Working at the hospital, you really do meet all types of people. A lot of broken families, a lot of families with substance abuse problems and prior involvement with child welfare, but also a lot of very supportive, tight-knit families and a lot of different faiths. The nice thing about working here is that the staff do their best to accomodate all of these.

One of the families we're dealing with right now is devoutly Catholic and their son is currently having to be tube-fed. Earlier this week, the mother approached one of the staff because she wanted her son to receive the Eucharist.

This presents a bit of a problem because her son doesn't have a gag reflex, so if the body of Christ were to placed in his mouth, you run the risk of Eucharist-induced chemical pneumonitis.

So the suggestion was made to put the Eucharist into his G-tube, only then you might run into problems with tube blockage. So someone else suggested that we could blend the Eucharist.

"The body of Christ"

*places the Eucharist into the blender*

WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRR...

Clearly that wouldn't have worked either. So then the idea came up that we could dissolve the Eucharist in water and pour it down his G-tube. According to Catholic doctrine however, the Eucharist must be placed on the tongue of the believer in order to fulfill the principle of Transubstantiation. That is, that unless the Eucharist is taken in the proper way, the bread will cease to become the body of Christ and will merely be a lump of bread.

Finally it was decided that it really didn't matter how MUCH of the body of Christ this child received, any portion of bread would qualify as the body of Christ. So after about 10 minutes, the decision was made place a crumb in this child's mouth, thereby bypassing his G-tube, undergoing transubstantiation, avoiding his lungs and passing safely into the rest of his body. But most importantly, satisfying all of his doctors, his therapists, the pastors and his mother.