Hospital ghosts

Yesterday morning at the former McKellar Hospital I helped the MEMO team start to organize the leftover furniture and medical equipment to ship to Cuba and the Philippines. I hope to have some pics soon at my website.

First of all, it was really cool to walk past many "Do not enter" signs into rooms such as OR, delivery rooms, radiology control rooms and doctors' offices where I never before could have gone. There we found such messages scrawled on the walls as "Thanks for the memories" and "The end is coming. Run!".

Secondly, I began to contemplate (in the pediatric ward sadly) how many people have died in that building. (I also found the ICU room to which my Dad was taken in late '02 when he *almost* died.)

It made me wonder why there are not more ghost stories associated with hospitals. (I do remember hearing one when I was on my "Ghost Walking Tour" in London England, but I think it was a nurse not a patient.)

I also realized that I'm fairly certain that many more people die in hospital than in schools. That could be used to argue in favour of choosing a school over a hospital when feeling deathly ill. (I suppose that many more people flunk math in a school than in a movie theatre. Therefore, if your grades are slipping, go to the movies.)

It also made me think about the Church (and "churches") and the number of people who are damaged in one way or the other there. (I believe these thoughts apply to other helping institutions as well.)

It's possible that the damage is just more noticeable than that which occurs outside of such institutions, because of the *expectation* and *intention* of healing. (See hospitals above.)

OTOH it's possible that the amount of damage *is* greater than outside -- but pretty much for the same reasons.

This is not to excuse such damage, especially that which is due to malevolence or inexcusable negligence (<----tautology alert! tautology alert!)

Nor am I suggesting any solutions.

Hey, this is a blog, not a Philip Yancey book.