I will be conveyed to an Emergency Room of some kind, where I will be detained as long as I do not respond to questions, and then, when I do respond to questions, I will be sedated; so it will be an inversion of standard travel, the ambulance and ER: I'll make the journey first, then depart.

If there is one thing I'd learned about hospitals, it's that they aren't interested in healing you. They are interested in stabilizing you, and then everyone is supposed to move on. They go to stabilize some more people, and you go off to do whatever you do. Healing, if it happens at all, is done on your own, long after the hospital has submitted your final insurance paperwork.

It had the tangled floor plan common to all hospitals, seemingly designed by someone who believed in the healing power of watching confused visitors aimlessly wander around hallways.

What the sick need is teachers not treaters, health schools not hospitals, instruction not treatment, education in right living not training the sick habit. Both they and their advisors must get rid of the curing idea and the practices built up thereon.

I don__ understand hospital chaplains that try to rob my patients of their anger. Sometimes anger is a key motivator that gets people to take action. Anger can push a cancer patient to jump out of his hospital bed, walk down to the nurses station and scream, __ am getting the hell out of here!_. There is a misconception that God is simply sweet and passive. Actually, God can be quite cunning, manipulative and relentless with his children. What we consider as negative traits are actually helpful in molding us. He will use a negative emotion if needed to push people to do things that will change them for the better. He will allow people or situations to derail us if there is a chance that those interactions will push us forward. Personally, I don__ want a God that is going to send some church member to my deathbed with a plate of cookies and tell me to have faith. Actually, I rather have a God that screams, __et the hell off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Walk down the hall with that Physical Therapist so you can get on with your life!" A little anger in a person can push them to do amazing things.

Like my loved one, I am convinced that we all have critical conditions. Battles that we undertake behind the hospitals, in lonely alleys, secret locations and sometimes public places that are out of reach to those who seem to care.