Thursday, July 29, 2010

Strange Happiness

The plan today was to go pick up Aleister and take him swimming at the Bainbridge pool. His mama met me at the Silverdale Mall and off we went, Aleister in his long brown sweater, flip flops and swim suit, and me in my black pants and sweater (I don't dare yet enter the pool for fear something "poolish" might infect my still-healing scars).....when, suddenly, Aleister started a high-keening like crying. When he finally could talk, he talked. "I miss Papa Jim," he said, between sobs. "I know, I miss him too," I said. His high-cry turned into a full wail. He wailed. I have never heard Aleister wail since he was a little boy and even then, it wasn't like this. For one thing, although he doesn't know it yet, his voice has changed and his wailing is lower. For another thing, it breaks my heart.

I thought. I thought quickly. "Aleister," I said (I think I am the only person left in the whole wide world who still calls him 'Aleister') --we can either go swimming - or we can make our own funeral for Papa Jim. Which would you like?" It only took a second before he announced, "A funeral. A funeral for Papa Jim. So what will we do?"

"Well," I said, thinking quickly again, "we get some of his ashes and put them in two bottles, one for you and one for me." Aleister nodded. "Then," I went on, "we get some flowers and we think up things we would like to say to Papa Jim privately, so that nobody else can hear, and we bring along a picture of Papa Jim so that we can see him and get the feeling of him..." whereupon Aleister interrupted me, put his hand on my leg and said, "I do not need to get the feeling of Papa Jim, I have that already. I do not think it will ever leave me. Is that all?"

"Uh....no! Then I find a bottle, a strong thick bottle with a good strong cap - and we write notes to Papa Jim and put them in the bottle and we throw the bottle into the water, as well."

"I know exactly what I want to write," said Aleister. I gave him five skinny pieces of paper. On each piece of paper he wrote the exact same words: "I miss you." "I miss you." "I miss you." He did not sign his name, I think he figured Papa Jim would know whose writing it was.

With all that in tow, we drove down to the water and walked around until we found the perfect spot. "This is an important thing we are doing, Mama Kay," said Aleister. "Yes it is," I agreed. "We could have gone swimming but we are doing something for Papa Jim instead," he said. "Because he was the best man I ever knew."
"Me too, Allie," I said, "me too."

We whispered our silent words. We tossed in the ashes. Each ash-plunk made a circular design in the water. We looked at Jim's picture and Aleister cried some more. Then we wiped his tears and said, "the flowers." He threw in the red rose. I threw in the daises. He threw in the orange whatevers. I threw in the white and blue whtaevers. They had petals. They were flowers.

"I need to sit down, Mama Kay," Aleister whispered to me. We found a place. I sat next to him and was thunderstruck when he threw both arms around me, held me close and moved me even closer to him. Ten year old boys don't throw their arms around their Grandmas; they don't like to. The only time they do is when their Mamas tell them to. But Aleister did. He nestled me right into his arms as he said, "This is a very touching moment for me."

The sun came out. It had been dark and dreary and then the sun came out. "I think this is what Heaven is like," Aleister says. "When you do what you need to do and then the sun comes out."

We went, then, for ice cream. At Mora's. Both one scoop ice cream cones cost eight dollars. "Eight dollars!" Aleister exclaimed. "That's pretty pricey!" I felt a bit embarrassed but I said nothing. "Well," the young lady behind the counter said, "it's all natural."

"Hey," Aleister said. "I am all natural too, but I don't cost eight dollars."

The ice cream. It was good. It was natural. Although really it didn't taste any better than Breyers. I'm a hick. What do I know? We left the ice cream place and walked out into the sun.

"That was a perfect funeral," Aleister said. "They ought to have funerals for kids. And the sun should always come out after. Do you reallly think Papa Jim did that?"

"You never know," I said, "you never know."

"Mostly my life is a bunch of 'never knows', Aleister said. "School is for knowing, Life is for not knowing."

I agreed.

I drove Aleister back to his mama. She said that he often just starts crying for Papa Jim. "He won't even let me dust off Jim's photographs," she said. "He figures that that particular dust landed there for some particular reason and it is not my province to dust it off."

But ALeister was already onto a different subject. "Someday," he said, " in China, they will find the bottle with the notes and they will wonder what they say. And Papa Jim will be right there making the sun come out. And maybe we, here, where we are, will feel a little bit of strange happiness because on this day, Mama Kay, we did everything right."

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Holy Tony's Restaurant and Bar

I decided to leave my last blog "as is" simply because it so cleverly reveals the mind on pain meds. All I can say is, you had to Be There. St. Anthony's, or "Holy Tony's" as the folks at Harrison call it, is one terrific place. I felt as if I had died and gone to Heaven and, for all I know, I nearly did. After six and a half hours of surgery, however (how can there be ROOM on me for that much time? My lover wants to know).... I was down for the count for a couple days and made lots of friendly relationships with lots of nurses, all (except for one who shall remain headless) I learned to love. By 11:45 p.m. on the night of my surgery, one of the younger nurses got so carried away in our love-fest that she asked me and my friend, "Would you like me to see if I can get a bottle of wine up here?" My friend's face and my face lit right up. "You bet!" we said at once. "We do this, sometimes," the other nurse smilingly informed us. "Our cafeteria is well stocked with pretty much anything." "Yes", said the first nurse, "we'll just have to call your doctor."

Now, I knew...I KNEW....that calling my doctor for a bottle of wine at midnight on a day when he'd already done four long surgeries was not a well-reasoned-out idea. But, as Eleanor Roosevelt said about something else, we decided to live life to its fullest and call Doctor anyway. He was not amused. Two days later, when I was standing in his office, he STILL was not amused. It's nutty what exhaustion will do to a person's sense of humor.

And the morphine. Could there be anything better than morphine? I had been put on morphine years before for a chronic pain situation I walk around this world with, but never realized what a highly terrific drug it was because I couldn't "handle it", as they say, during my hours with my patients, and therefore my interest in it simply dropped. Not this time, though, boy. Swear to God, that stuff kept me alive. And I got to have it whenever I wanted it! Sweet. I was hugging everybody in sight.

The first time they got me up to walk after my surgery was one of the funniest/nonfunniest events I've ever taken part in. One nurse pushing the IV, two nurses holding me AND the walker-thing up, my socks on wrong so that the tracks which were supposed to be on the bottom of my feet (so I wouldn't slide) got put on upside-down, which caused me to slip and slide from this side of the hall to the other side, sort of like an Olympic skater on....well,....morphine.....was funny. I'm sorry, but there is just something extremely comical about a weary, bruised, cussing, crying person who is worried about flashing somebody from behind - - trying so hard NOT to slide hither and yon, trying so hard NOT to lurch and jerk down a hospital corridor. I asked the staff if they ever made videos but all I got was a somber, "No, we don't."

No. We don't.

The surgeon did fine. The nurses did fine. The man who came to see if I had any complaints or tips about the menu or the hospital's nutrition plan did fine. I told them him the ycould put real suger back into the food if they wanted to, but apparently nobody wanted to. The woman who brought around free TACOMA TRIBUNES in the morning did fine. Even the Pastor did fine. He stayed away. The television had a nice big screen and I always love the ham and cheese sandwiches in the middle of the night, eating them at such an hour feels so thrillingly illicit.

So I've been home for nearly two weeks and this week I've gone back to work. So far, so good, I haven't taken any pain pills during the day so I'm lucid as the morning robin. I try to walk in a modified bent-over position like they showed me. I hate it. All of life's mundane daily chores have become huge enterprises. I need somebody to help me take out my garbage. I also need somebody to come alone and help me MAKE garbage.

Am I glad I did it? Not yet. But, since homo sapiens is pulled by but also fearful of risk-taking, I'm not in a bad psychological place at all. I am right in the center of the nature of Life.

Monday, July 5, 2010

A Short Small Tether to Reality

I was scared. Like a middle-aged dog skittling across the floor in any direction but the ready-or-not bathtub, I was dipping and diving away from the entrance at St. Anthony's. "Oh no, you don't," as my friend tried to maneuver me closer to "our" destination, "I'm not goin' in there to get carved up like a chicken, hmmmm, MMMMM." But even my skuttlin' came to a halt and, finally, in baby-steps, I made my way up to the entrance and the entrance, it opened automatically, it being ne of THOSE doors that are even friendlier than You.

I signed God-Knows-What more papers, waited a minute or two and was asked to "come this way, Mrs. Morgan," by a pretty dark khaired young girl. Anymore there are only young girls. The entrance RN looked like she was in Senior High. The anesthesiologist looked like he had just performed particularly well on his cellor at the local Junior High graduation. And there was Dr. Meeks, looking....well, grim. Thus far, this situation had cost Olympic Medical Personnel a bit more than $5,000.00 and that may not make for the best doctor/patient relationship. He thanked me for the card I sent, which told how him how grateful I was that he had "made this call".....even though 1) I wasn't actually all that gratful at all and 2) this surgeon hadn't been a part of that call. He had been educated and silenced and rolled over by the anesthesiologist who was NOT here today. So Dr. Meeks was on his best behavior around me and I was......well, let's say I felt as if I had "some capital" in this sutation. "Member ol' Georgie-Boy Bush and his "capital"?
Yeah.
I had some of that, myself.
And I liked it.
So, once again, I got out of my clothes, which were covered with a big slowly pulsating sheet, one of my fingers socketed into a monitor which keeps tabs of your oxygen levels from moment to moment, and now a catheter exquistely pushed up inside my by-now horrified uretha, yes, the very one that called 911 at least twenty times that very Thursday morning, with a little screamy voice, rasping out, "Get me out of here! Get me out of here! I do NOT want to proceed with this procedure any longer any further!" Alas, the little screamy voice was not loud enough to be heard.

The fourteen year old kid who was the anesthesiologist was named Dr. Week. So now we had Dr. Meeks and Dr. Week. I asked where Dr. Wong was, but nobody was ready to get or give a joke at 5-something in the morning. Perhaps the entire staff there at St. Holy Tony's, which is what the other hospitals in King and Kistap call them, were so used to jokes about Dr. Wong's name that they just learned to blink three times and keep on going, I don't know. Anyway, every staff member blinked three times and, after answering some more pretty funny questions, I was brought up to the OR and my friend was politely shown the way away.

Two minutes later, they told me I had undergone six and a half hours of surgery and I could wake up now and chew some ice chips. Were they kidding? Was this the best they could do in terms of practical jokes? You know how they do it. "Come on," I said, "don't kid me. Have you done the damn surgery or not? What's real? Am I alive?"

"Sure you're alive," I heard somebody's nearly recognizable voice. "Who are you?"
"Al," I said, "that IS the question." "Don't give them any more than they ask, I though. They're Catholic. They could be spies. "Kay? Kay! DR. MORGAN!" one male voice rang out. "es?" I answered meekly, "that would be me, but....."
No 'but's" about it," I recognized Dr. Meek's voice. "We are done,Kay (they like to say your name during these most stressful times} "it's one thirty, everything went well. As soon as we are able to take your vitals one more time, we'll wheel you down to your room."

"You intend to deal with my mother's womb?" I asked, incredulously. "Well, good luck. I don't think you'll get far."

But they did. Their idea of reality and my idea of reality was entirely different. Finally they rolled me down to my room with the view of the next building and a great TV screen and legs pads that went in and out, pumping warm oxygen around my lower leg muscles so that they would be assured I would not have a blood clot on THEIR watch, and I went to sleep again. A half hour later and I was calling people right and left, saying, "Hey! I love you! Wanna come on up and see my ______s? Wanna come on up and take a load of my ______s? But of course it was the end of a Thursday, a nice quiet Thursday with pastel butterflies on the sheets and a couple of monitors into which I was hooked. I thought to myself: I could travel down this path of life and never turn back. This is as good as it gets.

I made fast friends with every nurse who was assigned to me. One nurse even suggeted (NOT my suggestion THIS time, folks) that we order a bottle of wine, which was often done, she said, but first we would have to get Mr. Meek's permission. Now, about this part of the equation, I knew it was a wrong call. I KNEW that man did not have the sense of humor to be even remoted amused by such a suggestion, much less, MUCH LESS - - than THIS suggestion. Oh, Jesus, oh Jesus, and they were seriously making a CASE for it. Damn. What kind of hurly-gurly pole dancers WERE my new care-takers?

"It's okay,"" I kep saying to my disappointed staff, "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe he wants some, himself."

"But I WOKE HIM UP!" cried the little blond haired nurse, "and he didn't sound none too happy about it!"

So I woke up each morning in spite of my morthpine drip and my muscle relaxcent pills and my crazy hair which looked to be desperately trying to climb its way off my poot head and onto any other poor soul being wheeled down the corridor.

They brought me roast beef (too salty), with roasted fresh vegetable,s (yum, jum) - but I just did not feel like eating. About one o'clock a.m. I asked for and received within three minutes, a fresh ham and cheese sandwhich and a diet Sprite. It was the best ham and cheese I've ever had and believe you me, I've had many.

I was beginning to think of this place as a kind of nifty motel. I had not as yet felt any surgery-type pain and I remember thinking how thoughtful that was of "them" - - to be me in an existential position of NO-Pain. WHAT A GOOD DEAL! When I was finished with my delicious sandwich, I paid attention to my thoughts, which went something like :God [or Someone else] must have my address. Because I had not felt one iota of pain. Because I was still there and my parents and one of my grandparents had been dead and gone at this (my) point in (their/my) life and wadn't that good! Because It is good to meet nurses and hear about their lives {their fainting goats, their wonderful little phrases they brought from whatever town or culture they sprang from, how many dimples in their faces, what their husbands say, what their husbands don't say)...

"Oh, honey....." I remember that. I remember I just kept saying, "oh, honey......."

So when I got done with my "....and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever, amen," I was plenty calm. Because that is a long song, enough to live a semblance of a life inside of, and here I was, this old and saying it right and left, thirty seconds here and thirty seconds there. Shouldn't I be saing souls instead of lying in this lumpy bed and listening to my "head-voice" lumber out the words to this most beautiful song? "Ah, go get 'em, kid," I heard one of my patient's voices coming through to me, "Go get 'em. Enjoy it. Let those voices PUUURRRRR."

I let them voices purr.

The next day was Friday. My friend had brought me a rose and an.......I'm not sure. Maybe a home-grown orchid? I received a couple of cards. I did NOT choose to be given the Last rites" earlier yesterday by the chaplain. I decided to take my mother's and father's words to heart on that one: 'If they come to give you your last rites, DON'T SAY YES! They are not necessarily ON YOUR SIDE! You never know! Tell 'em you got your own set of brand new last rites and you gonna apply them to yo Own Self! And then, if you can,.....RUN!"" So I did.

My father actually did run. From the American army medic quarters in New Guinea to the middle of the jungle where we slumped down to die beside a tree. THAT was what my father felt about the last rites, it went like, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I have never questioned his decision in this matter, although I'm sure it would have been intersting and, Who knows, it might have saved him his life. KEEP YOUR EARS OPEN AND YOUR MIND ON RED ALERT, said my Mama. I can hear her now. There she is, over there, in the big stuffed white leather chair. She's doin' that thing with her eyes and she's movin' her head right to left, right to left, waving me along. Come here. Go away. Come on over here. Go on, get out of here. She was a high maintenance woman and they say I am too, although I never once woulda thunk itto myself..

Nope, not even onct.