Showing Appreciation

[ravenpenny]

I decided about a two months ago to write a letter of appreciation to the hospital staff who had taken care of me during my time there. They (collectively and overall) did a really great job, and to be honest they helped me get through that ordeal as much as my friends and family. Just over 350 words took me a month to write, I kept going back over it, revising this, revising that, scraping it completely. Nothing seemed good enough, nothing seemed liked it could properly describe the gratitude that I felt for these people I knew only for a short time. Eventually after a discussion with my mother and LA, that's exactly what I wrote.

Here's what I sent them below:

To the Medical Staff of Maryview Medical Center,

How do you tell someone you feel like they saved your life? It’s like trying to catch the sands of an hourglass in your hand and hope they don’t run out, but twice as maddening and even more difficult. Words just cannot describe the feeling you have that you’re alive. Believe me I’ve thought about it for a while, and I’m not too bad with words and the odd turn of phrase, it is after all what I like to consider an occupation. I don’t know exactly what I want to express with this letter except two words, two simple, mundane, and ordinary words: THANK YOU. Thank you to my Doctors, to my Nurses, to the support staff at the Maryveiw Medical Center, from those who prepared my food to those who cleaned my room. I learned several things during My Eight Days, chief among them is that to be a nurse is to be an unsung hero. Nurses are like superheroes without tights, capes, or masks. They work long hours, deal with things I find unimaginable, and they take it in stride. To be a nurse, well, in my an opinion a good nurse, you have to care, not just on an abstract level you have to form a relationship with your patient, even if it’s a temporary one. You have to be part priest, part court jester, and part stern disciplinarian, and you have to do all these things at once. My nurses while I was in ICU, ’Shell, Beverley, Cheryl, Penny, and Love kept me going when I was ready to give up. They let me cry, they let me brood, they let me be angry, in short they let me vocalize whatever I needed to and kept on. There were others of course but most of those are a blur, the only two I really remember are Rus and Jessica.

So this letter’s purpose is simple, I want those who helped me to know that I appreciate them, I appreciate what they did and to thank them with such poor words as I can manner to rouse.

Sincerely,

C. R. Rice