Rev. Pamela Lucas
Spiritual Care Practitioner
I tried to save PPE in the beginning when people were trying not to go into rooms.
I couldn’t understand why one of our patients wouldn’t answer the phone while I was ringing in. In the end, I went in to see him and I said, Why won’t you pick up your phone? He said, I can’t see where it is and I don’t know how to use it.
He said, My wife is going to worry about me. Would you just help me and dial the buttons for me and help me to talk to my wife? I said, Of course. Of course we will.
The patient had a visual impairment, which we hadn’t quite realized. And in a new environment, he couldn’t quite figure out where the telephone was and make a call to his wife. Once he had done that, it was like a weight had lifted off his shoulders. His anxiety had been lifted by a simple intervention.
I think that’s what everybody’s done here at St. Mike’s. They’ve gone out of their way to perform acts of kindness. To try to make this experience more grounded in humanity.
You know plastic tea lights? I had a patient who was in one of the isolation rooms, and what she wanted to do was to pray. She didn’t want to feel like she was being left alone and she was struggling being in a room by herself. I gave her one of those electric tea lights, and this little tea light from Dollarama changed her world because she just put it on her table, and it was flickering and a light of hope.
I have used them at memorial services, but this was the first time I’d done it in this environment with a patient, where I’d given a tea light to someone and it had given them a sense of calm and brought a sense of meaning. It had shown them not only were they not alone, but they felt a sense of inner calm and connection to God.
I think that’s what everybody’s done here at St. Mike’s. They’ve gone out of their way to perform acts of kindness. To try to make this experience more grounded in humanity.
Every time I look at my desk, because I have a plastic tea light there now, I think of that patient and I think about that flickering light and how in the midst of this pandemic, there is hope.
Reverend Pamela Lucas is a spiritual care practitioner at St. Michael’s Hospital.
As told to Hayley Mick. Photos by Yuri Markarov. This interview has been edited and condensed.