In rounds:
"Can I please have a PCA with a basal? 3 weeks. His pain is not being adequately managed."
"How much are you giving?" Sala is attending. She's here as a package deal, because her husband is such a hot-shot heart surgeon. She's pretty and smart but she's not a trauma doctor.
I show her the medication record. We've been pushing dilaudid on this chick every hour, 2 mg, since the 5th of May.
"Fentanyl drip. You think 50-100 mcgs/hr?"
I nod.
"50-100 mikes an hour. DC the dilaudid."
"DC the dilaudid?"
"The fentanyl will take care of the pain."
"Maybe."
"Okay. 1-2 dilaudid q 2."
"Why not q 1?"
"you'll over medicate."
"It's a prn med. It's administered at our discretion."
"Well, I don't want your discretion to overmedicate."
"Because that's a big plot--big nursing plot. We want to depress the respiratory drive of all our patients...."
Baggins shoots me a glance..."Relax...."
"listen, if we're going to be switching pain meds, you're can't tie my hands like this. I've got to be able to titrate this to what she needs."
"I'm not tying your hands."
"April, you always do this. The first thing you do is cut pain meds. You cut our options at the patient's expense. Trust us. We went to school, too."
Carla, who's supervising today, big box like Carla--smart and treacherous--50's, passive aggressive, lies through her teeth, "And then you say the nurses are doing drugs."
She hates Dr. Sala. It was the Dragon who said that about the nurses, not Sala. Fuck, I think. I was just about to get what I wanted out of Sala. Now Carla's queered it.
"How about just for one day? Til I can transition her to the drip and get it right" I say, ignoring Carla. I'll pay for that later, I think.
"Fine."
I leave.
My patient is in multi system failure. Lungs, kidneys, liver, heart. Broken ribs, broken pelvis, broken clavicle, c collar. GI bleeds, pancreatic bleeds, Everything. And they want to cut pain meds.
She's probably dying. I don't know. I'm not sure. Honestly, I've seen worse.
The family held a care conference today. No one wants the burden of deciding what to do. But you can't just blow this off. It's complex. There is no easy answer. They request a chaplain to pray with them. You have to navigate through fantasy and hope.
They decide to ask the patient. Who's having liver and kidney problems and who probably isn't at her sanest right now. Not that I dismiss the wishes of the patient.
"Do you want to die?" They ask her. The chaplain is with them.
Okay. I don't want to sound like the devil, but chaplains often do more harm than good. Some of them aren't very intelligent. They are often interfering and self-righteous and don't really understand pathophysiology. They tend to want simple answers and, quite frankly, our chaplains seem to be a little in love with death.
"Do you want to die?"
The patient nods.
"Praise God." The chaplain says. "Well, I guess we have our answer."
Lots of drama, people weeping over the bed.
And then I come in, like the nasty little rational spoiler I am.
"No, we don't have our answer, with all due respect." I say. "We have a little more information. You still as a family have a lot of work to do before you decide on withdrawing care. You need to take into account, for example, that she may not be in her right mind. Has anyone in the room gone through natural childbirth? " (nods) "Wouldn't you have said anything at some point during it to have it over? This is the most serious and important decision all of you will ever make. You are deciding whether she gets to keep fighting for her life or not. I am sure that Reverend Clive will pray with you for discernment. He is here to support you spiritually." I emphasize the word "spiritually" hoping that Clive will get the message.
Clive, man. Ghoul.
Later, Carla corners me. "Did I just hear that the family was going to withdraw care and you talked them out of it?"
"Clive?"
"Clive."
"Luther, man. Luther started all this. Priests don't act like this."
Carla sighs. She's Catholic, too, like I used to be. "I know. You're right. "
Wiz is at the desk listening. "They should have taken away his shoe. Did you hear those heretics even read the bible all by themselves? Come up with their own opinions about it, too..."
"Shut up, Wiz," Carla says.
"It was too easy," I say defensively. "Clive was pushing them towards withdrawing care. It's not his place. That man isn't ready to die."
"Oh, Haley," Carla says, "he's suffering..."
"He didn't understand the question. Go ask him again." I tell her.
Carla gets Dr. Sala.
"Is he with-it enough to answer questions?" A dig at me. She's mad. Sala doesn't usually take revenge, though.
"He's been on narcotics for the last month, every hour. I don't know how rational that's left him." I shoot back.
She goes in. The family's gathered around the bedside. Clive is there too, looking self righteous and smug.
"Do you want us to continue treatment?" Dr. Sala asks. "Do you want to go on?"
The patient nods.
Sala then lays out to her and everyone in the room exactly what this may entail. She doesn't make any bones about it.
Then she asks her again.
The patient nods again.
"Do you see?" I say. "She has given us two very different answers. Your work for her on this is not done." I tell them as gently as I can.
No Christmas cards for me from these guys.
Oh, well, nobody loves you cause you're easy.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Train of Faith
Ok--so I found out a little more about Becky Doisy.
She disappeared on August 5, 1976. The year of the bicentennial. She was a reader for the blind. She had dinner with someone named Johnny Wright the night before she disappeared. He turned out to have a long rap sheet. He's since disappeared.
That's all I know for now. I'll keep you posted.
Back to West Virginia--
My ex had been hired as the drama counselor at this camp for the high school kids. For the little kids, they'd hired a woman name Sherri Faith. Or maybe it was Cheri Faith.
She was in her mid to late thirties at the time, I guess. I've always been rotten at guessing ages. She had been beautiful, you could tell, but was now a little down on her luck. She was overweight and had long, straight dark hair which was colored with one of those purplish burgundy washes so popular in the 80's--cellophanes? Right? She had a wonderful smile and this sort of "show must go on" quality.
She was definitely out of her element.
She'd once been a fashion model and had, notably, once been engaged to Rod Stewart. (We didn't believe it when she told us, but one of the older camp people remembered it as being true). She had a lot of big stories that seemed too big. She seemed not to know how to relate normally to people--she played instinctively to men, and didn't have any idea what to do with older, non glamorous women--or younger, non-glamorous women, for that matter.
But she tried hard, and the little kids seemed to really like her. She wore brightly colored clothes--tye die mostly. I guess she was sort of grating. It was mainly that she was just uncomfortable. People who are uncomfortable are often sort of annoying. She was so vulnerable, just stank of it. Rob zeroed in on this of course, with his famous tight end instincts.
He was never fully happy unless he had someone to bully--and single, overweight women a few years removed from an ever receding prime were his favorite targets.
He became obsessed with getting her fired. "She has no qualifications." he'd complain to me, in our shack. "Spent her whole life selling herself--now she thinks she can teach acting. There's a lot more to it than just getting up there and smiling. Those kids are getting no training."
He would always convince himself he was getting his mean rocks off to help someone else. He made her life miserable--turned the other counselors against her, viciously mocked her--her hair, her clothes, her way of speaking. I mean, so what? We were only there 12 weeks. So what if the other drama counselor wasn't a real "ACTOR" So what if she was just an aging fat fashion model trying to get a little breathing room--a little time to regroup and gather before she sailed off into middle age. So what if the camp play was under parr?
He got her fired 4 weeks into the summer. She left sobbing, left all her stuff--her beads and bright scarves and tye die. Fred had it all thrown into boxes and dumped in a parking lot somewhere in Hialeah.
I saw her again several years later in the ladies room at the Colony on South Beach. We were standing next to each other in front of the vanity. I had been divorced for a few years then, and my life was completely different. She was more overweight. She smiled at me, recognizing me but not really placing me. "She will," I thought. Her smile froze. There it was.
"We're divorced." I said immediately. Her smile came back. Bright and amazing. "GRRReeaat. That's just great." she said in her showbusinessy-way.
And that was that.
There's this great story by Nadine Gordimer called The Train from Rhodesia. In it a newly married couple are on a train on their honeymoon. The wife has been collecting these little native carved wooden animals from different stops along the trip. There's an old black man selling carved wooden animals at this stop, but his are really good--the work of an artist. And he's charging more--a fair price, but one the bride can't afford. At the last moment, as the train is pulling out, her groom, thinking to please her, throws some money at the man and grabs the animal she'd been admiring. The marriage, essentially, is over. I know I've talked about this before--it's one of my favorite stories.
That was Sherri, Cheri, Sherry, whatever Faith. She was my train from Rhodesia.
Choo choo.
That's my 1/2 hour.
She disappeared on August 5, 1976. The year of the bicentennial. She was a reader for the blind. She had dinner with someone named Johnny Wright the night before she disappeared. He turned out to have a long rap sheet. He's since disappeared.
That's all I know for now. I'll keep you posted.
Back to West Virginia--
My ex had been hired as the drama counselor at this camp for the high school kids. For the little kids, they'd hired a woman name Sherri Faith. Or maybe it was Cheri Faith.
She was in her mid to late thirties at the time, I guess. I've always been rotten at guessing ages. She had been beautiful, you could tell, but was now a little down on her luck. She was overweight and had long, straight dark hair which was colored with one of those purplish burgundy washes so popular in the 80's--cellophanes? Right? She had a wonderful smile and this sort of "show must go on" quality.
She was definitely out of her element.
She'd once been a fashion model and had, notably, once been engaged to Rod Stewart. (We didn't believe it when she told us, but one of the older camp people remembered it as being true). She had a lot of big stories that seemed too big. She seemed not to know how to relate normally to people--she played instinctively to men, and didn't have any idea what to do with older, non glamorous women--or younger, non-glamorous women, for that matter.
But she tried hard, and the little kids seemed to really like her. She wore brightly colored clothes--tye die mostly. I guess she was sort of grating. It was mainly that she was just uncomfortable. People who are uncomfortable are often sort of annoying. She was so vulnerable, just stank of it. Rob zeroed in on this of course, with his famous tight end instincts.
He was never fully happy unless he had someone to bully--and single, overweight women a few years removed from an ever receding prime were his favorite targets.
He became obsessed with getting her fired. "She has no qualifications." he'd complain to me, in our shack. "Spent her whole life selling herself--now she thinks she can teach acting. There's a lot more to it than just getting up there and smiling. Those kids are getting no training."
He would always convince himself he was getting his mean rocks off to help someone else. He made her life miserable--turned the other counselors against her, viciously mocked her--her hair, her clothes, her way of speaking. I mean, so what? We were only there 12 weeks. So what if the other drama counselor wasn't a real "ACTOR" So what if she was just an aging fat fashion model trying to get a little breathing room--a little time to regroup and gather before she sailed off into middle age. So what if the camp play was under parr?
He got her fired 4 weeks into the summer. She left sobbing, left all her stuff--her beads and bright scarves and tye die. Fred had it all thrown into boxes and dumped in a parking lot somewhere in Hialeah.
I saw her again several years later in the ladies room at the Colony on South Beach. We were standing next to each other in front of the vanity. I had been divorced for a few years then, and my life was completely different. She was more overweight. She smiled at me, recognizing me but not really placing me. "She will," I thought. Her smile froze. There it was.
"We're divorced." I said immediately. Her smile came back. Bright and amazing. "GRRReeaat. That's just great." she said in her showbusinessy-way.
And that was that.
There's this great story by Nadine Gordimer called The Train from Rhodesia. In it a newly married couple are on a train on their honeymoon. The wife has been collecting these little native carved wooden animals from different stops along the trip. There's an old black man selling carved wooden animals at this stop, but his are really good--the work of an artist. And he's charging more--a fair price, but one the bride can't afford. At the last moment, as the train is pulling out, her groom, thinking to please her, throws some money at the man and grabs the animal she'd been admiring. The marriage, essentially, is over. I know I've talked about this before--it's one of my favorite stories.
That was Sherri, Cheri, Sherry, whatever Faith. She was my train from Rhodesia.
Choo choo.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Summers
There are lots of teenagers in my basement. Lilly's having a party. Her entire grade is over. There are only 5 girls in the grade--one of them is one vacation, and two elected not to show. But all the boys came. The pizza arrived, after some back and forth---one store told me they didn't deliver to my street--then the other store told me the same thing. Finally it got here. I was so annoyed.
Young people annoy the crap out of me. They don't seem cute or curious or on the verge or myself when young or whatever. They just seem like idiots. Even my own children seem like idiots. Everyone under 34 seems like an idiot.
Oh, God, now they've all come upstairs. I brought down pizza and all these white hands reached up and tore apart the boxes--it was sort of like day of the dead. The poor pizza didn't have a chance. I've never seen 5 large pizzas go so quickly. Like a cow being attacked by a school of piranhas.
Lilly dyed her hair red yesterday. We used henna. I used to have red hair when I was 21. It was beautiful. I don't have it now--I think women make a big mistake dyeing their hair red when they start getting older--it starts looking bad and brassy and dull. Of course, even your real hair starts looking bad and brassy and dull. We had to do it twice. The first time didn't take for some reason. Lilly sat in the kitchen on one of my old antique T chairs that I bought in West Virginia. We lived there when I was first married. Nick was just a baby, and Rob (my ex husband) got a job at a camp for rich Jewish kids in the mountains. The camp was owned by a man named Fred, who also owned one of the big circuses--either Barnum or Ringling--I forget which one. We lived in a 2 room shack for 3 months. We were the only goyim there. I mostly loved it. I walked around smelling the top of Nick's funny little head and thought of myself as the mommy tree. They gave me a job as the nature director, which meant basically that I fed the animals and sat up in the treehouse with two very unhappy overweight teenage girls who became my unofficial assistants and talked about the meaning of life, etc. I got a library card from the Handley Public library--starting my collection of library cards from weird towns around the nation. I did a lot of reading that summer--good stuff--Anna Karenina, The Count of Monte Cristo, Brothers Karamazov. And I wrote a short story about my grandfather which I thought was pretty good--it garnered a very nice rejection letter from Ploughshares I think--one with a nice handwritten codicil at the bottom offering encouragement and the generic "dear author" crossed out in ballpoint pen and my name handwritten instead. I still have it. It's my only brush with publication.
It was also at that time I fell completely out of love with my husband.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Young people annoy the crap out of me. They don't seem cute or curious or on the verge or myself when young or whatever. They just seem like idiots. Even my own children seem like idiots. Everyone under 34 seems like an idiot.
Oh, God, now they've all come upstairs. I brought down pizza and all these white hands reached up and tore apart the boxes--it was sort of like day of the dead. The poor pizza didn't have a chance. I've never seen 5 large pizzas go so quickly. Like a cow being attacked by a school of piranhas.
Lilly dyed her hair red yesterday. We used henna. I used to have red hair when I was 21. It was beautiful. I don't have it now--I think women make a big mistake dyeing their hair red when they start getting older--it starts looking bad and brassy and dull. Of course, even your real hair starts looking bad and brassy and dull. We had to do it twice. The first time didn't take for some reason. Lilly sat in the kitchen on one of my old antique T chairs that I bought in West Virginia. We lived there when I was first married. Nick was just a baby, and Rob (my ex husband) got a job at a camp for rich Jewish kids in the mountains. The camp was owned by a man named Fred, who also owned one of the big circuses--either Barnum or Ringling--I forget which one. We lived in a 2 room shack for 3 months. We were the only goyim there. I mostly loved it. I walked around smelling the top of Nick's funny little head and thought of myself as the mommy tree. They gave me a job as the nature director, which meant basically that I fed the animals and sat up in the treehouse with two very unhappy overweight teenage girls who became my unofficial assistants and talked about the meaning of life, etc. I got a library card from the Handley Public library--starting my collection of library cards from weird towns around the nation. I did a lot of reading that summer--good stuff--Anna Karenina, The Count of Monte Cristo, Brothers Karamazov. And I wrote a short story about my grandfather which I thought was pretty good--it garnered a very nice rejection letter from Ploughshares I think--one with a nice handwritten codicil at the bottom offering encouragement and the generic "dear author" crossed out in ballpoint pen and my name handwritten instead. I still have it. It's my only brush with publication.
It was also at that time I fell completely out of love with my husband.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Constipation
For some reason, the transliteration toolbar on my blog decided to take over this morning and everything I was typing was appearing in Hindi. Which was really exciting, except I didn't know what I was saying. Maybe I just should have kept going. Maybe that woud have been the lesson today. To just let your words go. I mean, we think we say things, but who knows how they are really being heard?
Communication, right?
I don't know how to reply to the comments yet, but there's one posted on Mysteries--about Becky Doisy--thank you, if you're reading this. You're right...but remember, this blog is all fiction.
Okay, it's shohetsu. Have I talked about this before?
Barry Gifford (who might or might not be a really good kisser) wrote a book called A Good Man to Know which is roughly about his father--and he explains in it that shohetsu (sp?) is a Japanese form of biography which gets at the spirit of the truth, if not the exact actual facts.
I'm supposed to go to Ernie's this morning to have breakfast with the anesthesia attending, but I'm blowing him off. I decided that if it's okay for Jay to send erotic fruit poetry to old girlfriends and meet them for drinks and lie about it, it's okay for me to eat greasy fried eggs with doctors. Okay, so I guess I've really decided that it's not okay and I'm just going to sit in the peace room in the basement and blog and fucking suffer. Our actions tell the truth, don't they?
My heart is true.
Yesterday was Memorial day. I worked eight hours of it. I've been working on Tong-len (sp?) And I probably need some help with it because all it's doing is making me sick. I can't seem to release any of the energy. Tong len is when you breathe in the suffering of someone and take it upon yourself, then you breathe out something good in it's place. The problem is...I can't seem to breathe anything good out. It helps like hell with my patients, I don't know whether it's because it actually works, or because as a practice it forces you to pay attention to what your patient is feeling. It's so easy to turn them into task lists--it's safer emotionally. But you can't really treat people humanely unless you put yourself in their shoes, or, better yet--put yourself first in their heads, then in their breath, then in their belly, etc. What I am finding is that every single person is infinite, as is their suffering.
Okay--so I got really constipated. And because I'm a nurse, and crazy, I convinced myself that I had ovarian cancer, or maybe colon cancer, or maybe a prolapsed uterus.
And because I work with other crazy nurses, they were right on board with all of this, looking things up on UptoDate. ("Maybe it's your liver" Regina suggests. "Maybe you just need to take a big crap" Wiz interjects.)
Well of course, 2 cups of coffee later....
"Everything go okay?"
"I know a lot more about hockey than I used to, and I think I just gave birth."
As Seido says, if your nose is covered in shit, that's all you'll smell.
Watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with Lilly, Jay and Nick. As Holly Golightly is running through the rain, crying, looking for the cat, Nick says, "Psycho...."
"Exactly," Jay affirms.
What a mean fucking world. What on earth has happened? Babbitts everywhere...even my own.
That's my 1/2 hour. Be gentle, everybody.
Communication, right?
I don't know how to reply to the comments yet, but there's one posted on Mysteries--about Becky Doisy--thank you, if you're reading this. You're right...but remember, this blog is all fiction.
Okay, it's shohetsu. Have I talked about this before?
Barry Gifford (who might or might not be a really good kisser) wrote a book called A Good Man to Know which is roughly about his father--and he explains in it that shohetsu (sp?) is a Japanese form of biography which gets at the spirit of the truth, if not the exact actual facts.
I'm supposed to go to Ernie's this morning to have breakfast with the anesthesia attending, but I'm blowing him off. I decided that if it's okay for Jay to send erotic fruit poetry to old girlfriends and meet them for drinks and lie about it, it's okay for me to eat greasy fried eggs with doctors. Okay, so I guess I've really decided that it's not okay and I'm just going to sit in the peace room in the basement and blog and fucking suffer. Our actions tell the truth, don't they?
My heart is true.
Yesterday was Memorial day. I worked eight hours of it. I've been working on Tong-len (sp?) And I probably need some help with it because all it's doing is making me sick. I can't seem to release any of the energy. Tong len is when you breathe in the suffering of someone and take it upon yourself, then you breathe out something good in it's place. The problem is...I can't seem to breathe anything good out. It helps like hell with my patients, I don't know whether it's because it actually works, or because as a practice it forces you to pay attention to what your patient is feeling. It's so easy to turn them into task lists--it's safer emotionally. But you can't really treat people humanely unless you put yourself in their shoes, or, better yet--put yourself first in their heads, then in their breath, then in their belly, etc. What I am finding is that every single person is infinite, as is their suffering.
Okay--so I got really constipated. And because I'm a nurse, and crazy, I convinced myself that I had ovarian cancer, or maybe colon cancer, or maybe a prolapsed uterus.
And because I work with other crazy nurses, they were right on board with all of this, looking things up on UptoDate. ("Maybe it's your liver" Regina suggests. "Maybe you just need to take a big crap" Wiz interjects.)
Well of course, 2 cups of coffee later....
"Everything go okay?"
"I know a lot more about hockey than I used to, and I think I just gave birth."
As Seido says, if your nose is covered in shit, that's all you'll smell.
Watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with Lilly, Jay and Nick. As Holly Golightly is running through the rain, crying, looking for the cat, Nick says, "Psycho...."
"Exactly," Jay affirms.
What a mean fucking world. What on earth has happened? Babbitts everywhere...even my own.
That's my 1/2 hour. Be gentle, everybody.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Little Birds
No one reads this blog but me. And I don't read it, at least not more than the sentence preceding the one I'm typing right now. There's something sort of lovely about this, but also something sort of lonely.
Talen is back from Brooklyn. I didn't ask him why... or what happened...he just gave me a hug and asked me "#3? With raisin toast?"
I didn't even know I missed him.
Wow, I'm lonely.
Today I got sent home on call (hooray). It's funny, you know, the hospital forgot to put my overtime in my last paycheck (nice) and that was a loss of something like $2500--and I am facing the last three days of the month with exactly 92 cents in my checking account--and $11.88 in outstanding checks--and I'd still rather have the time. Money be damned. You can never get a day back.
I'm worried about my patient, though. A little old lady. I've been taking care of her for the last month. Little old ladies always get under my skin. Farmer's lung. She has a year to live.
Husband's a trucker. He just loves her, loves her. She's tiny and funny and cranky. True what my grandmother said--no one loves you for being easy. She's getting stronger. I told them not to accept this prognosis--I think if she got home and got happy she might live a lot longer. I don't know how to be kind to people, really. I get so scared and stiff. How do you be as good to people as they deserve without visiting your own crap on them? Without your ego and your need for approval tainting your interactions?
No one will ever love me that way. I want it too much.
Wiz loves her, too. He's usually really hard assed with patients--good--but kind of hard. But he treats her like a little child. He picked her up in his arms to move her to the chair and called her 'pumpkin.' Sometimes, I really love Wiz. And sometimes he's just repulsive, like when he's walking around with shit on his scrubs and eating graham crackers off the ICU floor just to gross me out. "Ummm--nothing like the taste of acinetobacter in the morning...breakfast of champions..."
She apparently takes in strays--wild animals find their way to her door, her family tells me. I was running with Lilly in the cool spring twilight, thinking about this, when I noticed a bird sitting at the side of the road. It didn't fly off as we ran by it.
"Do you think it's sick?" Lilly asked.
It was a sparrow. A girl sparrow. I couldn't see anything wrong with her, but her head looked a little funny, and when I put my hand next to her, she hopped onto my finger. I cupped my hand around her and stood up. The sparrow remained on my finger, peeping and trembling.
We began to walk home. I felt strangely gifted, as if I were holding a star instead of a bird, or as if the trembling hand of an ancient god was holding mine, some rare faery spirit, reaching out from their world. Everything seemed to still and come into an almost painful focus, the way it does sometimes when you are making love with someone you really love. Lilly ran on ahead back to the house to get a box. I kept walking with the little bird cupped in my hand.
As I passed under my neighbor's big pine tree--funny how some trees somehow have their own little world around them, isn't it? I mean, I'm walking on the chattahoochee in my street, past the magnolias and crabapples and forsythia, and then I'm under this pine, and all the sudden, there's this green shadow and sense of the black forest, and I'm thinking--wow--six feet of a completely different planet under this tree--and the sparrow suddenly takes flight, as if she could do it all along, and flies up into the pine.
Thinking she might be sick and fall out of the tree, I stood there underneath it, looking up into the dense green branches for the bird. I could hear her, but I couldn't see her. Lilly found me this way, when she came running back with the shoebox.
"What are you doing?"
I told her, not taking me gaze from the tree, still looking up. "I'm just waiting to see if she's okay."
Then a big splat of bird poop hit me on the shoulder.
Deadpan, Lilly says:"I think she's probably okay."
"Right."
I can't believe how quickly things can go from the sublime to Three Stooges in this world.
I told my patient this story, thinking she'd laugh, but she just looked at me and started weeping inconsolably.
Then, after about 5 minutes, she held out her little club fingered hands and mimed squishing the bird. She shood a finger at me as if to say, "That's what you should have done."
There and back again.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Talen is back from Brooklyn. I didn't ask him why... or what happened...he just gave me a hug and asked me "#3? With raisin toast?"
I didn't even know I missed him.
Wow, I'm lonely.
Today I got sent home on call (hooray). It's funny, you know, the hospital forgot to put my overtime in my last paycheck (nice) and that was a loss of something like $2500--and I am facing the last three days of the month with exactly 92 cents in my checking account--and $11.88 in outstanding checks--and I'd still rather have the time. Money be damned. You can never get a day back.
I'm worried about my patient, though. A little old lady. I've been taking care of her for the last month. Little old ladies always get under my skin. Farmer's lung. She has a year to live.
Husband's a trucker. He just loves her, loves her. She's tiny and funny and cranky. True what my grandmother said--no one loves you for being easy. She's getting stronger. I told them not to accept this prognosis--I think if she got home and got happy she might live a lot longer. I don't know how to be kind to people, really. I get so scared and stiff. How do you be as good to people as they deserve without visiting your own crap on them? Without your ego and your need for approval tainting your interactions?
No one will ever love me that way. I want it too much.
Wiz loves her, too. He's usually really hard assed with patients--good--but kind of hard. But he treats her like a little child. He picked her up in his arms to move her to the chair and called her 'pumpkin.' Sometimes, I really love Wiz. And sometimes he's just repulsive, like when he's walking around with shit on his scrubs and eating graham crackers off the ICU floor just to gross me out. "Ummm--nothing like the taste of acinetobacter in the morning...breakfast of champions..."
She apparently takes in strays--wild animals find their way to her door, her family tells me. I was running with Lilly in the cool spring twilight, thinking about this, when I noticed a bird sitting at the side of the road. It didn't fly off as we ran by it.
"Do you think it's sick?" Lilly asked.
It was a sparrow. A girl sparrow. I couldn't see anything wrong with her, but her head looked a little funny, and when I put my hand next to her, she hopped onto my finger. I cupped my hand around her and stood up. The sparrow remained on my finger, peeping and trembling.
We began to walk home. I felt strangely gifted, as if I were holding a star instead of a bird, or as if the trembling hand of an ancient god was holding mine, some rare faery spirit, reaching out from their world. Everything seemed to still and come into an almost painful focus, the way it does sometimes when you are making love with someone you really love. Lilly ran on ahead back to the house to get a box. I kept walking with the little bird cupped in my hand.
As I passed under my neighbor's big pine tree--funny how some trees somehow have their own little world around them, isn't it? I mean, I'm walking on the chattahoochee in my street, past the magnolias and crabapples and forsythia, and then I'm under this pine, and all the sudden, there's this green shadow and sense of the black forest, and I'm thinking--wow--six feet of a completely different planet under this tree--and the sparrow suddenly takes flight, as if she could do it all along, and flies up into the pine.
Thinking she might be sick and fall out of the tree, I stood there underneath it, looking up into the dense green branches for the bird. I could hear her, but I couldn't see her. Lilly found me this way, when she came running back with the shoebox.
"What are you doing?"
I told her, not taking me gaze from the tree, still looking up. "I'm just waiting to see if she's okay."
Then a big splat of bird poop hit me on the shoulder.
Deadpan, Lilly says:"I think she's probably okay."
"Right."
I can't believe how quickly things can go from the sublime to Three Stooges in this world.
I told my patient this story, thinking she'd laugh, but she just looked at me and started weeping inconsolably.
Then, after about 5 minutes, she held out her little club fingered hands and mimed squishing the bird. She shood a finger at me as if to say, "That's what you should have done."
There and back again.
That's my 1/2 hour.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Rice
Did you know there's a rice shortage?
That's kind of scary.
I know things are getting tighter and tighter and that I have less and less money, even though I'm making more than I ever have.
I think we all might be getting into trouble.
I'm making rice right now. Organic short grained brown valencia. I'm going to heat it up with last night's black beans. It's the quick and easy recipe from Memories of a Cuban Kitchen, my secret weapon. I love Cuban food.
In my book, there's an inscription: "To Willow, the best husband in the world. Love, Diana and Dean.
Kids are back, I'll tell you the rest of the story tomorrow.
That's kind of scary.
I know things are getting tighter and tighter and that I have less and less money, even though I'm making more than I ever have.
I think we all might be getting into trouble.
I'm making rice right now. Organic short grained brown valencia. I'm going to heat it up with last night's black beans. It's the quick and easy recipe from Memories of a Cuban Kitchen, my secret weapon. I love Cuban food.
In my book, there's an inscription: "To Willow, the best husband in the world. Love, Diana and Dean.
Kids are back, I'll tell you the rest of the story tomorrow.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Jealousy breathing
I'm trying to figure out why I'm so stupid. If you have any insight into why you are so stupid, please drop me a line. Maybe it will help me figure myself out.
I found out through very devious means that I'm completely ashamed of, prompted by the usual psychic sirens that LIES LIES LIES are being told.. that Jay had sent a book of poetry to his ex girlfriend. A book of poems by Elizabeth Desmond. Then he followed it up with a sample--one about plums...except it's really about sex, and probably, in his mind, it's about sex with her, the fucking ratfuck weasel ratfuck.
She's married. They had an affair about 4 or 5 years ago. He pushed her to leave her husband and she did--and then Jay dropped her. Which made her mad. Strange girl. She called on Christmas Eve this year.
I've thought about doing all sorts of things. Like sending her husband a note, or covering Jay's car with rotten plums.
And, check this out...her name is Haley, too. Just like me and the other Hali.
I wish I didn't know the things I know. One of the problems with my practice has been that as a result of sitting all these years, I have become very good and noticing things. My ego dream has been lifted--only a little--but still--and I see things, for the most part, very clearly--except emotional realities--and I can't make strong decisions for myself. For example, I know I should leave this situation, but I'm not going to. I guess I will, eventually. But then I think of myself. I'm not married. I have male friends who send me books and cd's and visit me on vacation. My father has had close relationships with women, intellectually and spiritually intimate friendships. Are those wrong?
I want the one I'm sleeping with to think of me and me only.
The error bred into the bone is to be loved and loved alone.
My practice just falls apart when it comes to things like this.
The best I've been able to do is resolve to not check up on him and to focus more on living my life for me and mine. I'm wearing this little string around my wrist and I'm adding a bead for each day I do right. I know that's judging the day--but I'm thinking of it as a 12 step program. When my thoughts go to scenarios involving imaginary confrontations I touch the beads on my wrist and breathe and focus on the world around me. I don't think it's virtuous to spy, so I'm stopping for that reason. Things manifest at different times, when the conditions are right for them to do so.
Everyone's heart blooms when it is spring.
I found out through very devious means that I'm completely ashamed of, prompted by the usual psychic sirens that LIES LIES LIES are being told.. that Jay had sent a book of poetry to his ex girlfriend. A book of poems by Elizabeth Desmond. Then he followed it up with a sample--one about plums...except it's really about sex, and probably, in his mind, it's about sex with her, the fucking ratfuck weasel ratfuck.
She's married. They had an affair about 4 or 5 years ago. He pushed her to leave her husband and she did--and then Jay dropped her. Which made her mad. Strange girl. She called on Christmas Eve this year.
I've thought about doing all sorts of things. Like sending her husband a note, or covering Jay's car with rotten plums.
And, check this out...her name is Haley, too. Just like me and the other Hali.
I wish I didn't know the things I know. One of the problems with my practice has been that as a result of sitting all these years, I have become very good and noticing things. My ego dream has been lifted--only a little--but still--and I see things, for the most part, very clearly--except emotional realities--and I can't make strong decisions for myself. For example, I know I should leave this situation, but I'm not going to. I guess I will, eventually. But then I think of myself. I'm not married. I have male friends who send me books and cd's and visit me on vacation. My father has had close relationships with women, intellectually and spiritually intimate friendships. Are those wrong?
I want the one I'm sleeping with to think of me and me only.
The error bred into the bone is to be loved and loved alone.
My practice just falls apart when it comes to things like this.
The best I've been able to do is resolve to not check up on him and to focus more on living my life for me and mine. I'm wearing this little string around my wrist and I'm adding a bead for each day I do right. I know that's judging the day--but I'm thinking of it as a 12 step program. When my thoughts go to scenarios involving imaginary confrontations I touch the beads on my wrist and breathe and focus on the world around me. I don't think it's virtuous to spy, so I'm stopping for that reason. Things manifest at different times, when the conditions are right for them to do so.
Everyone's heart blooms when it is spring.
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