“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(I finished early so I’d have some extra time to open the account for Jane’s hospital expenses — but wouldn’t you know it, the phone rang at 11:50 a.m. It was someone from social services at the hospital. [...]

[...] “If I didn’t live so far from the hospital, [three miles] I’d go back and get some mail,” I said in frustration. [...]

[...] Then I get the feeling that scares you even more—that you’re scared to death of the hospital, and yet you’re afraid to dismiss your doctor and say to hell with the whole bit—I must be hiding stuff, see, because I’m getting ready to cry, because the time might come when you couldn’t stand it any more, and you’d have to do it—go back to the hospital—go through it all again—then I just tell myself I’d make out again, just like millions of people....” [...]

(“It’s hard to be sure,” she said, “but I think from the time I was in the hospital [last February].” [...]

[...] For of all the doctors she’d encountered while in the hospital, Jane had liked Dr. C the best, feeling intuitively drawn to him and his optimistic statements that once her thyroid began functioning again she’d find herself getting around much much better than she thought possible. Cummins’s opinion had been largely negated by Dr. K., especially after Dr. K’s friend from Ithaca, the rheumatologist Dr. Sobel had examined Jane at Dr. K’s request early in Jane’s hospital stay. [...]

[...] Remembering a few small but potent suggestions will of course be of greatest benefit—particularly to offset any negative hospital suggestions, which do of course exist. [...]

[...] I cannot impress upon you too much, however, the importance of those early sessions on the Magical Approach, for they will make even more sense to you now after the hospital experience. [...]

[...] I thought I was in a hospital room. [...] she does not remember the room number at the hospital or the color of the walls [given as green].)

[...] One of the nurses popped in on her way home to tell us that Georgia Cecce had just been admitted to the hospital — “Down the hall, in room 307.” We’ve known Georgia, Jane’s favorite nurse, ever since my wife entered the hospital in April, 1983.

[...] This morning I’d prepared payments for insurance and the hospital. [...]

[...] Lynn said the hospital even has a list of Russian words, but that Karina doesn’t respond adequately to them — perhaps they’re poorly pronounced, say.

[...] We asked her not to tell anyone, though I expect she’ll tell Georgia, her closest friend in the hospital. [...]

[...] This morning the ringing telephone got me out of bed at 5:45 a.m. It couldn’t be anyone except someone at the hospital, I thought as I ran out of the bedroom. [...]

[...] I’d taken the notebook with Chapter 9 of Dreams to the hospital with me. [...]

The story unfolds when the mother uncovers evidence of a mixup in the baby complex at the hospital: She had been given only one of her children, or some such affair; either that, or she had managed to adopt a baby from there. Either way, she finds out through much detective work that a whole series of mixups had occurred in the hospital that day — that in the Elmira area there are several sets of parents who have been raising the wrong children all these years. There had been mixups in the hospital because of new help, etc. [...]

[...] Your inclusion of the hospital mixup in the tale was, as, you suspected, connected with the medical ideas you have been dealing with of late (in extra notes for Mass Events, and the book by the physician) — and here was an excellent fictional idea, you see, that could, among other things, bring those ideas into prominence.

I do not know how or when the two look-a-like young men met — but in my reverie I thought of the mother in question tracing back connections all the way to her son’s birth at the Elmira hospital. [...]

I think that the idea of mixups in the hospital came from a book Jane and I have been reading the past week, written by a doctor who warns against medicine, delivery rooms, the whole bit, in the establishment practice of medicine. [...]

[...] Yesterday the two of them had spent a day at the hospital in Sayre. With the best intentions, her account reflected all the negative beliefs about illness that Jane and I had come to expect in the hospital setting. [...]

[...] I stopped at the bank to buy a check and a money order for Blue Cross and the monthly hospital payment on our old bill. [...]

[...] Jane said their actions made her feel bad, because it reminded her of when she’d had her own panic feelings, and people had tried to calm her down in her early days in the hospital. [...]

[...] After lunch I explained the situation about the hospital being 30 days late sending her medical records to Blue Cross in Syracuse, their denial of the major medical claim, the $10,000 I’d given the hospital on her current bill, and the payments I’d arranged on the old bill we still owed from last year—all of this just so she’d know what was going on. [...]

[...] However, her statement prompted me to tell her that a few days before the insurance company had denied our claim for major medical benefits because they hadn’t received the hospital records, I’d waked up early one morning and lay there worrying about the possibility of a denial for perhaps an hour. [...]

[...] One can stand next to the elevator bank and look out at the parking lot for the emergency room at the back of the hospital. [...]

[...] All we want to do now is to get out of the hospital. [...]

[...] He said he’ll be at the hospital to see Jane at about 6:00 PM tomorrow—Tuesday, to take impressions for her teeth. [...]

Whenever possible, it is far better for the patient to remain home, rather than live steadily at a hospital. When hospitalization is required, however, family members should try to act as honestly and openly as possible. [...]

[...] Doors slammed in the hospital corridor, and at the bathroom entrance to 330. [...]

The next few days, in mid-February 1982, found me determined to clear up the hearing problem—and on one level at least, it was that determination that led me finally to the hospital’s emergency room. We had no family doctor to call upon, but through the invaluable help of a dear friend who was also a nurse, we set up an appointment with a doctor at the hospital.

[...] We were pleased to get it for, as I told Jane, if ever we’re to understand all of the events in our lives that led to the hospital experience, we must call upon every ability at our service. [...]

[...] Therefore, a kind of momentary gap appeared between his life and his living of it—a pause and a hesitation became obvious between his life and what he should do with it, as his condition showed just before the hospital hiatus.

[...] We decided to outline our story here instead, and to carry it through the hospital experience, since that was its logical outcome. [...]

[...] I don’t think I have the nerve to give her prescription drugs on the sly, in the hospital, as Dr. Blount had suggested I do. [...]

[...] It would be her first session on her side, her second in the hospital. [...]

(Long pause.) He has indeed done well enough, considering the negative suggestions of such an institution as a hospital. [...]

(I’d left the house a little early this noon so that I’d have a bit of extra time to go up to room 522 at the hospital, to see if Joe Bumbalo was there — but he wasn’t. I made the trip again after leaving Jane, and this time found him. [...] Margaret told me a couple of days ago that he’d gone back in the hospital because of uncontrolled blood sugar. [...]

[...] Margaret and I had been kidding about her lemon pie at the hospital. [...]

[...] Originally I’d planned to write the standard kind of introduction for Dreams, “Evolution,” and Value Fulfillment. However, as I became involved in describing the complicated, emotionally charged series of events surrounding the hospitalization earlier this year of my wife, Jane Roberts, the material automatically began organizing itself into a series of dated essays. [...]

[...] Shortly after finishing it, she went into the hospital. [...]

[...] Why do I have to leave my dear wife alone in the hospital each night, so that I feel like crying for her when I go to bed by myself in the hill house? [...]

[...] JOSEPH’S HOSPITAL

(See my hospital notes for the events leading up to this little session. [...]

(As noted in the private session for May 22, I brought Jane home from her overnight stay at St. Joseph’s hospital the day before. [...]

(Today [on June 3] the bill from the hospital arrived—for $812.00. [...]

[...] We regard the overnight affair at the hospital, and the enormous cost of it and the tests, as largely a waste. [...]

[...] It seems that you are highly civilized people because you put your ill into hospitals where they can be cared for. [...] Patients are obviously in hospitals because they are ill. [...]

[...] Now with your set of beliefs you are indeed more or less obligated to go to hospitals in severe conditions. [...]

(Pause.) In your hospitals however you take your patients out of their natural environment, and often deny them the comforts of creaturehood. [...]

Small hospitals on spacious grounds, with freedom for all but the bedridden to use their bodies, would far surpass what you have. [...]

[...] She agreed that she is protected from life in the hospital. [...]

(The symptoms — and now the hospital — protected her from criticism, eliminated book tours, the whole bit. [...]

[...] She agreed with me that she now has the ultimate protection of the hospital.

(She added: “Now I don’t know whether the hospital experience was worth it or not.” [...]

[...] “And you’ve had the whole hospital experience to use in the years ahead in your work,” I said. [...]

[...] She was taken directly to the hospital when I called the doctor, and I went back home to that odd, nervous house that felt strangely vacant with her presence gone. [...]