A LETTER BY EVELYN FROM HER HOSPITAL BED 5-5-2023

To my loving family and my dear friends,

I am still an inpatient at the hospital I go to for my medical care.

I want to thank every one of you for your prayers, kind words, your love and your concern.

All of you had sent a light into the midst of being so sick in the hospital.

I feel and I know that God has not only been with me in my struggles, my God sees me.

I only wish my assigned doctor would honestly talk with me, preferably with visual prompts that I would comprehend better than using words that are confusing, unsettling and weird.

I, being a computer geek, follow the only recourse that’s available to me.

I go onto my own My Chart account and I read all of my doctor’s, nurses’ and everyone that’s connected with me in this hospital admission, well, I read all of their notes.

Then there is this magic tool called “Google” where I research all of the problems that I am said to be plagued with and go on from there.

This would not be the optimal way of knowing my own medical conditions but, I guess most medical professionals do not act in reasonable ways when it comes to patient care.

From reading my doctor’s notes, I have acute respiratory failure, hypo-inflated lungs, lungs are hypoxemia, hypocarbia effects on my lungs and the list goes on…

It doesn’t do me, as the patient, any service when I have to resort to reading the patient notes on my own My Chart account and then I need to google all of my medical conditions that are written down about me.

What I do need and want to happen is an honest dialogue between myself and the medical professionals that are treating me, in words I can understand and with needed visual prompts so I, myself, can know, understand and learn to live with what is exactly going on in my own body.

I want to know what I am fighting.

I want to understand what I am fighting.

I want to learn how I can have the best Quality of Life with the time left that God has gifted me with.

I want to be with my family and my friends.

It is 6am on Friday and I bow my head, look into the heavens, that I am unable to see because my hospital room faces a building, and now, this morning, I humbly ask God for His protection.

As I enter The Throne of Grace, I’m frightened, weak, exhausted, extremely ill and confused.

I cry and cry and cry and cry and cry…

As my tears reach the Hands of Jesus, I weep more.

I’m touched by the Presence of the One, Jesus, who I have depended on for solace, for love, for protection, for safety and for peace.

As I somehow face this Friday in the hospital, I realize the dangerousness of the difficulties I will encounter and the coarse path set before me.

Yes, I do admit I am what I know I appear to be in the Arms of God, a scared, tired and small child.

I am at peace, a peace I do not understand under the circumstances I have found myself in.

I know, though illogical to most, this peace I have been freely given is a gift bestowed on me by my God. I now realize, it has been God who has been here, with me and in me for not only through this and through the many recent health conquests.

I emphatically realize my God has known me, has seen me, has protected and has been with me my entire life.

Oh, what exceptional gifts that I have been freely given by God!

My loving family and my dear friends, please continue to pray for me and I will keep all of you in my prayers as well.

A person’s presence is always vital to another.

Can you please, please be there for me and also for each other?

That’s so important to me at this time.

Signing off from my hospital bed, in my hospital room in the hospital,

With love, gratitude and all that good stuff,

Evelyn Pinto

May 5, 2023