Monday, December 25, 2006

Curious Justin Goes to the Hospital

I spent the night before last in the hospital with Justin. We never dreamt when we took him to Maple Creek on Friday to get his eyes and ears checked that the doctor would want to keep him there overnight. He had been complaining for a few days of a bad headache, off and on, and I noticed a slight temperature in the evenings. He felt quite nauseous sometimes, too, so we suspected an ear infection or something.
As it turned out, his throat was infected. The doctor said he might just have had a headache because of the cold he had had, but he was wanting to be careful in case it was a more serious infection, so he wanted to put him on antibiotics intravenously right away.
One of the first things they did on his arrival at the hospital was to give him a gravol shot in the you-know-where to settle his stomach. That was rather painful. Then they put the needle in his left hand for the intravenous, and that didn't work, so they had to do it again in his right hand. After he got all hooked up and named his IV stand "Johnny" ,(please don't take any offence, anybody) he felt quite well. Then we had our usual bedtime routine of prayers and reading, and as he drifted off to sleep, he said "This is so much fun..."
In the children's ward in Maple Creek, they have a whole suite of rooms - the bedroom, where there was just room for him and me; the library, with a table, chairs, and a bunch of books; and the tv room, with Nintendo. We did the rounds quite a few times the next morning while we waited for the doctor to come and tell him he's fine.
Really, the only severe hardship in the whole thing was that McLanes were visiting at the farm and we were missing them. Fortunately, we did get to see them Saturday night and Sunday.
Justin's been enjoying telling everyone about his hospital stay ever since.

Authoship of the aforementioned

Raymond was asking about the authorship of "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" and I was going to just comment that the authorship seems uncertain. In my hymnbook, it says the text is from the Liturgy of St. James, translated by Gerard Moultrie. However, since you asked about my poetry, I thought I'd let you hear some of it:

Saskatoon, Saskatoon, my beautiful hometown
Your streets are so vast
Your Co-op store is the best
Plus all the other things you have to invest.

(notice the poetic licence!)
I wrote this a few years ago.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence

Let all mortal flesh keep silence
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords in human vesture,
In the body and the blood:
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At his feet the six-winged seraph;
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the Presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry,
Alleluia, alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord most high!