Who Ya Gonna Call?

Thanks to a bizarre karmic ripening, I spent the past several days in Johns Hopkins Hospital with still-unexplained but spontaneously-resolved GI bleeding. I got released just a few hours before the ball dropped on New Year’s Eve. This post is dedicated to all those who helped me get through it:

The Doctors
Hands down, the doctors at Johns Hopkins are the best. Their level of expertise is staggering. For the first time ever I can relax, knowing they each understand not only all the complications and contraindications, but that they also deeply appreciate the toll this illness takes on one physically, emotionally and mentally.

The Nurses
Because of complications, I had a lot more nurses than a typical patient. With the exception of one odd apple, each one cared for me with such kindness, compassion and respect. It's a ridiculous job description : Must mop up the emotional and physical debris of perfect strangers without getting to hear how it all turns out. Given that, I marvel that they return to work each day.

The Nuns
Ani Alyce Louise holds the sangha record for the most hospital hand-holding sessions with me. She intends to maintain her record in Maryland, enduring a 9-hour local ER visit and several hours of travelling after work just to visit me in the hospital. I don’t know how she did it. Her smile wove itself into those 4 pain-filled days.

Also intending to keep her medals, Ani Dorje holds two sangha records: one, for the most overnight hand-holding sessions and second, for always pet-sitting while I’m hospitalized. Knowing my babies are safe in her loving care brings me much needed peace. On top of that, she gave up the popular New Year’s Eve celebration at our temple, to come pick me up on a freezing, windy night. My hospital stay was particularly harrowing, and our laughter on the way home went a long way towards getting me back on my feet emotionally.

It’s hard to describe the relief it gives me to have my Vajra sisters with me during times like that. Hospitals swim in fear and chaos, and the mere sight of the Buddha’s robes seems to settle it all down a bit.

The Sangha
Our Maryland temple has maintained an unbroken 24-hour Prayer Vigil for nearly 24 years. Sangha members take 2-hour shifts every day of the year. It's a monumental task to keep the shifts filled each week—especially the middle-of-the-night ones. Failure is not an option. Seeing the endless suffering in the world, each of us does our best to follow our Lama’s teaching, “Pray as if you’re the only one in the world praying, like it all depends on you.” I'm personally humbled that during the nearly 100 hours of my own ordeal this week, there was always at least one person in in the world praying for the benefit of all beings.

The Lama
In one of Jetsunma’s teachings, she explained that there is no beginning to the relationship between the lama and a student, that it has always been so. I had always wondered when it all began—how it came to be that I have only to look at a picture of her, picture her in my mind, hear her voice or her name to feel my heart melt. She is the embodiment of Wisdom and Compassion, existing in the world only to liberate beings. Jetsunma’s prayers and miraculous intervention have quite literally kept me alive. For the few days that I was geographically further away, the potency of her embrace was just the same.

To all these people, and to everyone who prays for me and contributes in whatever way towards ending the suffering of beings: Thank You and Happy New Year!