Grilled Cheese Sandwich Please

CIO Unplugged. A blog at the traffic circle of professional, personal, 

technical and healthcare. Opinions my own.

As a new CIO, I spent the first five years volunteering after hours for our health system. Each Wednesday afternoon, I met my oldest son Brandon, then 14 years old, in the main lobby. We went room to room delivering $10 gift shop vouchers to the winners of our weekly closed-circuit TV bingo game. Bingo was the highlight of the week for hundreds of patients and their families. The game normally finished around 4 p.m. We picked up the certificates at 5 p.m. and hand-deliver them to the winners. 

While striving to take our IT shop from bad to good, I was not Mr. Popular with my customers. Thus, volunteering became my escape, the highlight of my week. It got me out of the office and into our hospitals. Everyone wanted to see me. Everyone welcomed me. Wednesday evenings became a salubrious respite from the work grind I faced the rest of the week. 

While I felt I never had time to volunteer, volunteering improved the quality of time I did have. 

Observing joy in my winners’ faces brought my heart pleasure. Think about it. These people were stuck in a hospital. Receiving a voucher for a $10 credit at the gift shop meant everything. Their responses impacted me. I stopped taking life for granted and started embracing the simple things. 

Volunteering also broke me, especially those dreaded deliveries to the fifth floor of our University Hospitals Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital. Not RBC5(!), I thought to myself when I saw the location code. As I scrubbed before entering, I took twice as long to wash to delay the inevitable. I was about to come face-to-face with kids the same age as mine. Except these children were dying. What???

I’d knock gently on the door as I pushed it open.  As I entered the kids always looked right at me eyeball to eyeball. Expectant. Picturing my own children in their bed, I’d swallow hard and muster a smile. Yet the joy in these young patients’ faces made the grief worthwhile. Before leaving the floor, I sometimes paused out of sight. Just for a second. I am not crying. I am not crying. I am not crying. I am crying.

I’ll never forget the mom who met us outside the peds ICU. Before we reached her daughter’s room, she asked, “Can I use the voucher in the cafeteria?” Although they were strictly for the gift shop, I walked her there to see what we might negotiate. She went to the grill and emphatically ordered a grilled cheese sandwich. “Not on the menu! We don’t serve grilled cheese sandwiches,” the cook replied. The exasperated mother all but begged. “My daughter just woke from months in a coma, and her first words were, ‘Mommy I’m hungry, I want a grilled cheese sandwich.’ I need a grilled cheese sandwich please!” The cook made the off-menu grilled cheese sandwich while the woman wept. I just stood there awkwardly blinking back tears. 

I kept volunteering through the years. Most recently I used my Wednesday lunch breaks to serve at the Cleveland Clinic Cancer Center. I exchanged my suit coat for a blue volunteer vest, my iPhone for a volunteer badge and walked to my floor. My beautiful mother died of ovarian cancer so this was one way to honor her. My service was to check in on the patients receiving outpatient chemo. I would make them coffee, grab a soft drink or snack and make sure they were warm and comfy. About half were by themselves so most of my time was spent chatting. 

One day I entered the room of Jane who was receiving therapy, her husband Joe by her side. Joe found a new audience to tell a story to and so I pulled a chair next to them and listened. He told me how they were going to beat this cancer thing because their courtship started some 50 years prior under worse conditions. Joe played varsity football for Marshall University. He and Jane had just begun their courtship in the Spring of 1970. Joe was taken ill in November that year and did not make the trip to play East Carolina University. The return flight never made it home. All players and passengers were killed as the plane approached the runway. 

Joe and Jane squeezed hands. Looked at each other in a way only 50 years of love can do and cried. Don't cry, don't cry I would speak to myself. Well what the heck! I guess I should cry along with them. I looked for Joe and Jane in subsequent visits, but never saw them again. I was diagnosed with cancer a few months later. I now had a silent, unspoken yet powerful bond with the patients I served.

I learned so much volunteering. The value of listening. People all desire to be heard and have a story to tell. The value of being present. People want every part of you engaged and they know when you are faking it. I learned humility. Accolades quickly fade in light of eternity. I learned purpose. My job was no longer “IT”, but how we leverage technology to save lives, enhance the quality of life and when time, enable the dignity of death. 

Sure volunteering helps others. Yet helps you the most.