Healing Hospital Garden
No matter how many times I experience it I continue to be amazed by the way poor people are discriminated against in our country. Be it the right to food, health care or education, they are made to feel that being poor is a crime and of their own doing. As one friend said to me today about her family, “I guess we need to pull harder on our bootstraps to get out of this situation.”
After much of a struggle to get health care by his parents my young adult friend without health insurance was released today from a local hospital, still weak and with prescriptions he cannot afford. Now that he is out of the intensive care unit the hospital no longer wants him. His parents will hopefully find some care for him tomorrow as they themselves struggle to survive in a society where many do not care.
They are blessed persons who despite facing discrimination and countless bureaucracy have managed to stay together as a family. They have not given up and are generous persons, seeking to help others despite their own struggles.
In between driving this family back and forth to the hospital today, I was able to get some healing work done in the gardens at our house. Healing gardens seem to have been discovered recently by hospitals. A major hospital in Milwaukee just built an indoor and outdoor healing garden, and the one that rejected my young friend without insurance today is in the process of building a healing garden. Except in emergencies a hospital can reject patients without health insurance, but those with money and insurance now can enjoy a ‘healing garden.’
I am glad to see hospitals discover healing gardens, but just wish they could realize the healing they could provide by caring for the poor and uninsured. People in need, ill and without insurance need healing and do not need to face the discrimination that comes with being poor in our society. When will the hospitals discover that “Blessed are the Poor?” Healing gardens in hospitals are great, but hospitals that care for the poor and uninsured are blessed.
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