Holy Cross

I slept upright in a chair last night, in the emergency room of the hospital where I was born.

When I do classes for new international students, after we talk about the places they just arrived from in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and Europe, I ask them where they think I'm from. Some of them guess I'm from Kentucky or West Virginia, based on my less than upper crust accent, I presume. I tell them nope - I was born about five miles away, which is why I need to live a bit vicariously through their stories, and is also proof that our community is made up of people from around the world, and 'round the way.

This always gets a laugh, but they know I'm mostly serious.

Now I am in a chair in the corner of a cafe, feeling a bit sorry for myself, tired, stiff, and a bit more chafed by the family ties today than grateful. I was in the ER with the second grandmother in as many weeks who needed medical care, this time the one with whom I'm much closer and hands-on. I responded to the call to go be with her and wait for a room last night, after a typical wacked out August day at work. I got there around 6 p.m., and didn't leave this morning until 6:15. My aunt, who is a champ, stayed with me. We both kept telling the other one to go home. She instead got the pleasure of watching me prop myself up against a wall with a pillow, with my feet up on the mattress and my hand intermittently curled around the cup of coffee next to me on the table, waking myself up every ten minutes or so, tempted to lie down on the floor.

This hospital now has a 24-hour Starbucks in the lobby, the goofy soda machines that put your individual bottle in a little conveyor sort of contraption to deliver it through a window, and a bird and butterfly waiting garden outside. It lacked these amenities in 1971.

The emergency room at night is one of the most bizarre environments in all of existing civilization. This particular one depressed me more because it was like heaven's waiting room, populated with several elderly people in various stages of physical breakdown, and what I can identify as different stages of dementia, based on my years working with people with Alzheimer's disease and other kinds. The makeshift "rooms" - more indented space with curtains - were full, so many of them were scattered around in the area outside the square nursing station, sleeping in the cruel fluorescent light. Right outside my grandmother's little cubby room curtain, an elderly man lay curled on a stretcher, the top of his bald head the only thing visible to me, filled as it was with nicks and age spots. The sight of it upset me but I had to work not to see it, so my eyes kept drifting back. When I witness such things, I feel twinges of physical pain myself.

I stepped outside the curtain at one point, when the nurse came in to catheterize my grandmother, something I have zero interest in witnessing and didn't think was necessary, but the doctor said this was the only way, as dehydrated as she was. I stood miserably and listened to her cry and moan, shifting from foot to foot, uncomfortable, looking anywhere I could to forget what I was hearing. Down the hall, at the same moment, a woman in the room on the end vomited in technicolor into her bedpan. At the same exact moment, an EMT team pushed a wiry man in a stretcher through the far doors.

"Ma'am, I am sorry. I am sorry I said that. I didn't mean it," he said.

One of the EMTs was a woman.

"Actually, yes. I did mean it. I'm sorry ma'am, I meant it. I DID. But if you too had seen the ghost of Bob Marley, you'd know what I was trying to say."

It is a testament to my lack of sleep and the completely overwhelmed nature of my evening that I somehow mentally mistook Bob Marley for Bob Cratchit, and called to mind an image of a tall, grey, Britsh man balancing a ledger, and wondered why the hell anyone would think of him when it wasn't Christmas time. It was a little bit later when I realized it was "Redemption Song" and a big fat spliff that he was probably thinking of instead.

I could never be a nurse. A tall, very handsome African man named Manfred was her nurse after they moved us over to what I called the shadow side, an annex of the ER that was barely populated, after 1 a.m. It was creepy over there, and we were even more bummed out because we thought when they moved us that it was going to be upstairs, to the regular floor. There weren't even any machines on this side to monitor vital signs. Just us, and him, and an orderly playing solitaire on the computer. Manfred, though, moved dutifully, purposefully, capably. He called her "Ma'am." He was completely everything one needs in a person, especially of the opposite sex, who is providing what is often quite personal, invasive care.

"You want a new Depend, ma'am?"
"I am going to move you to one side, ma'am."
"I am going to take this sheet out from under you now, ma'am."

He didn't just jerk her around like some of them do, shoving rolling stretchers around like couches on moving day with no notice that there's an actual human being involved, transferring from bed to bed with the gentleness shown a sack of potatoes. He narrated the experience quietly. He told her what was going to happen to her body, whether she understood him or not. And every time she bellowed "WHAT HONEY?" he repeated himself. I loved him. If he hadn't been married I'd have married him.

The job plain sucks. And as I roamed up and down this little annexed area, trying to get a third or fourth wind, and shook out my vertebrae before cramming them back in the chair, I wondered how it was that some of us come equipped to do it and some of us don't. I don't. Now, the Bob Marley guy I can handle. I saw him later in the waiting room, fighting with the security guard, and it just fascinates me, the many twists and turns the brain can take, and what we define as normal, anyway. I can work with mental illness, which admittedly is beyond the scope of some people who can dress a physical wound or change an adult diaper. We all have our abilities and comfort levels.

Many family members of other patients left last night. For some there's a need to, and I guess we could have too. But the question of when she would be moved was never fully answered, and if one thing is clear to me in health care, it's that the person who has a visitor, or an advocate, or a family member sitting there dozing in a chair, tends to get more of a response if they're unable to fully express themselves. She woke up several times in night, forgetting where she was. She'd open her eyes, yawn, and say theatrically, "I'M SLEEPY." My aunt and/or I would jerk out of our book chapter or semi-REM sleep and say, "Go back to sleep," and she'd say "Okay" and then she would. My uncle showed up at 6:10 a.m., pissed that we'd all been through this bizarre waystation night, and my aunt and I stumbled home. My day was a waste, and my grandmother didn't get a room until 6 p.m, when another uncle was down with a meal from Wendy's, her favorite hamburger place, just to get her to eat something. Tonight, she's still agitated, and not sure where she is, and not interested at all in eating (that which landed her there in the first place.) I told her that if she continues this hunger strike without a cause, we're going to have to go through this hospital hell again, living as she is in an assisted living that likes to send people ot the hospital at the first sign of a crisis.

She doesn't really understand. This is a person who used to save me a HALF of a LEAN CUISINE for when I came in after work. Half. A half of something that wouldn't fill me up in its entirety if my life depended on it, that after I'm done eating, I lick the little plastic plate, and might be encouraged to gnaw on the box if some of the sauce dripped on it. She doesn't care about food, and at 86 it's showing.

Tonight she is in a bed on a regular floor. I dropped by and she was in a foul mood, was unspeakably rude to my cousin who had driven some distance to see her, and was confused about the reality of being in a hospital at all. We offered her dinner and she didn't want it. I told her I was leaving and she told me I couldn't leave her there alone. I told her I had to, that I was tired, and that she was safe. When pressed, I told her that my neck hurt and I needed to get some stuff done.

"YOU don't have to work tomorrow," she said.

She was never like this. She was not clingy or needy or in any way nasty about our personal responsibilities. I know her brain isn't working in the same way anymore. Still I find it difficult to separate myself from the guilt that I know is irrational. I left her in the capable hands of a nurse's aide who she seemed pleased as punch with after I pissed her off.

"Sali," she said. "That's a beautiful name. That is just great."

"You push the red button, and I will come," Sali said. "I will help you."

Comments

[Jennifer/The Word Cellar]

This is a touching story, Laurie. Thank you for sharing. I was in the ER Saturday afternoon with my dad, but he was in and out in a few hours - thank God. I'm sorry to hear of your family's struggles. I hope you can get some rest and that your grandmother improves.

[joanna]

I so understand what you're going through, including the physical exhaustion and emotional twists and curves. If it's time for your grandmother to go, I hope she goes swiftly and painlessly.

[Laurie]

Thanks to both of you for the feedback.

I didn't go in today. I met a friend for brunch and am getting caught up on my writing (both personal and assigned...)

I think what's difficult for me is that even though it's great that our life spans can be extended, when the quality of life is so compromised and care challenges are so pressing, all I can think of is "please take me before I get to this point."

[joanna]

" all I can think of is 'please take me before I get to this point.' "

yep. Walking through the advanced dementia hall at my father's nursing home has that effect on me.
Take care of yourself.

[littlepurplecow]

This is tough. I could smell the ER in this post. You have a gift for sharing the guts of life. Do take care of you.

[Bozoette Mary]

Ah, this is all so familiar, Laurie. My mom is 96 and we are old friends with the ER. It's draining and it's sad, but I do it because... well, because.

[laurie]

I'm trying to, Stephanie. Things have settled down a little. Sometimes I can write about things well when I'm in the middle of them and other times I need some distance. This time I think I had some stuff to work out in words.

Mary - I know. I could go home at times like these, but in my family...we just don't. Thankfully there are enough of us to share the load, and who are willing. It's not that way in other situations in my life which makes things a bit tougher.