Healing touch in midst of pandemic

Normally during a school day, every 55 minutes or so, the hallways at Carrollton and Banks are transformed into human interstate highways, with 1,300 students drafting in and out of traffic and navigating contraflow to get to their next class on time.
    

Now, for a chaplain trained to listen and offer support to adolescents with more questions than answers, there was nothing but silence and empty space.
    

“I just got to thinking, ‘We’ve got to figure out something to do here,’” Father Dyer, 46, said.
    

On consecutive Fridays before Holy Week, Father Dyer wrapped a purple stole around his neck and sat in a folding chair in the rear of the schoolyard as dozens of cars pulled up. Drivers got out of their cars, knelt on a prie dieu near the curb and confessed their sins.
 

A COVID volunteer
    

It was around that time that Father Dyer asked Jesuit’s president, Jesuit Father John Brown, if he could serve as a temporary chaplain at University Medical Center New Orleans, where dozens of COVID patients were being treated, some on ventilators, some approaching death.
    
Father Dyer’s friend, Dr. Peter DeBlieux, was the hospital’s new “chief experience officer,” an intriguing 21st-century medical role centered on creating a culture of compassion among the thousands of University employees who care for patients and their families every day. 
    

“Dr. DeBlieux was scrambling to find people to help out not just the patients but also the staff,” Father Dyer said. “That was in the middle of crazy times, and everyone was wondering what was going on. Many people were thinking, ‘Oh, my God, if I get this virus, is it going to kill me? Am I going to give it to my family?’”
    

As an added measure of protection to his fellow Jesuits, Father Dyer decided to move out of the high school residence and live by himself in the rectory at Immaculate Conception Church on Baronne Street.
    

“I’m relatively young and healthy, so I wasn’t really at risk,” Father Dyer said. “But, as Father Brown said, ‘Hey, there’s nobody in the community whose life we’d rather put at risk than yours.”
    

That was a fraternal jab.
 

‘Vesting’ with great care
    

When he arrived for his first day, the hospital’s infection control unit gave him the rundown on exactly how to put on, adjust and take off his Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
    

“I told them on Day 1, ‘I plan on doing whatever you tell me to do to the letter. I want to help and to serve and not cause you any problems,’” Father Dyer said.
    

In addition to an N-95 mask, he wore a face shield, a medical gown and gloves. He was so camouflaged that one patient mistook him for her dentist.
    

“But for the most part, they knew who was coming in,” Father Dyer said.
    

Father Dyer had administered the Anointing of the Sick before, but this assignment required special care. He would carry into each patient’s room a small pack that contained a rosary, a holy card of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and a Q-tip that he already had dipped into the oil of the sick .
    

“You didn’t want to bring out anything you had brought in,” he said.
    

Not even a prayer book: “I had all the prayers memorized.”
    

In those early days, COVID patients died without the benefit of any regular visits from their relatives.
    

“Families were allowed 10 minutes with a loved one who was dying at that time,” Father Dyer said. “A big thing for Dr. DeBlieux and his staff was to figure out how to mitigate people’s isolation while at the same time protecting against infection. There was a great nurse, Toni, who set up an iPad so that patients could have Zoom meetings with their families.”
 

Prayer in the ‘safety huddle’
    

On most mornings, Father Dyer attended the “safety huddle,” a brief group meeting in which unit directors would report on what was going on. The palliative care team would give him an update on the most critical patients and their respective care plans, and Father Dyer would offer a spiritual reflection and a prayer for the hospital workers. 
    

“Then I would just spend the rest of the day walking around the floors and talking with the nurses, dropping in on patients, talking with them and praying with them,” he said.
    

His patients ranged from communicative and reflective to those suffering from the fog of dementia.
    

“It was everything under the sun,” Father Dyer said. “With some of the older patients with dementia, when I brought them the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and put it in their hand, it was like you could see that little shock of recognition in their eyes. Something deep within them was being touched. That really struck me – the power of people’s faith in Jesus and how deeply it was ingrained within them. It was like, ‘Wow, the Lord can do so much more than an individual man can.’”
 

Serving New Orleans’ gumbo
    

Although he was there mainly to visit and bring the sacraments to Catholic patients, he saw many others.
    

“You had Black, brown, white, Asian, just everybody under the sun, the whole swath of the New Orleans community,” he said. “I really felt like I was serving the whole church in New Orleans, which is wonderful. The very first patient I visited was a very moving experience, and when I left the room, I said to the person from infection control who was teaching me how to use the PPE, ‘Wow, that was intense.’”
    

With the benefit of his two months inside a hospital devoted to saving lives, Father Dyer came away impressed by how different the reality is from what is normally portrayed in the media.
    

“One of the great things I took away is that the real world is so much better than the virtual world,” he said. “People online are freaking out the whole time, and it starts discombobulating you. As long as I wasn’t online, I was just out there working and trying to do something good. I was happy and at peace and life was great. I think I learned everybody’s just happier when they’re trying to do something good. What I learned at the hospital was how good, caring and professional work is being done by a lot of great people, and people of faith, too.”
 

Touching, healing vocation
    

One nurse poured out her heart to him one day.
    

“The toughest thing for her was the distance the disease put between her and her patients,” Father Dyer said. “She told me, ‘Jesus reached out and touched people.’ It really pained her heart that she couldn’t be in closer contact. That really struck me – seeing her work in the hospital as being a vocation from God.”
    

Father Dyer said his two-month stint in helping people experience God’s presence at the end of life strengthened his Ignatian sense of gratitude in doing small things for others.
    

“I’ve never visited somebody in the hospital and regretted it,” he said. “This goes for everyone, not just priests. You are never going to visit someone who is sick in the hospital or who is elderly and living at home and then go away regretting the fact that you took the time. You’re always going to appreciate that you exercised a work of mercy.”
    

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].