Must-Read from Paul Levy Blog

A couple of summers ago I was doing my usual run in the neighborhood on a hot, muggy weekend afternoon.  I came to a turn where I usually go to the left. For some reason that day I turned to the right. I had never turned that way before.

I came across an elderly gentleman in the middle of the street. “Excuse me,” he said. “Which way is the entrance?” I thought it was an odd question since our neighborhood does not really have one, but I pointed him to where I thought he meant. I resumed the run before my conscience turned me around. I found him again wandering through a front yard. I asked him if he knew where he was. “Well, not at present,” he said. It became clear this fine gentleman had Alzheimer’s and was wandering. We called the sheriff, who after a few calls was able to find his home and return him there safely.

One of my neighbors who helped me entertain the gentleman while we waited for the sheriff told me that there was a reason why I went right instead of left, and that reason was not a coincidence.

I usually leave such questions of fate and existence to better storytellers than I, but was reminded of the delicate chains that often mean so much to our lives when I read a post in Beth Israel CEO Paul Levy’s Running a Hospital blog. The wrenching, poignant “My son’s story” post is from a friend of a friend who recounts his teenage son’s heart attack during a cross-country meet, and the hands at work that saved him, from the landscaper who happened to be on a part of the course where he had never been before, to the surgeon who happened to be at the meet that day. It’s a wonderful example of what can happen in healthcare, to be sure. But it also reminded me that sometimes we can’t explain why the hands that need to be with us in a crisis can somehow be there.