Posts Tagged: Day in the life

Mere Observer

Lying here looking at the ceiling , I am reminded of various observational mishaps. The first one that comes to mind is something that happened to me in college once. After graduating, I returned the following year to take some more philosophy classes that had not been offered during my time at CSU, Fresno. The very first day I was sitting in Professor Winant’s Philosophy of Language class listening to her introduction to the subject and the class, and explanation of the syllabus. It was quite interesting. Then, to pair up everyone in the class, she counted off, “one”, “two”, “one”, “two”,… so that each person was assigned to either the “one” group or the “two” group. She ended on a “two”. Great, we are even. To make sure she got everyone and that the groups were even she asked the “ones” to raise their hand, and counted hands. Then the “twos”. But we didn’t come out even. Weird. So, thinking she must have miscounted the hands, she did it all over again. Again we were not even. Then, as she was starting to count for the third time, I realized why the groups were not coming out even. I was not raising my hand for either group. It’s not that i wasn’t paying attention to what was going on, I was earnestly.

In my head, I had become an observer, so much so that I had somehow forgotten that I was also a participant — that I was actually there in the room, and not just watching it on TV. And this, dear friends, feels like the story of my life. Observing, not participating. Watching in fascination as the parade goes by, but too scared, shy, lazy, preoccupied, busy, confused, or just stupid to jump in. But it’s no way to live, not at all.

Community=trust, or is it the other way around?

So, I roll into my new favorite wi-fi enabled coffee office, and as I am about to order I see that they don’t take credit cards yet, and I know I have no cash, and the nearest cash machine will charge me more than the cost of a cup a joe to give me my own money. And the nearest Wamu-Chase joint is a 15-minute bike ride away.

So, as I am thinking about all this, the woman at the counter, who turns out to be one of the owners, sees the look on my face and says, “no cash, eh?” And then she asks me if I wanna do an IOU? She says, “you look familiar”.

So, I am kind of blown away, because you definitely don’t get this anymore. I’ll be honest, i really liked this place anyway. It doesn’t hurt that the coffee is really good, as are the oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies and shortbread squares, the vibe is cool, the wi-fi is provided without an attitude, minimum purchase requirement, or sideways glance like you’re stealing something.

But now, they have a totally loyal customer for life.  This is a down economy, and the restaurant business is tough in the best of times. This place is still new and could probably stand to see more cash flow. So, it is really gratifying to see people expressing trust and building community. One might argue that this is just smart business, and I would not disagree. I just think it is not all that common these days. So, you know, come get some coffee and a pastry. Bring cash.

Staying busy part 1: eldercare

Ever since I was laid off from my job in February, life has been exceptionally hectic. This seems completely counter-intuitive. This is because I obviously have much more free time than I did when I was working full time. Nonetheless, the free time seems to fill up fast with things that I either wish to do or that come up that I must do.

One huge thing that has come up is caring for my mother. This started the very day I was laid off when she fell and broke her wrist. About three weeks later, her left hip, which had been painful for months as the prosthesis from a much earlier hip replacement was rattling around loose in her femur, finally just broke. That is, her femur just started disintegrating. It was time to attempt a total revision of the hip replacement. This was a major undertaking that just a couple months before was seen as not worth the risks by an orthopedist at Kaiser Richmond. But now the risk of a failed surgery, becoming wheelchair bound, was already a reality.

The first orthopedic surgeon to look at her new situation, basically thought he could not do anything for her, but offered to refer us for a second opinion. The referral was to Dr. Bini, director of orthopedics for Kaiser East Bay. Dr. Bini was very confident he could fix her. “I can cut this and replace that; and if that doesn’t work, I have some other toys I can play with.” But he was very upfront about the risks: “For a 91-year-old, the anesthesia is dangerous. Or afterwards, she gets a clot and it goes to her lungs, that’s it. Or she gets pneumonia, which it’s unlikely she’ll recover from.”

We decide to move forward with it, and he schedules her for April 29th, at the end of an already full day of surgery for him. He just adds her in. So, there were three days of appointments for tests, including blood, urine, ekg, and biggest of all, a heart stress test with nuclear imaging.

Finally, she has the surgery. Dr. Bini calls me 5 or 6 hours after I left her with the pre-surgery team to say that the surgery went great, and that she came through it well. By Friday, she was recovering really well and they were planning on discharge to a rehab home the next day.

But the next day, Saturday, she started having terrible trouble breathing, and a chest x-ray showed patchy fluid throughout her lungs. It looked like pneumonia. By Sunday, she was moved to ICU, on an oxygen machine that helped keep her lungs inflated (bipapp?) and the doctors there were mostly talking to me about her health directive and “do not resuscitate” (DNR) status. We were all preparing for the end game. But I know these old Greeks, and her in particular. She’s too stubborn. Monday morning, the doc on watch suggested that she could be on the breathing machine indefinitely and that if she goes a couple days without change it might be time to think about pulling tubes out of her and just keeping her comfortable till the end. I said let’s see what we can pull back in terms of intervention and see how she does. So, over the course of a couple hours, we took her off the back-pressure oxygen, and got her down to just a little oxygen through a nose tube, not even a mask. And there started the big rally. The ICU docs were surprised.

She continued to improve through the week in terms of her infection and ability to breathe. However, she refused to eat, take her meds or otherwise cooperate in any way. Her lack of English, baseline dementia, and combination of lack of sleep and regular morphine all had her totally delusional. I was having to come in everyday to try to get her to eat and take some meds. By Friday, the ICU docs were again concerned that this was going to send her into decline again. And they felt like the hospital environment was a big factor in her disposition. They wanted to discharge her to a skilled nursing facility for rehab and focus on getting her on a normal routine. Saturday they did that, and sent her to Kaiser Post-Acute.  Of course, that didn’t change her attitude much. They called me this morning to talk to her about eating, letting them take her vitals, and starting physical therapy on her hip. I tried. Later in the morning, we (Sarah, Theo, and my friend David) all went there for a mother’s day visit, and to see what the situation is. I actually got her to eat several bites of pureed food (can’t blame her for not liking it), and let them get her vitals. It looks like that is going to be the drill for the coming days, until she gets oriented. Assuming she ever does.