The unexpected consequences of new life
It was the summer of 1991. I was 27 and doing my best to get through an intense unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at a large Boston teaching hospital.
During my very first weekend on call, I was summoned to help a new patient’s wife. Ben, the patient in question, had been flown to Boston to undergo an evaluation for a possible heart transplant. He was around 40 and had been dealing with serious heart disease for a number of years. There wasn’t any hope for his own heart. He needed a new one, or he would die.
Ben was dealing with the sudden trip to Boston, and his stay at an unfamiliar hospital, with remarkable equanimity, despite his failing health. His wife, on the other hand, was barely able to hold it together. She knew that her husband needed a new heart, but the prospect of the process was overwhelming. In addition, she was worried about their young son, whom they had left with family at home, many miles away.
