitted, or how to treat it.
We learned as we went.
Initially, too, we saw ICU patients propped up in beds. Now I sometimes see then lying face down. It looks awkward, but apparently it helps to drain the fluid building up in their lungs.
At that point, I wondered if anyone in the COVID-19 camp had contacted the cystic fibrosis community about postural drainage.
Because nobody, but nobody, knows more about getting fluid out of lungs than the people who treat cystic fibrosis.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Cystic Fibrosis, COVID-19, postural drainage, lungs
I’ve been taking my time putting Christmas decorations away.
Long ago, everything came down on Twelfth Night, January 6 -- when, tradition says, the Magi from the east visited Jesus and brought gifts of gold, and myrrh, and incense.
We put them all away. Somewhere. That wasn’t part of my job.
My job was to take the tree and any evergreen wreathes outside. To burn them in the yard. A single match usually sufficed to demonstrate the combustibility of coniferous forests.
This year has been different.
Some of my Christmas decorations have come down, and been tucked away in boxes in the basement storage room. But some are still out.
Because I think, I don’t want Christmas to end.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Christmas, decorations, W.R.Rodgers, pretence
Ever since 22-year-old Amanda Gorman delivered her poem, The Hill We Climb, at President Joe Biden’s Inauguration, people have asked me how I reacted to it.
To respond, I have to distinguish between me as a sentient human being, and me as a technician with words.
As a human being, I endorse her message 100%. I’m inspired by WHAT she said, and the context in which she said it.
As a technician with words, though, I have to deal with HOW she said it. So I approach her poem, any poem, differently.
Tags: Poetry, Amanda Gorman
“God in a stranger’s hello, God in a raised hand of greeting…” So begins a short daily prayer recently published by the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland.
The prayer recognizes that COVID-19 restricts many interactions we used to take for granted.
It goes on, “Those simple gestures, be it a glance toward a passer–by who looks back with a nod, or a friendly question about what breed of dog you’ve got there, give us moments of connection.”
As a dog walker, I relate to that prayer. That’s how I too experience life these days.
Corrymeela anticipates a return to normal, whatever that is: “When instead of passing by or getting only as far as small talk, we will be able to draw close and learn more from each other.”
I don’t see that happening. Not anytime soon. COVID-19 will not go away.
Tags: faith, prayer, Corrymeela
People all around the world watched the inauguration of the new president of the United States of America.
Most of us, I expect, watched mainly Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. We watched Biden take his oath of office with his hand on a family Bible.
Biden is only the second Roman Catholic president; the first was John Kennedy. That speaks volumes about the dominance of one branch of Christian religion in American politics.
We watched Kamala Harris’s radiant smile as she became, not just the first non-white woman to be vice-president, but the first woman. Period. That too speaks volumes about American politics.
But I wonder how many of us watched the troops, occasionally visible in the background.
Tags: Biden, Harris, Inauguration