When I was a curate in the people's republic of South Yorkshire, before the days of data protection and safeguarding, a local member of the Deanery was awarded an OBE for services to patients.
Each week he went through all the admission sheets for the Doncaster Royal Infirmary and sorted the names into the ecclesiastical parishes each individual came from and wrote to the parish priest.
In my parish the Vicar coordinated a weekly hospital visit usually on the afternoon of the mid week Eucharist and staff meeting.
A car full of us, there were four on the team, would drive to the hospital and fan out across the wards each armed with a list of names.
One particular Wednesday I called by the bedside of an elderly miner, injured in an accident at Hatfield Main Colliery. Breathing heavily through advanced pneumoconiosis. I introduced myself but he was singularly unimpressed by the sight of a bespectacled, denim clad, callow youth, in a dog collar.
He was too ill to show me the door but made it clear that he had no truck with religion, do gooders and the church in general.
So I moved on to the next person on my list.
A couple of weeks later there was a tentative knock on my door. I had never met the person before but he introduced himself a the son of the man that I had visited.
His father had died and had asked his son to seek me out in order to ask me to take his funeral. Of course my response was to agree and we settled down to discuss dates and the order of the service.
I was in hospital and you visited me!
…38When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick or in prison and visit You?’40And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’…
Over the years since my curacy I have visited many parishioners in hospital and the nature and style of those visits followed a pattern, I would check with the hospital, I would arrange a time, I would visit, catch up on home and parish and I would say a short prayer or blessing.
In my current role at one point I had both Churchwardens in hospital, one in Durham and one in Ward 5 of the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle I was a regular visitor to both.
And then ironically I found myself as a patient in Ward 5. I was in Hospital as a result of surgery, a Pancreaticoduodenectomy or Whipples procedure.
From pastor to patient.
My first challenge was to do with names and titles. As a Pastor I was the Revd Canon Geoff Smith. But since may remarriage and an agreement with my new wife who wished to retain her maiden name we became the Purcell Smith's.
In hospital as a patient, I was bed 3 and variously Geoff Purcell. Geoff Smith. P Smith and just Geoff but mainly Geoff, I was very aware of the risks of being mistaken for someone else, every procedure was preceded by the question date of birth?
I recalled the story of a doctor making a request on behalf of a patient: "Wort on middle finger, please remove, for the patient to wake to find his whole middle finger missing".
Also, rather than normally being focussed on the one parishioner that I was visiting I was now one of six quite poorly men in the ward. In my ward Ward 5, most of the men were local, Newcastle United supporters and spoke with broad 'Geordie' accents. So as we settled into our common existence with most conversations being conducted behind curtains and therefore open for all to eavesdrop an uneasy sense of familiarity settled on the ward and between the six of us.
My immediate neighbour in Bed 2 was scandalised when he was handed a pair of hospital slipper socks in red and white. He demanded black and white, the colours of Newcastle United.
My wife's visiting was subject to Covid restrictions, one named visitor for one hour, but I was visited by members of the Chaplaincy team and because of some vivid dreams, stressful nights and weird fantasies I requested and was visited by the psyche team from the hospital.
But as a result of two weeks restrictions because of a leaking pancreas I was put on 'nil by mouth' when I experienced significant weight loss together with what Ivan Illich described as 'iatrogenic' symptoms including never before experienced Migraine type headaches.
My wife observed that I was being institutionalised and one of my medical team observed on his morning round, you've been here too long, this is not doing you any good. I suspect that it was at this point that efforts were made to ensure that I was discharged.
As a pastor I seek to preach and proclaim the concept of an incarnational faith. As St John's Gospel tells us: 'The word became flesh and dwelt amongst us'. Whilst the notion of incarnation speaks of lofty ideals, at the end of the day, well, flesh is flesh.
As a patient I had to get used to the idea of being flesh.
Blood tests, cannulas fitted and removed, picc lines, fitted and removed, in one case accidentally, injections. My body was a specimen which had to be controlled and managed to allow it to heal after some eight hours of surgery.
Whilst I felt that that my 'flesh' was treated with respect it was still treated with an uneasy familiarity during observations, checks for bed sores and whilst mopping up vomit and other accidents 'of the flesh'.
But whilst I was a patient I was still a priest, a pastor and during a n email conversation with a parishioner I discovered that Radio 3 was broadcasting the Canonical Hours and so I decided that, silently and under the cover of darkness I would exercise as best as I might a ministry if prayer in my situation and for those I shared my situation with and for those who cared for us.
Canonical Hours in Ward 5
