One of my favorite TV shows is the drama “24”.  The final episode of the most recent season was tonight.  The show is known for the unexpected twists and turns the plot takes.  The constant in the show is that the main lead, Jack Baurer (played by Keifer Sutherland) is always doing what he does for purpose of protecting the USA.  He often uses methods that are not legal because according to him, “You have to follow the rules the enemy uses, and the enemy has no rules.”

I will readily admit that I know very little about real life espionage.  But I do see a lot of real life illness in my work.  I would like to paraphrase Jack’s philosophy as we learn to deal with illness.  It would read something like this, “Illness knows no rules, its strikes the just and the unjust and is not something you can avoid by being of noble thought and behavior.”   When I am working with a patient who is trying to make logical sense out of why they are sick, I see they are in a lot of emotional turmoil.  So we discuss that turmoil and most of the time through the conversation process they come to realization that being ill was no their choice.  It was not a punishment handed down by a divine being.  It was not the result of a predesigned plan for their life.

We can take a lot of precautions to remain healthy and we should take those precautions.  But even with all the precautions known and available illness still happens.  The only thing we can control about an illness is our response to it.  If we remain true to our faith, and do not give up research shows we will have a better outcome than if we give up at the onset and say the illness has won.  I recently dealt with a patient who died.  This patient was originally given a prognosis of 3 months when diagnosed.  The patient lived 24 more months.  Knowing what I do about the personality of this patient, I venture to say the response of the patient to the illness is at least partly responsible for the extra months that she lived beyond the original prognosis.

If all we do as chaplains is remind people that hope has power, we have given them a great gift!  Who have you given hope to this day?  Please post a response so we can all learn examples of how the power hope works in relationship to illness.