He met her in the "chow" line at the Mountain Glen retirement center a little over a year and a half ago. He was standing in front of her and at just about six feet tall blocked her view to the food service table. Eighty-three years had slowly sandpapered his spinal column down but he still stood tall and strong. He felt a tug on his jacket hem and looked down to see the 4 foot 11 Marilyn staring up at him. "Hey, what's your name? You're new here." None of the formalities or coyness of awaiting proper introductions. Those contrivances were for those who have the luxury of time. At 92 Marilyn didn't. Her spine was rounded and she walked as if she was looking for a penny she just dropped. But what she lacked in posture she gained in a beautifully wrinkled, old sweet face. He was new to the retirement community. He was new to the retirement community lifestyle. After his wife died 8 years ago he got accustomed to living alone but never really liked it much. After a bout with cancer and the following radiation treatments, his family convinced him that it was time he got some help. He told her his name was Ed and he was a bit flustered. It wasn't so much her brusque nature that got to him. It was her fiery red and tousled hair. That it had been too long since her last 'beauty parlor' visit went unseen and Ed was instantly taken with her. So he did what any ex Royal Canadian Air Force pilot who had seen a lot of action in WW2 would do in that situation. He turned around and fretted about this cutie in line behind him.
I met Ed yesterday in the ER when he came in complaining of nausea and vomiting for the past week. " Think it's my new medication... I just can't eat". He became nauseated just after taking a new prescription and he thought it would get better over time, but it hadn't and now he was here. "You seem a bit dehydrated, Ed" I said and told him he'd feel a lot better after a few liters of Normal Saline flowed through his veins.
He told me he went back into his room that evening at Mountain Glen and said to himself "Goddamn it, Ed, if you don't call up that girl then you don't deserve to live". He grabbed the phone list and a few minutes later he had a date for Saturday night. They hit it off right away both knowing the attraction was there, "but what really got her was when I asked if she danced. 'You dance?', she asked me, and her eyes got really bright. That's when I knew I had her!"
The vitals signs were all taken, the perfunctory exam, the IV stick and the blood draw along with an EKG were all done now. My drunk patient in the next room was sobbing and screaming about how life was so hard that she couldn't take it anymore. She had crashed her car into a tree and was blaming everyone including me for her pain and problems. I could hear the obscenities through the walls and was glad to be sitting with Ed and Marilyn. Glad too that old age had at least spared their ears from having to listen to their neighbor. "Do you think they'll keep him overnight?" Marilyn wanted to know. "No I think we'll top off his tank and you guys can go back home in a few hours if he starts feeling better". He was already looking better with his pale cheeks pinking up a little.
They danced that next week. Then they danced four nights a week and every chance they got. "Ballroom's Marilyn's favorite" Ed told me. They danced and they fell in love. Marilyn had lost a husband to cancer not 2 years ago and the pain of that was being washed away in the magic of a new love she could not have imagined at 92 years of age. They got married just over a year ago. They are still honeymooning even here in the ER, as they looked sweetly at each other and she stroked his forehead. I thought it was funny that couples learn to finish each others' sentences even after knowing each other for such a short time.
When I hung the 3rd liter of fluid they asked when they'd be going home. I told them that there were a few abnormalities in the blood work and that the doctor had ordered another test. "Not bad really, just that your liver enzymes are a little elevated". I got Marilyn a cup of coffee and for that received a big hug. Flashbacks of my grandmother seeped into my body as her bony frail body squeezed me. Her head coming just up to my chest...a rare feeling for a guy 5'7".
The results of the abdominal ultrasound crashed into the room like a drunk driver...killing joy and dreams and Big Band music remorselessly as it plowed first through Ed and then Marilyn. The liver cancer was advanced. The doctor explaining this was trying to be as optimistic as possible but you could see the color draining from Ed's face. Marilyn looked sweet and calm while holding Ed's hand. When she stepped out of the room Ed looked at me and whispered "I don't think Marilyn heard the doctor...I don't think she understands". We sat and talked about time and death. Ed wasn't ready to die yet. He had a lot of things to do still. A whole lot of dancing with Marilyn. I told him to take as much pain medicine as he could and dance till his legs dropped out from under him. I reached out to shake his hand and neither of us would let go. I suddenly loved him as much as my own grandfather to whom I never got to say goodbye. I never wanted to let go. But the ER was hopping now with a trauma code 5 minutes out. As I walked back to the nurses station, Marilyn grabbed me shaking and we hugged in the hallway for minutes until she asked me how long I thought he had to live. She knew alright, only too well the steps of this dance.
Note: Names have been changed of course. There is no room 13 in this ER or any I have worked in. I guess it's still considered unlucky if you're superstitious. Ed was in room 12. Right next door.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Nebraska
The plane smelled of cabbage and potatoes. I was still in Seattle, albeit rolling down the runway at SeaTac airport, and already I was feeling far from home. It was the smell...and the 300 pound mother that was way too comfortable sharing half my seat with me. I used to be really touchy-feely in my 20's; you know, walking hand in hand with friends down the street or hugging all the time. And, though I've lost some of that I wouldn't say I'm touch phobic or need tons of personal space. But having strangers rub up against me in an airplane, forearm on forearm, ass on thigh, really creeps me out. Of course if that stranger happened to be really hot and had dark intentions I might have a different take on the situation. Let's just say this stranger wasn't...and thank god, didn't. And again, there was the smell of boiled cabbage. I was flying to Omaha, Nebraska and already had more than a little apprehension about the trip. I was actually quite anxious about spending two weeks in a mid-sized, Midwestern city. I know this sounds silly as I have recently cycled thousands of miles through parts of Asia just over a year ago. But being born and raised on the West coast of America, I have more of an affinity for liberal cultures and exotic spicy foods than I do traditional family values and Jello salad. In other words, I'm a total snob. I know people are people everywhere you go, with the same issues and concerns and fears. But I know too that we're just better out here on the coast! So I was afraid. Afraid of the food I'd have to eat for two weeks. Afraid of being in a land of Folgers coffee and dead air. Air not blown-in, cold and fresh, cleansed by thousands of miles of Pacific ocean, but air thick with farm chemicals... pre-used and exhaled by the millions of people west of me. Afraid too, of the folks immortalized by the national media...the ones that have more of a liking to the NRA than Greenpeace. I was heading to red state country wondering where I'd find tofu and rice milk. Snob yes, and watching this mother next to me constantly chiding and "no-ing" and riding and "don't-ing" and nitpicking her little girl (for being a little girl no less) had me guessing that she hadn't received her last subscription of Montessori Now or Today's Parent. You know, those "helpful" magazines that try to prevent you from creating a totally neurotic and miserable person in your own image that furtively looks around while biting her nails down to bloody, painful stumps.
I've always like cabbage. I've even planted a few in my garden this year. But the smell on the plane had me thinking of German food gone bad. Bad from years of Midwestern tinkering. Tinkering like, oh, I don't know, removing all spices and exotic flavors and replacing them with extra boiling and salt. It was becoming oppressive and I was actually looking forward to the thick Omaha air. Not that I'd be out in it that much. I was here to take a two week crash course in learning the art of being a Paramedic. A year long class boiled down into two weeks for nurses who had critical care/ER experience and who also happened to be active EMT's. Both of us! The class itself was long and hard and demanding as we practiced intubations in the OR's of the areas hospitals before our 8 hour lectures, then practiced running ambulance calls out of the city's many fire stations afterwards. Long days for sure but somehow I began to gel into the rhythm of sleeplessness and stress. And unexpectedly I really started to like the town of Omaha. Obamaha it ISN'T. Blue state, not. And the food... I actually took a photo of my burrito at a local Mexican restaurant. A burrito! How can you screw up a burrito? Easy, by burying it in melted Velveeta cheese. Sadly I ate almost the whole damn thing and I wasn't even drunk. But the park along the river, the beautiful old Creighton University campus and the little downtown section that had the charm of an old frontier outpost now yuppified with "too cute" boutique shops and even a real cafe with espresso, was surprising and very sweet. It made me forget the segregation only a half mile away where I was instructed to never go and never park my car...better yet, never even think about that part of town. But go there I did.
Station twenty one. The knife and gun club was located on the edge of that crappy part of town and I stayed there one evening waiting for my first gunshot victim like a kid waiting for Christmas. Would it be a gunshot wound (GSW) to the head with airway complications?! Or maybe a GSW to the chest with a collapsed lung that I could insert a needle into and re-inflate! Or maybe a stab wound to the belly that would be bleeding badly. OK, I know it's sick but after sitting in a classroom all day and going over this stuff and how to deal with it, you kind of want to get your (gloved) hands dirty and use your knowledge. The trouble is that there is a known phenomenon called the student syndrome. If a student is standing by waiting for something bad to happen it never will. Hence, the only calls I got that night were abdominal pains NOT from guns or knives but from constipation. Without going into details I will just tell you that after being on the receiving end of these patient transfers in the ER, as a nurse, heart sinking while the medic tells me an enema is probably in my future, there was a certain glee in dumping off that same patient and getting back out on the open road!
Station forty three. Another sketchy part of town that had good trauma potential... except for the student syndrome that followed me around Omaha. After nights and nights of sitting around catching up on the golf channel (there is something odd about firefighters and tons of crappy TV) a potential winner of a call was finally paged out as an assault with injuries. Here it was at last. My trauma moment. Pulling up to the house in Crapville, there were multiple cruisers with lights flashing and the scene was determined to be safe. As we entered the house, (and why is it that almost every house I saw in Omaha was cluttered with piles of dirty dishes/magazines/ blankets/trash and smelled of old laundry, dirty pets, and cabbage?) a father and son had gone at each other and the son appeared to have won. It didn't help that the dad was in his late 60's! I guess if your drunk dad comes at you with a baseball bat, even if he is a sexagenarian you might break a pane of glass over his head too. But who am I to judge...OK it was really f%#@ed up and this was like Jerry Springer except live, in the back of an ambulance, and I was holding this old guy's carotid artery as he was saying "What do you mean I'm going to jail...He's the one who cut my throat!" Strains of the banjo music from Deliverance twanged through my head as we bounced toward the hospital.
Two weeks have never rushed by in my life so slowly. The airport was like a church for me on the last day in Nebraska. A safe haven to thank god for better things to come in my life. Like Seattle...in just a few short hours. Seattle and Washington and it's smell of freshly ground coffee, pine trees and cabbage free sea breezes.
I've always like cabbage. I've even planted a few in my garden this year. But the smell on the plane had me thinking of German food gone bad. Bad from years of Midwestern tinkering. Tinkering like, oh, I don't know, removing all spices and exotic flavors and replacing them with extra boiling and salt. It was becoming oppressive and I was actually looking forward to the thick Omaha air. Not that I'd be out in it that much. I was here to take a two week crash course in learning the art of being a Paramedic. A year long class boiled down into two weeks for nurses who had critical care/ER experience and who also happened to be active EMT's. Both of us! The class itself was long and hard and demanding as we practiced intubations in the OR's of the areas hospitals before our 8 hour lectures, then practiced running ambulance calls out of the city's many fire stations afterwards. Long days for sure but somehow I began to gel into the rhythm of sleeplessness and stress. And unexpectedly I really started to like the town of Omaha. Obamaha it ISN'T. Blue state, not. And the food... I actually took a photo of my burrito at a local Mexican restaurant. A burrito! How can you screw up a burrito? Easy, by burying it in melted Velveeta cheese. Sadly I ate almost the whole damn thing and I wasn't even drunk. But the park along the river, the beautiful old Creighton University campus and the little downtown section that had the charm of an old frontier outpost now yuppified with "too cute" boutique shops and even a real cafe with espresso, was surprising and very sweet. It made me forget the segregation only a half mile away where I was instructed to never go and never park my car...better yet, never even think about that part of town. But go there I did.
Station twenty one. The knife and gun club was located on the edge of that crappy part of town and I stayed there one evening waiting for my first gunshot victim like a kid waiting for Christmas. Would it be a gunshot wound (GSW) to the head with airway complications?! Or maybe a GSW to the chest with a collapsed lung that I could insert a needle into and re-inflate! Or maybe a stab wound to the belly that would be bleeding badly. OK, I know it's sick but after sitting in a classroom all day and going over this stuff and how to deal with it, you kind of want to get your (gloved) hands dirty and use your knowledge. The trouble is that there is a known phenomenon called the student syndrome. If a student is standing by waiting for something bad to happen it never will. Hence, the only calls I got that night were abdominal pains NOT from guns or knives but from constipation. Without going into details I will just tell you that after being on the receiving end of these patient transfers in the ER, as a nurse, heart sinking while the medic tells me an enema is probably in my future, there was a certain glee in dumping off that same patient and getting back out on the open road!
Station forty three. Another sketchy part of town that had good trauma potential... except for the student syndrome that followed me around Omaha. After nights and nights of sitting around catching up on the golf channel (there is something odd about firefighters and tons of crappy TV) a potential winner of a call was finally paged out as an assault with injuries. Here it was at last. My trauma moment. Pulling up to the house in Crapville, there were multiple cruisers with lights flashing and the scene was determined to be safe. As we entered the house, (and why is it that almost every house I saw in Omaha was cluttered with piles of dirty dishes/magazines/ blankets/trash and smelled of old laundry, dirty pets, and cabbage?) a father and son had gone at each other and the son appeared to have won. It didn't help that the dad was in his late 60's! I guess if your drunk dad comes at you with a baseball bat, even if he is a sexagenarian you might break a pane of glass over his head too. But who am I to judge...OK it was really f%#@ed up and this was like Jerry Springer except live, in the back of an ambulance, and I was holding this old guy's carotid artery as he was saying "What do you mean I'm going to jail...He's the one who cut my throat!" Strains of the banjo music from Deliverance twanged through my head as we bounced toward the hospital.
Two weeks have never rushed by in my life so slowly. The airport was like a church for me on the last day in Nebraska. A safe haven to thank god for better things to come in my life. Like Seattle...in just a few short hours. Seattle and Washington and it's smell of freshly ground coffee, pine trees and cabbage free sea breezes.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
