This is my love letter to intensive care units, especially the fine unit at Central Maine Medical Center.

The trouble is that you have to be really sick to get in. I recommend rather that you stay as far away as possible. But sometimes there is no helping it, as there was for me early this December.

Recently, the breast cancer that I beat off seven years ago came back, rapidly and with a vengeance, in my bones and lungs. My health deteriorated rapidly. One day I was at a doctor’s appointment, and the next I was in the ICU, hooked up to as many wires and tubes and respirators and machines that a body could possibly take.

Yes, it was frightening. It was terrifying and confusing. But I was carried the whole time by competent medical treatment and the best kind of caring the human heart can offer – mind you, from perfect strangers.

A hospital, and in its smaller way an ICU, is a system organized to perform a function. There are dozens of roles, from the doctors who decide and guide care, through the various therapists and the people who swab the floors and empty the wastebaskets, each role important.

Even sick as I was, I had plenty of time to observe that it’s a system of people.

Dozens of people trained in their various skills report to work every day. They are human. Like store clerks, they may or may not want to be there that particular day. They suffer moods and personal troubles, they get assigned work schedules that may present great inconvenience to them or their families. But it’s not a business that can shut down for the holidays. When you are sick, you are sick 24-7, and staff has to remain just as dedicated and competent whether it’s 10 a.m. on a normal workday or 3 o’clock on Christmas morning.

Of course, it’s the nurses I am most in love with. It was the nurses who got me through. They kept me believing in life when my connection to it was as tenuous as could be. They encouraged me, advocated for me, and kept me moving forward. My family and friends couldn’t have been more loving and devoted, but in the darkest hours it was the nurses who were there.

All of my nurses were women. They are highly trained and thoroughly professional, and on top of that, they are called upon as in no other profession I can think of to offer warmth, care and support to perfect strangers.

I can’t tell you about each of them, but I want to tell you about one thing.

Being doctored here in Lewiston, I am a long way from my home ground in rural Temple. Here, for over a month now, I awaken to city rooftops, look down on cars and snow and factories, and have not breathed the fresh sharp cold of country air or felt the frozen earth beneath my feet.

I know back home in Temple, the moon still shines on the snow covering the blueberries in the back field, the trees still play their bare lines against the sky, and the sun still rises late over the ridge south of the house whether I am there to see it or not.

One night early in my stay in the ICU, I had drains, stitches and bandages over my entire body. I could not turn over in bed by myself. Fear was in every cell of my body. Though it was the middle of the night, more tests and procedures were scheduled. At my bedside appeared the cherubic but calm and steady face of my night nurse, Kimberly Foss. Her confidence and clarity kept me calmer than seemed possible. She was my lifeline and never let go.

Had it been another sort of time, and had I been home and healthy, I might have been outside that evening, walking the dog. I could have set off down the drive and across the brook, then up the little ridge across from the house. Almost straight over the ridge, and without much hunting, I could have come to the high open fields of my friend Belle Foss’ place, and the home of her son Austin and his wife Kimberly. I somehow had never met Kimberly, but when she had set off that evening to drive to work, one of my unseen and nearest neighbors, she was leaving, as it turned out, to take care of me. That was a precious discovery to make.

When I left the ICU, I spent a couple of weeks on the regular floor, also with great nursing, getting much better and stronger. I am home now to continue my treatments as an outpatient. When the weather is better, Kimberly and I have a plan to walk together over the ridge from house to house.

It’s good to have hope and it’s good to have plans. But foremost, when you are really sick, it is good to make connections. God bless nurses everywhere.