I love to people watch.<\/p>\n
Since there was a mall nearby, it was easy to do that in Columbia.<\/p>\n
Now I have a different, and much more unique, place to people watch.<\/p>\n
\u00a0I go to the leukemia clinic almost everyday when I am not in the hospital for a stay. In the waiting room there are SO many people from diverse backgrounds and circumstances. While I’ve struck up a conversation with some of them since I’ve been here, there are many others that I have never talked to…some who won’t give you eye contact or are very sick and just do not feel like making any contact with others.<\/p>\n
While in the hospital recently, I was invited – as all of the other patients and families on the floor – to a session with a doctor, a floor nurse, and one me favorites here, the Leukemia chaplain. Pierce met me there and we sat in the room, along with four other caregivers, to talk about what was going on with us and how we were coping.<\/p>\n
As I listened to others talk, I realized that everyone in the room but me was newly diagnosed within the last week. Two were from Oklahoma and the others were locals. Each had stories of new diagnosis or did not know – for sure yet – what they had. Two were male caregivers for their wives, the other two were female.<\/p>\n
Pierce and I sat there listening as we went around the room while they told their story – much like ours when we first got here. As an “expert”\u009d patient and caregiver, the others were anxious to hear our story as well.<\/p>\n
It was like people watching except everyone told their story and were willing to talk.<\/p>\n
I could hear the struggles. They asked the same questions I did when I was first diagnosed in May. They were stunned. They were in disbelief. One said, “bring it on – we will handle it.”<\/p>\n
My wish for you today <\/em><\/strong>is that you become people watchers and listen, when you can, to each person’s story. Sometimes the only thing someone wants is for someone to listen.<\/p>\n ~ Joellen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love to people watch. Since there was a mall nearby, it was easy to do that in Columbia. Now I have a different, and much more unique, place to people watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-illness","category-life-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":741,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions\/741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reflectionsfromacountrygirl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}