Report from Pillville: The Triumphant Return

My mom is home. A stop for fro-yo, a stop for antibiotics, and zoom. There I was at the kitchen island, figuring out what meds she still needs to take today.

The first thing she did was pluck her eyebrows.

We had frozen pizza and a fruit plate for dinner. And of course she had a martini.

Why-oh-why does it take hours to get released from the hospital? They told me she was going to get released this morning, but the actual process took all day. You could bust out of prison with a file and a shovel in that amount of time.

And what the fuck is up with the bread they serve? The toast is soggy. The hamburger buns are soggy. The dinner rolls are soggy. Is there something about soggy bread that supposed to propel you back to robust health? I don't think so. So stop serving that shit.

Dizziness actually sounds like fun to me right now.

I should probably have some wine.

Hospitalland

In the hell of hospital land, you can go for days without seeing a doctor. You can go for days without finding out anything at all. Does my mother have pneumonia that's a result of a virus or bacteria? Or is the fluid from congestive heart failure on a little vacation visiting her lungs? I don't know. Here on day four in hospital land, I'm willing to say, I might never know.

Here in hôpital land, if you're 90 and weak and arthritic, you could starve trying to open your little packets of butter, jam, mayo, mustard, ketchup, sugar, coffee creamer, the lid on your coffee, juice, your carton of milk. Where the hell are all of the school kids who need to log volunteer hours? Get over here with your lithe and nimble fingers. Please.

Here in hospital land, they give you menus for your next day's meals and no pencils. They give you plastic devices to cough phlegm into without opening the package and assembling the thing.

So I'm here in hospital land. Visiting with my nimble fingers and my purse full of pencils. For every meal, I'm here. (Not going anywhere near the phlegm thing.) Camped out. Keeping vigil. Somewhere in this damned place, there's a doctor. I'm sure of it.

The plastic owl on the rooftop and I are waiting.

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." ---Kierkegaard

Follow the corridor that looks down on the koi pond and the garden. Get in the elevator. Don't bother with the barrage of confusing signs, just let muscle memory lead. You've been here before. Maybe six or seven or eight times in the past year. Who's counting. Walk past the life-size photo of the nun, past the skinny Jesus painting, past the seascape, turn right at the sailboat. Now walk to the end of the hall. Wasn't it this room where you had to be gowned and masked to visit Dan last spring? Now it's your mom's room. Don't be surprised. Yesterday she was in the very same ER cubicle (# 12) that he was in for his final visit. The day after Thanksgiving she was in #1, also a cubicle that Dan had spent several hours in. Maybe the universe feels you need to be reminded of all this for some reason. So be reminded. Go there. Let the past inform the present. Put your ear to its mouth. Listen.

My mom has pneumonia. She's in the hospital. Between the three visits I made there today, I crawled in my bed with my clothes on. I didn't really sleep. I didn't really read. I lay there, inhabiting a liminal space between past and present. Whenever I decided to open my eyes, I deleted old emails or read a few poems. Tonight I'm sitting in my living room, drinking wine. It's so quiet, the silence is roaring.

My mom seemed very, very tired this evening.

When I left the hospital the sky looked like this.

Hopice:That was Yesterday/This is Today/Tomorrow is Tomorrow/

Yesterday:

We meet with the hospice rep in the hospital room of the man who loves me. Immediately, with a sad-eyed dog look and a honeyed voice, he blurts out a bunch of shit about how the hospice “can be there for us 24/7.” 

"Well, stop right there," I say. "So there could be someone 24/7 at my house if I took D home with me for hospice?” I'd already spent two or three days figuring out that wasn't possible. And that the 24/7 would be necessary since I also care for my mom.

Mr. Hospice Guy, henceforth known as The Tool then tells us nope, well, not really and begins talking about respite care only he keeps saying respice like it was a weak rhyme with hospice. If we need respice care, that’s 24/7, he says.  For maybe 3 or 4 days. Tool. He calls D “young man.” Tool. He keeps saying transition and transitioning. 

"You mean death and dying," I say. He keeps confusing Medicare and Medi-Cal every single fucking time he speaks. Could we please change the names of both of those programs? How about ElderMed and PoverMed so Tools can get it straight. When he leaves, I would chug a glass of poison if I could get my hands on one. Bartender, drinks are on me. A round for everyone at the bar.

Today:

A woman in an exquisite rose-colored polka-dot dress comes to fill out the hospice forms. She manages somehow to be simultaneously all-business and kind. After I get D settled in at the nursing home, the hospice nurse comes. She's wearing a pink smock with the name of the hospice and scrubs with hearts, but she's direct. Full of information about pain meds, and hope for being comfortable without being a zombie. She's asks if the goal is to get D to return home. "I would love to have him at my house," I say, giving her the facts of my seemingly impossible situation.
"It might not be impossible," she says. "Talk to the social worker. They have lots of community resources."

Tomorrow: Who the hell knows? For tonight, the man who loves me is in a nursing home. I'm sitting on my couch. Watching HGTV. I watched endless hours of HGTV after my divorce, never changing the channel. Maybe a couple of weeks from now, he'll be next to me, and the two of us will be staring a TV show where people obsess over granite countertops and his and her closets.

The Pie:

I was gone from 10:00 a.m. until after 6:00 this evening. M and her girlfriend stayed with my mom, bought groceries, reminded her to drink her Ensure,  made her dinner, AND they made a pie. Mixed berry. Gluten-free crust. It was beyond divine. Maybe this is a harbinger of the love and support that awaits us.

Report from Pillville: The Other Side of the Story

While things are going well with my mom (the CT scans did NOT show any cancer or tumors as cause for her weight loss,) things are going less well for the man who loves me. Still in the hospital, he's not really feeling great. However, his appetite might be making a comeback. I will take good news where I find it.

I took an early morning walk on the beach before I went to visit him and photographed from a  different point of view. You've seen dozens of pictures of the water, the waves, the islands on this blog, so how about this for a change?

view of the sand and the sky taken standing in the ocean

Years ago when I was acting, a sage director once told me it was absolutely essential to step out of the character's skin before leaving the theatre, especially when playing someone sick or dying. I frequently wonder what it's like to have the ancient body my mom possesses. My knees are 61. What do almost 90-year-old knees feel like? I wonder what it's like to "pull for breath" as my boyfriend so often says he does. I wonder about so many of the things that he and my mother are going through. I put myself in their shoes, but only for a brief moment. Then I step out again.

Weekend Recap

In chronological order, beginning with Friday afternoon:

My mother weighed in during her doctor's visit at 99 pounds.

On Saturday Piper, our beloved and ancient cat, died.

Later that evening, the man who loves me was taken by ambulance back to the hospital.

I came home from the E.R. in the wee hours of Sunday morning to find I'd forgotten to take my house keys with me and was locked out, thus having to awaken M, who due to Piper's final hours the night before, had barely slept.

Today I turned off my phone and, after briefly checking in with my mom to say good morning around 8:00 a.m., went back to bed and slept until 3:00.

I might be coming down with a cold. But as I sit here with my cup of tea, I am aware that the figurative cup overflows. Many loving condolences re the cat; daughter C's offer to come to my side; friends who've left messages saying that no distance is too far, if I need them; a friend who proofread the galleys for my book while my brain went out of writer mode and into survival mode, another friend who came today and allowed me to do some hard thinking out loud, helped with chores around my house, and brought us strawberries; my mom, who in her frail state is still more than willing to pitch in and help in any way she can; M doling out love to Piper, me, and my mom and offering to drive me to the hospital.

I sit here in the dark, replaying it all. Re-evaluating, re-grouping, readying myself for tomorrow.

Thank you. All of you.

Anything is Possible.

I accomplished many things today. Things that would not impress anyone, really, but I feel like I have superhuman powers due to said innumerable trivial accomplishments. I could go to sleep or I could stay awake FOREVER. DOING MORE TRIVIAL THINGS.

Perhaps I should mention that I've been sleeping a lot prior to the combustible energy I experienced today.

And perhaps I should mention, that tomorrow, the man who loves me might sit in the chair pictured above--at the makeshift desk in my room. It'll be rather remarkable if he sits anywhere since he has been mostly asleep since Thursday night when I took him to the ER. But he's been infused with blood and antibiotics and fluids, so who knows, anything is possible. Anything.

State of the State of the Margaritaville

It not yet 8:00 p.m. here in Margaritaville, and I am in bed, wearing my warmest pajamas while the wind tosses patio cushions askew and makes my house feel about as airtight as tent fashioned from a fishnet. In bed with me is my heating pad, a sorry substitute for the man who loves me. The man is tucked into a hospital bed (where he's been since Thursday night,) and if the energy level he exhibited when I left him around 4:30 remains the same, I'd say he is fast asleep. Once again he's been laid low with a soaring white cell count, and this time he had a racing heart and a fever to go with it.

"You knock me out," he murmured when I kissed him good-bye. He looked at me the way he looks at me. Go ahead, imagine it--because I don't have the words for it. Maybe it's the way you'd look at a woman made of water if you were dying of thirst. The way you'd look at a woman breathing out sunbeams if you were freezing to death. Yeah, something like that.

I came home from the hospital and made my favorite no-brainer of a dinner. Salmon poached in a little vermouth, sweet potatoes, green beens, and sliced tomatoes and avocados. I loaded the dishwasher and left my 89-year-old mother to wash the pots and pans.

And in other news, before going to the hospital, I drove to 65 miles to a divorce mediation first thing this morning. Long time readers of this blog, those of you might recall its original name, which I am prohibited by order of the court to render into  print here, sit yourselves down. The mediation went well. Yes, indeed, two months short of seven years since the uttering of the sentence with the trifecta of bad news (our marriage is over, I'm marrying someone else, and we want the house so we can raise our new family here,) the mediation went well. 

It's been a mixed day. And while I would not have ever thought it possible seven years ago to imagine   being more sad than happy on a day when the divorce mediation went well, that is how it is here on this particular evening in Margaritaville.

A Story in Pictures

LAST NIGHT'S MIDNIGHT SUPPER

THIS AFTERNOON'S PAJAMA PARTY

THIS EVENING'S VISIT

We Don't Know What We Don't Know

Somewhat less than three decades ago, I spent a night in this hospital giving birth to my older daughter C. If you had told me then that my husband would leave me for another woman and start a new family, I simply would not have believed you.

If you had told me then that I'd be in this same building today under the same bright blue sky on similar a hot day with Santa Ana winds brewing--this time sitting on the bed of the man who loves me, I would have looked at you blankly and asked, "Who?"

The daughter is a grown woman now. The ex-husband exists only at the crumpled edges of my memory. But the man, sick as he is at the moment, is a presence as wide and warm and sheltering  as that blue California sky.

How to Heal

First this happened.

And yesterday, after nine days in the hospital, this. Welcome home committee included Piper, the ancient cat.

Tonight there was even a little music.

The daughter of the man who loves me is staying here, too--and that has been the silver lining--getting to know her a bit. Today she slept and rested most of the day. The relief crash. I'm feeling it, too. The sweet slowdown. The knowing (as much as we can know) that this will all be okay.

We are all burrowed in. Heads full of song. Bellies full of meatloaf. Present full of wellness.

Welcome to the Hotel California

2007: The 30-year marriage ended. Husband ensconced with a 34-year-old. Somewhere in the timeline that ensued, I'm  pretty sure I told everyone that all I wanted was dinner and sex (not necessarily in that order) and a sign to hang on my bathroom door that said "Check-out time 12 noon." A lot has happened since then.

Tomorrow the man who loves me will move in temporarily while he recuperates from lung cancer surgery. Everything is so fucking temporary. You are temporary. I am temporary. And yet,  we are permanent, too. If I had a sign to hang on my bathroom door now, maybe it would say, "Welcome to the Hotel California. You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave."

Word of the Day

A pneumothorax (pl. pneumothoraces) is an abnormal collection of air or gas in the pleural space that separates the lung from the chest wall and which may interfere with normal breathing.

Not a particularly happy word. The happy part is that the pneumothorax,  in the lung of the man who loves me, is small. It should heal itself, the doctor says. Meanwhile, he's pretty much confined to his hospital bed. I have confined myself to my bed in solidarity.

And doesn't the Glendale train station look stunning at night?

I confess: I'm fickle

The Glendale train station is an architectural gem

Cheating on the freeway system that I professed my love for yesterday, I took the train to see the man who loves me this morning. I awoke at 3:30 a.m. (and yes, that's when he awoke, too, I learned) and couldn't get back to sleep. Brimming with worry, I decided I would leave my mom home alone for a few hours and pay a visit to the hospital.

More train station architecture

So I trained past green fields and fallow fields.

Suburbs where horses reigned,

Orchards....

Barren rocks...

The weird temporary plastic green houses sheltering some crop or another that you see around here,

and strawberry fields...forever

Back to this.

Early this evening, I learned that the man who loves me was finally moved out of the critical care unit.

Dear Ozzie,

Your bed is ready.

Love, Harriet

Crochet Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

last year's tree

this year's tree with twice as many snowflakes

My mom crocheted all of the snowflakes, but I made the snow people out of wool.

 And I made the elf--and found that lovely piece of wood on the beach.

The print above the mantel is the work of  an artist I met while I was doing a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. That was a lifetime ago, it seems.

In the here and now, I'm hoping my mom's health holds steady. Thanksgiving weekend there were two trips to the ER.

Given the situation with the man who loves me, I know there will be some time spent in the hospital in the coming weeks. Maybe I should consider a needlework project of some kind. I think there's a box of yarn in my garage somewhere. Will I advance beyond knitting scarves and hats? Probably not.

Death, Pain, Anger, and Santa on a Tractor

My mom is home.

I've explained and re-explained the difference between pro-biotics and antibiotics. We've gone over the changes in her pain meds. I made soup for dinner, made sure to offer her a bowl of ice cream, and I just rolled some Max-Freeze onto her back. She's not quite herself, eyes like giant hollows, walking in super slow-mo. Each hospitalization, while life-saving, delivers its own special beating and sends her home weaker.

My father died suddenly of a massive heart attack one night after dinner. I was away at college and witnessed nothing of the the actual event of his death, yet that quick drop to the floor is how I've always imagined my mother would leave this life. It's now seeming quite likely that I was wrong.

A sudden death seems a mercy to me. To be alive one moment, aware of a brief pain perhaps, and then gone. No needles. No indignities. No litany of agonies. No small chiseling away of the mind and those elements of personhood that once were so integral and now are gone without a trace.

I really don't think very far ahead these days, and I don't worry. I do the things I can do. I have confidence that I will do the things, solve the problems, and ask the questions and find the answers, and change what needs changing, and just keep going. And even after I do all of that, she'll die.

Hahahah, life, you trickster! is an attitude that I can usually muster these days. My tire pressure light comes on as I start my drive to the hospital in the pouring rain. Okay. Hahaha. We take a detour to the tire store. Oh, now there's a Christmas parade and I'm behind Santa on a tractor. Okay. Hahahaha. Oh, the home physical therapy didn't get set up like it was supposed to? Well, less funny, but we'll survive. A pain medication situation that doesn't seem to be working? Well, I could get a little angry, but anger won't stop the pain, so never mind...but still, I'd like to engage in the luxury of rage. For most of my adult life, it's been evident that the lessons learned through difficult situations don't always come up again and give one a chance to flaunt that back store of knowledge. There's always new stuff. Like never ever get discharged from the hospital on a Saturday--and especially don't get discharged on a Saturday if they're going to fuck with your pain meds.

But I'm ready. Sleeping on the couch, maybe, with the MaxFreeze at the ready. Tramadol dosages researched, ready to say go ahead, just take it 2 hours early. And aware, at least right now while I'm still wide awake, that anger at anything won't do anything good.

Poseidon's Horses, Dominoes, and Roulette

sea spray being blown backwards by the Santa Ana winds

"Here in Pillville the winds can shift pretty quickly." At the risk of seeming completely self-obsessed, I'm quoting the final line of last night's blog post. The winds have, indeed, shifted here--the literal winds, that is.

The Santa Ana's kicked up this morning, blasting off the desert, with the potential for wildfires, psychic mayhem, and projectile palm fronds and patio umbrellas at a dangerous high. I don't know if I believe all the hoopla about the wind-borne positive ions driving us to desperate acts. But I don't rule it out.

My own patio umbrella had to be wrestled to the ground and restrained this morning. I'm hoping I don't suffer the same fate. When my mom is unwell, I don't feel it's right to leave her here alone, so I'm housebound, forsaking my morning walk and trip to the gym for T'ai Chi Chih. My concentration goes haywire and all the big questions ask themselves over and over. This morning there were doctor's phone calls to await with the answers to somewhat smaller questions. Do we hold the digoxin if she takes the antibiotics? What was found on the chest x-ray? Does she have a urinary tract infection? Currently, I only have the answer to one of those questions.

It was the antibiotics and their side effects that sent my mother to the hospital in June. INR levels off the charts, nausea that caused severe dehydration. We have a different antibiotic waiting in its nifty bubble packet on the kitchen counter. Spin the wheel. Stack up the dominoes. Which way will they fall when the wind is blowing everything backwards?

My friend Ellen and I drove the one mile to the beach this morning where we walked for twenty minutes while my mom was napping. The spray from the waves is blowing backwards--back out to sea. The waves looked like nymphs rising from the deep, their  platinum tresses trailing behind them. The especially long curls of waves brought to mind Poseidon's horses, white manes unfurling in the wind, galloping towards...whatever comes next.

photo credit: medeaslair.net

Report from Pillville: post hospital,the walker, the physical therapist, the vascular surgeon, the cardiologist, hearing aids, and every day we set up the dominoes

It's taken three weeks since my mom's hospitalization to feel like things are on an even keel here in Pillville. The walker and physical therapy were smallish things to deal with. But the pain in my mom's feet  made us worry that four days laid up in bed had compromised her iffy circulation once again. Luckily, the vascular ultrasound proved otherwise, and arthritis is most likely responsible for her pain. Usually not a reason for celebration....but in this case, it's quite a nice piece of news. My mom's hearing seems to have deteriorated since her hospital stay as well, so we've scheduled a new hearing test.

I'd say that my mom is back to where she was before the antibiotics for the skin infection made her sick and dehydrated and disoriented and played havoc with the coagulation levels in her blood. She bounced back physically by the beginning of last week--her therapy finished and the walker got folded up against her bedroom wall, but it's only this week that her mental energy seems fully back to normal. Then yesterday morning she suddenly felt unwell, got sick to her stomach, and had to spend until the early afternoon resting. Uh-oh, I thought.

But whatever it was resolved itself, and by afternoon she was fine. Martini. Dinner. Today I took her to the cardiologist for a regular check up. Her blood pressure was low--so we must take her blood pressure every day and only administer her evening blood pressure medication as needed. Not a problem, right? Still, the dominoes are set up here in Pillville. Like they are every day if you are going on 89.

Yesterday on Facebook, I stumbled across THIS. Since I live with my mother, I entered 365 in top box.
The answer was not a big surprise:

Your mum is living

10years beyond the age she is expected to die.
Yeah, I know this time with her is all bonus. I think of it every morning. Every time I come back into the house after going out. Every evening when I eat dinner with her and I'm finished 10 or 15 minutes before she is and I sit at the table  watching her chew with her eyes closed, wondering how I might become a more scintillating conversationalist. I think of it when we say good-night. It's bonus time. All of it.

photo credit: the ragblog.blogspot.com