My father is a favorite with the nurses in the rehab center where he is spending up to six weeks.

They told me so. Why is he one of their “honey-pies?”  This is the South, by the way, a place where such endearments are the norm and not considered disrespectful.

“He is respected because he always says please and thank you to us. Most people don’t,” the nurse said. “Your daddy is grateful for anything we do for him.”

I was not surprised she said this but my father was.

“Do you mean to tell me that patients or their family members don’t thank these employees?” he asked.

All too often they don’t. Those who do get to be honey-pies, pets, favorites—pick your regional term.

In hospitals, some families are so worried, perhaps they don’t think about it.

Many patients are in terrible pain and are not themselves.

In any health care facility, the workers are paid. That leads a certain kind of patient or family think staff members are “only doing their jobs.” They notice them only when they are not there, when they did not race to answer the call button in three minutes.

However, when it is you or your family member who is a patient, if you are honest about this, you hope these workers will do anything they can to make it better.

You hope that they will not show frustration if a patient has to take each of six pills one at a time—and with a big swallow of water after each—-instead of being able to get the job done in one efficient gulp. Time. Time. Time. These workers never have enough. When one nursing assistant stands calmly by a patient who needs a little more time for meds and she never lets on how much is waiting for her outside the door of that room, that is the gift of her scarcest resource—minutes.

When bedding is soiled, staffers are the ones who change it. If the patient can’t walk, they are ones who deal with bedpans and urinals.

They are the ones who answer the call buttons when something is needed and there always are several going off at the same time.

What part of this sounds like it fits “just doing their jobs?”

They help patients eat and eliminate.

They help patients sit up, lie down or make what can look like a daunting trip from bed to wheelchair.

They transport patients to tests on guerneys or in wheelchairs. They can scare the daylights out of a patient, going too fast or cutting corners too close. Since the point of the trip usually is a test or a treatment about which the patient may be a little uneasy, a transport worker can go at the right speed and talk to the patient so that it is not a long, silent journey. Or he can indeed zip through corridors, whizzing the patient to a test without a sound. Few people think about the transport workers who can cheer or scare a patient in a short trip.

It is not just doctors and nurses who are important to treatment and recovery. It is all of them who lay hands on a patient. If we conducted a national poll today, how many of these workers would say being thanked is a common occurrence? If it were half, I would be very surprised.

In this trip in which I have spent much time with my father—as my brother is covering his work and my father’s too—I have darted into convenience stores, hoping to find lip balm for my parent or my drug of choice, Diet Dr. Pepper.

Last night I saw a young mother who had tattoos running down the sides of her legs. The design was so intricate, I could not tell what it was but it did not look friendly.

The clerk smiled at the little girl with her—-dressed traditionally with a bow in her hair and a ruffled dress—-and told her she looked so pretty.

The child ducked her head.

“Tell the nice lady thank you,” the tattoed mother instructed.

That is proof to me that teaching people to say thank you and please still lives on in child-rearing. If this tough-looking mother was worried about her daughter’s failure to respond as she should, almost any mother would be.

Thank you and please are healing words.

They make a connection between the patient and the staff member that makes it all just a little more bearable.

We have much to be grateful for in our family this Thanksgiving. Our father is well on his way to a full recovery. In a year of great losses among our closest friends, this has been a wonder to watch, a privilege.

Although his medical care is superb, somehow, I think being a grateful man has had something to do with the graceful way he is recovering.

They want “honey-pie” to go home for his sake but, as one nurse said to me, “When he goes home, we sure will miss him.”

Aspirin is the oldest known medicine in civilization. It is common , cheap and yet powerful. It can even be too powerful, causing side effects.

The words, please and thank you, are old and powerful, too.

Unlike aspirin, the only side effects are good ones.

Better still, these three words are free, but also worth a fortune.

Use them freely. You will see what “honey-pie” already knows. All care-givers and their helpers  appreciate being appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving!