As a lifelong vagabond, I grew up used to entering new worlds of local customs, identities, standards, and mythologies — never knowing how long each new encounter might last (Dad’s frequent transfers from one military assignment to the next), or what to expect.
From metropolitan to rural to remote (a welcome hermitage as a mountainside cattle ranch “caretaker,” off the grid and far from any public services, after Mother died), I learned to welcome the challenges and adopt a mentally flexible interaction with ever changing people and practices of civil and social “norms” with unpredictable points of reference but for those on the compass.
Entering into this new world, of failing “health” and un-“fixable” physical conditions — reducing my former peripatetic spontaneity to nearly zero — the sudden tornedo of “diagnoses” and “treatments” unleashed by a seemingly ordinary yank on my skeletal structure sent me on a journey of inexorable losses, the end result of which will be, of course, the cessation of my existence.
This world does not have a name. “Middle age” comes with a battalion of remedies and survival techniques. “old age” succeeds late “middle” ages but still with one's individuality more or less intact; one can exercise an almost limitless degree of choices.
Then comes debility. Range of motion and extent of affiliation shrink appallingly, until the majority of human contact comes from “medical providers” or — if one has the means — “outside” assistance.
Rural resources for supportive programs (like “meals on wheels”) being as shriven of generosity as Elon Musk and his cronies, sudden struggles to arrange for transportation, for example, and coordinating the services of “referred” medical specialists require not only patience but also unfamiliar machines (like the very “smart” telephonic computer devices that must be used to verify governmental agency program participation, say for enrolling in Medi-Cal) costing hundreds (if not thousands) of available dollars in excess of one’s meager pension funds.
Such ancillary equipment is required in tandem with similarly up-to-date computer systems if one is to complete eligibility and authorization transactions with government agencies’ facelesss, nameless personnel, never the same one and widely divergent in their abilities to convey information in English.
Then there are all the tests to be endured, with the mystery of outcomes withheld until face-to-face visits with medical specialists, and whole new experiences of bodily compliance in the hands of strangers whose fundamental indifference to your personal experience is made plain in every plastic smile and terse reply to questions that can be cursorily “researched” on line but not detailed enough to enable “informed” decisions — the doctors said it has to be done, ergo, you do it and wait to see what will happen next.
What happens next is usually accompanied by some degree of physical discomfort — for which chemical relief may or may not be available. Nights disrupted by surprising new intrusions like nightmares and inexplicable agonies, days filled with remembering the timely ingestion of “meds” and over-the-counter remedies to retain normal metabolic functions. Organizing one’s last will and testament, “exit” plans, and final bodily disposition having become emergent priorities, a world of legal assistance and documentation support is also newly needed.
And, if one is lucky, an interregnum of new personal introspection and reflection, knowing that the situation will not be reversed, there is no roadmap to regain one’s former independence and get “back to normal.” This is “it,” prolonged by short-term interventions and sporadic glimpses of the rest of the world carrying on as before, no longer featuring the “you” that so lovingly crafted friendships and creative enterprises in which your thoughts mattered, your actions yielded “results.”
What is its name, this strange new place, the waiting room with no names on the door and no “others” to ask?
Men traversing this rocky terrain report their journeys in great detail, sometimes triumphant over time’s vicissitudes, sometimes despairing, but always managing to describe their struggles as battles waged.
Just as suddenly, your “peers” (in the same “age bracket” and stages of waning life) begin dying off at alarmingly rapid rates. Memorials and celebrations and outpourings of synthetic grief appended to social media posts. Disappearance of linkages between our simulated life displays (profiles, icons, emojis, and memes) shredding any last remaining illusion of “presence.”
Here we are, make yourself comfortable, as best you can, and never say die.
24/7. She can’t remember that she can’t walk, so she slides off the bed and immediately pitches head forward into the dresser, caroms off to the nightstand, twists into a heap on the floor, her head stuck between the nightstand and the bedframe.
She can’t remember that this has happened before, several times, only this time there is a massive bruise on her hip and her ribs scream in pain when she gasps for air.
You didn’t catch her quickly enough from the other side of the bed, jump out and leap around as the craaaaack of the bedframe fades under the scream pursing between her lips and the smell of hot urine wafts from the nightie bunched between her legs.
Wrestling aside the mess of spilled glassware, pill bottles, reading glasses, nail clippers, pencils and puzzle books to unbury her, you pull your rotor cuff out again, but your focus is so intense on unbending her weakened knees and flailed elbows you barely notice, until you try to use that arm to lift her out of the origami wedge as her scream turns to howl and you cannot raise your voice enough to penetrate the din. There, there.
Next the hobble to the water closet, settle on the shower bench to undress, bathe, and redress this crumpled form now with drool and blood glossing her chin (bit lip, no tongue control), pleading for time, to fetch a towel or warm up the water for a cursory sponge-off, accidental contact with bruise convulsing in her throat a gagging heaving chuffing gasping shriek in your ear (the one that still “works”), leading her hand to the laundry basket to stay upright, even for seconds.
Clean gown, more pleading for patience while you hunt for the phone not in your pocket, so help her to lie down on the floor panting to run back to the bedroom. 9-1-1 again.
Three days in the ICU, opiated out of agony and mind amiss, tests and probes and procedures to relieve the pierced lung, xrays, scans, and a new epidermal mass appearing overnight on her shin evincing new tormentous crying rage.
Two months later she comes home again with bowed back and uncertain gait, unable to overcome the obstinance of unwilling limbs and all all all ability to manage continence, staring blankly at the room instead of you, while you minister to linens and supporating wound care, thirst and hunger, unable to hold onto the ebb and wane of her cognition, answer the door apprehensively, eyes on her every second, it’s meals-on-wheels.
Every day for as long as she lives, after years of debilitating seizures, heart failure, bladder and lung infections, medication side effects rage, depression, nightmares, “combativeness,” fevers, and always the pain.
Finally crashing at dawn, sleep until noon, start all over, answer the door, meals-on-wheels or the EMTs, take your pick.
Be First to Comment