A holiday of ER, ICU

Several of you, with nothing but the best intentions, have asked this week the same question nearly everyone has heard dozens of times: "Have a good Christmas?"

The question is one of those where you think you know the answer. After all, doesn't everyone enjoy Christmas? How could the answer to "Have a good Christmas?" be anything but positive?

I don't want to be a post-holiday Scrooge, because Christmas ought to be, as the song says, a wonderful time of the year. But for many of us, it doesn't turn out that way for one reason or another.

Most of us have heard or read about holiday depression. For those who suffer from this malaise, the holidays are a bummer. Not only does there not seem to be a cure, but I don't see many pharmaceutical companies rushing to find a chemical version of Christmas cheer. Must not be a high-profit malady.

But I am here to attest to the fact that thousands of your family members, friends, neighbors and complete strangers spent Christmas the same way my family did: in a hospital emergency room followed by a a stint in the intensive-care unit followed by still more time in a hospital room.

Illness knows no timetable. Tell a fluttering heart that it's Christmas Eve and there's no time to be sick, and your heart is likely to respond by fibrillating.

(You have no idea how many new words I've learned in the past week. I'd like to forget most of them.)

When we arrived at the ER after darkness fell on Christmas Eve, we had already entertained a gaggle of firefighter-first responders and ambulance crew members in the central hallway of our home, which, we discovered, is ill-equipped for emergency services. The lack of space, however, did not deter the caring cast of critical-care providers.

While the emergency-room staff -- doctors, nurses, technicians of every sort -- tended to my wife, my son (home from Ireland for his first visit in five years and suddenly a central character in a true-life medical drama) and I watched a parade of seasonal illnesses file into the ER waiting room.

Soon, the decision was made to journey to ICU, which, I can assure you, is just as fraught with perils for an anxious family as the journey to Bethlehem must have been for Joseph and his pregnant fiancee -- minus the IVs, of course.

ICU is, as its name implies, an intense place. It's a place where, if you're not wearing the badge of a hospital employee, your are most likely teetering between drawing another breath and greeting the gatekeeper of the Great Beyond.

These badge-wearers are incredibly skilled at what they do, and their level of seriousness on a scale of one to 10 is well over a hundred.

Equally serious are specialists who call in a support team for a special procedure on Christmas Day. "I don't mind at all," said one of the team members afterward, "as long as someone really needs help." As best I could tell, she really meant it.

Things seem to be well in hand now, which gives me enough of a breather to comment on the state of modern hospital accommodations. Patient rooms are designed not only for the comfort of whoever occupies the mechanical bed with all its gizmos, but also for anxious family members. What a change from the hospital rooms most of us remember.

So. Here we are on the brink of a new year. My family is eagerly anticipating 2006. We'd like to think it has to be better than the conclusion of 2005.

Happy New Year.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.