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| Well, I’m not going to post a picture of my mother, because they’re all awful. (that’s not rude, keep reading). So here’s the photo out her hospital window (that’s why they’re awful) of the insane HVAC of the University of Maryland Capital Region Medical Center. It’s not a particularly NICE photograph, but I hate having blank thumbnails for pages. |
I woke up at 8am to the sound of wind and a woman practicing opera scales across the alley way. A single empty can was blowing up and down the alley and the sunshine was bright and fierce through the blowing blinds.
Thursday. I could’ve gotten so much more done on Thursday.
Kristen blew town to go have a girl’s weekend with her best friend down in
North Carolina, and she deserves it. And so I spent that first day kinda bacheloring,
eating poorly and binge-watching Daredevil and not really accomplishing very
much. The rest of the weekend, “office work”, going to the Hargrove show, a ManDate
to watch Krull, my open mic – and TAXES – was pretty well planned out
but alas, best laid plans of mice and men. Rabbits too.
My mom tripped over an uneven sidewalk as she does once
every three Aprils or so. It is foretold but she always forgets to look. She broke her wrist dramatically and pushed some bone
through her wrist. Lots of blood. My old friend Ed called 911 and then called me. He sounded calm. My mom says he looked terrified.
A LOT of blood.
So yesterday morning was this really
beautiful day, idyllic, I spent it recording Alaina Tamash and knocking out powerhouse
vocals, finally finding the perfect use for my SM7B – but then I told my ManDate
to cancel Krull and turn around on I-95 and go back from whence he came, got in
the car with Heather to go find my mom’s car, and then drove to the hospital in
which I was directed from one end to the other till I finally arrived in the
emergency centre which was … the weirdest combination of busy as Hell but empty
and … well, we won’t use inappropriate metaphors… Quiet as a LIBRARY.
I don’t really think of Easter as a wild holiday weekend,
but I guess it IS a Saturday night in PG County. Lots of cops, a couple of orange-jumpsuited
inmates being led from place to place, lots of people in stretchers in the
hallways waiting for doctors. Victims of accidents and circumstance and of my fellow man. But everything was quiet minus occasional beepings
and the whine of machinery. An alarm goes off but it’s dulled and muted. A warning of five minute inbound Level Two Trauma By Ground. People walk fast. I remember my grandfather’s favourite tv show was MASH.
They seemed to be severely understaffed, and though
our nurse, Dianne, was very kind, especially in comparison to the other end of the hall, everything just seemed to move at a glacial
pace for my mother. I guess that’s actually a GOOD sign.
Remote doctors needed everything sent to them so every step of moving my
mother and cleaning the blood off her arm and clearing the wound needed to be
photographed and discussed, Dianne with her phone clamped to her ear, silence
all around. Repeatedly trying to find the … other nurse? That could administer
pain medication, but no-one can be found. An x-ray tech arrives and unfolds a beautiful, massive MECHA of a machine and takes pictures. They discuss. Lots of blood. Clean everything again.
Dianne, in the very middle of her 25 hour shift, needed
another pair of hands for setting and splinting and wrapping and so I was
gloved up and put to work. Nightmare memories of my father begging for water
that I couldn’t give him because his digestive system had dissolved too far to
receive liquids. Cojoined with my mom weeping and screaming as I just hold
firmly and hope I’m doing it right. More x-rays to check if I was doing it right.
I don’t understand how these demands are made of people. 25
hour shift? I’ve heard stories like that from all my med-school and nursing friends
and they seem to manage it. But, is it… building stamina? Is it out of necessity
because they’re so short-staffed? Is it… cost-cutting? A form of industrial
hazing?
The other nurse, I’ll try to give him the benefit of the
doubt. Perhaps he was on the END of a 25 hours shift but he was clearly …
annoyed to be disturbed. My mom was actually in really good form. Not
manic or hysterical but chatty and understanding and patient when not being
actively aggressively cleaned or moved or… reset. But the med-distributing
nurse was who I could track down to get water for my mother and once he did finally get me a water bottle and a straw he was very clear
that this was above and beyond and it’s only in THIS hospital where he has to
do “other duties as assigned”… I tried to thank him and get directions OUT of
the emergency wing when I finally left around midnight, but he just held eye
contact for long enough to acknowledge me and then silently turned away.
I just don’t always know how to interact with people. It’s
not their obligation to do so. But other than the cops he was the only person who
was so stand-offish.
Signage got me part way, but they lock certain doors
(including, apparently all the clearly-labeled exists) at night and I finally
had to find another guard to give me directions.
I got out and got dinner. I made poor choices and then was
cruel and did NOT feed Prince any French fries.
Surgery today. Right now, as I write this, actually. And I’ll
head to the hospital shortly. I don’t mean to sound like… this is all just a big
inconvenience to ME. Out of the many things I get random phone calls about, my
mother breaking her wrist is pretty legitimate. I’m just putting it all in
order. Parsing it.
Last time she broke her wrist, on uneven pavement in Greece,
they put in metric screws and when I took her to get them removed they opened
her up and realized they didn’t have the right screwdrivers. Literally had to
go to Lowes to get the right fucking screwdrivers because none of the local medical
centres would / could lend any. At least we probably won’t have THAT problem. The time before that, I think it was uneven concrete at her job. The time before that, was it at Goddard? One time she broke BOTH wrists while roller skating.
The world is too complicated and the weather has shifted.
Rain is rustling the leaves out back. Or perhaps it’s rats. The opera is over and the wind has died and hopefully my laundry is dry. I’m running Morsbergers tonight. Maybe them bar-going post-family-gathering Christians won’t be a wild and crazy bunch. Maybe it’ll be a dead night. I am in no mood.
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