"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
I found myself
incarcerated yet again in the hospital last week, and as soon as I
settled in I realized that I was once again in hospital mode.
When I'm in hospital
mode, I fall into a routine that is only designed for hospitals. One
of them is watching Animal Planet. I get obsessed with "Big Cat
Diaries" to the point that I wonder how I'm going to survive
without it when I go home and am not watching it any more. But let's
face it ― would I
really get up at 7:00 a.m. to watch a television show about the big
cats of Africa? I think not.
Another hospital
tradition is that I stop eating ―
period. I was able to go for three months without consuming a full
meal earlier this year, but on the third day last week I was seduced
by an offer of bacon for breakfast and ate a slice of that. I am so
used to not eating in hospitals that I no longer get hungry when I'm
in a hospital. Food is reserved for restaurants or home.
My other hospital
routine is the discovery that people who actually sleep at night are
wasting a whole lot of valuable time. My 2:15 a.m. appearance by a
nurse Friday morning was for her to shake me awake and ask, "Do
you know your blood pressure is high?" At that particular
moment, she was probably right.
At 3:00 a.m., the
technician came in to take my vital signs. At 6:00 a.m. a stranger
who may or may not have been Dracula drew my blood. Who wants to be
awakened by someone who wants to stick a needle in you?
I think the patient
would respond a whole lot better to these middle-of-the-night visits
if something good happened occasionally. At no time has anyone
awakened me to scratch my back for example. Nobody has ever knocked
on my door and given me a $1,000,000 check from Publisher Clearing
House, either.
People would be a lot
happier about being awakened from a deep sleep after midnight if
there was a chance that, just occasionally, the surprise would be
something good,
God really knows
exactly how to do it. Sometimes really bad things happen to us. But
before you even have time to get properly depressed about it, we are
distracted by interesting hospital people we would otherwise have
never met, or a great sunrise, or a strong and happy reminder that
even though we may have lost a loved one, we live again after death.
The longer I live, the
more strongly I know that God loves us greatly. There is never a
night that isn't followed by the brightness of day. There is never a
trial that isn't eventually over. The good things, though, outnumber
the bad ones. And our post-Earth existence will be one of
never-ending joy and happiness.
Kathryn H. Kidd has been writing fiction, nonfiction, and "anything for money" longer than
most of her readers have even been alive. She has something to say on every topic, and the
possibility that her opinions may be dead wrong has never stopped her from expressing them at
every opportunity.
A native of New Orleans, Kathy grew up in Mandeville, Louisiana. She attended Brigham
Young University as a generic Protestant, having left the Episcopal Church when she was eight
because that church didn't believe what she did. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints as a BYU junior, finally overcoming her natural stubbornness because she
wanted a patriarchal blessing and couldn't get one unless she was a member of the Church. She
was baptized on a Saturday and received her patriarchal blessing two days later.
She married Clark L. Kidd, who appears in her columns as "Fluffy," more than thirty-five
years ago. They are the authors of numerous LDS-related books, the most popular of which is A
Convert's Guide to Mormon Life.
A former managing editor for Meridian Magazine, Kathy moderated a weekly column ("Circle of Sisters") for Meridian until she was derailed by illness in December of 2012. However, her biggest claim to fame is that she co-authored
Lovelock with Orson Scott Card. Lovelock has been translated into Spanish and Polish, which
would be a little more gratifying than it actually is if Kathy had been referred to by her real name
and not "Kathryn Kerr" on the cover of the Polish version.
Kathy has her own website, www.planetkathy.com, where she hopes to get back to writing a weekday blog once she recovers from being dysfunctional. Her entries recount her adventures and misadventures with Fluffy, who heroically
allows himself to be used as fodder for her columns at every possible opportunity.
Kathy spent seven years as a teacher of the Young Women in her ward, until she was recently released. She has not yet gotten used to interacting with the adults, and suspects it may take another seven years. A long-time home teacher with her husband, Clark, they have home taught the same family since 1988. The two of them have been temple workers since 1995, serving in the Washington D.C. Temple.
