Carly

06/18/10

Today, Nancy, my friend of 38 years, came and picked me up to go eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant we frequent, though less often now that we’re in our sixties and take Prevacid.  When she parked the SUV, I climbed out of my side and glanced over to see her looking in the car parked next to us.  She wore a look of shock and fear.  I rounded the front of her SUV and looked for myself.  There, in a black car, two windows slightly cracked, on the passenger seat, was a tiny white puppy with brown ears .  She was mewling like a kitten, panting, her eyes wide and terrified, beginning to cloud over.  There was no water in sight.  I clicked The Weather Channel icon on my Blackberry to find that at that moment, the temperature was 95º with a heat index of 100º!

Yes, some idiot person(s) who should be arrested and made to sit in a black car with no water and inadequate ventilation in 100º heat had left that little puppy, who looked as though she were too young to be taken from her mother, in the car under the blazing sun, no shade in sight.

I was almost physically ill, choking back the taste of bile that rose in my throat.  We rushed into the restaurant and I went from table to table until I found the two teen girls whose combined IQ must have been that of a squirrel, who said the puppy was theirs.  I asked if I could take him some water before he died of heat stroke.

“The windows are cracked.”

“Yes, they are, but in this heat the temperature of that car is probably close to 135º.  May I please take the puppy some water?”

Shrugs.  

“We have a water bowl, the younger of the two said.”

More Shrugs.

“May I please put some water in it?”

“Okay,” the older of the two finally said. She appeared to be about 17, and she handed her younger sister the car keys.  Nancy had gotten a cup of cold water and handed it to me as the girl and I walked outside into the scorching heat, me praying that the puppy was still alive.

She opened the driver’s side door. The puppy was nowhere to be seen.  I was at the passenger door and had to ask her to unlock it, and she reached across to let me in.  The puppy had crawled under the front seat seeking shade, I suppose, and she was still crying, only much more softly.

I reached under the seat and pulled out the puppy and put the cup to her lips.  She drank weakly, hardly able to lap at the water, but as he continued to drink, her tongue started working harder at getting the water down.

“Where is the water bowl?  Will you give it to me?”

The girl, who seemed to be about 12, opened the trunk of the car and retrieved the water bowl.  Now there's an idea:  leave your puppy in a hot car and her empty water bowl in the effing trunk.  I poured the cool water in the bowl and placed it beside the puppy, whose name, as it turns out, is “Carly.”

“How long have you had your puppy?”

“I got her yesterday.  She’s a early birthday present.  My birthday is on the 25th.”

“Don’t you want this dog to live until your birthday?” I queried, coming as close as I would to losing my temper.  "Please, if you don’t have a safe and cool place for her, take your food to-go and take her home.  I’ll buy your lunch if you will take it to-go.”

She said not a word, and returned a blank stare in my direction.  I walked back into the restaurant with her, imploring her and her sister to remember how hot that car would get.  Another shrug.  I asked them to keep an eye on the dog.

Nancy and I choked on our food, so worried we were about the puppy. I got up and went outside to check on it and found it lying beside the bowl, a quarter of the water gone.  She looked a little better, had some shine in her tiny eyes.  The mewling had stopped.

The restaurant manager approached the girls and gave them a stern lecture about dogs in hot cars, and they finally got up and paid and left.

And that’s not the worst of it.  Carly is in for a tough life, and I wonder if she might have been better off to die right there than to go home with those careless girls.  

What kind of people raise children who don’t realize that puppies are not stuffed toys, that they have hearts that beat and lungs that breathe and that they need to be protected from the world around them?  I have been weeping all evening, every time I think of that puppy.

This feeling of helplessness is almost paralyzing.  Should I have called the Humane Society from the restaurant, written down their car tag number?  Shouldn’t I have done more?  

The awful truth is that it’s too late now to do anything.  All I can do now is pray hard that some of what the restaurant manager and I said made some impact on the girls.  Maybe, just maybe, they heard what we said.  I don’t think I can sleep if I can’t convince myself that they did.

It's Official. I'm whining.

06/17/10

It’s official, I’m whining.  The job I have been trying to land since April 13 has not yet been filled.  Human Resources says Hospice has my application, but Hospice is in the middle of a computer training class, and they have not returned my call from Tuesday asking them for an update.  I just left another message with them.  What’s up with professionals not returning phone calls?  It’s rude.  That’s the only word for it.  

Trying to land this job has been one of the most exasperating experiences in my life.  It has also been a tremendous disappointment.  I paid a $500.00 tuition to be reentered into nursing and get my license back, then I did a four week preceptorship with Hospice, during which I worked my ASS off for them (for free).  They wooed me, pursued me to come to work for them.  They sent the State Board of Nursing a glowing recommendation, and I had my license in a week.

The job finally showed up on the HR web site on May 21, and I applied that day.  That was nearly four weeks ago!

Life is hard enough around here without Clint, and this situation has me sliding back into the depression that has plagued me all my adult life.  It’s making me miss him more, making me angry again, making me bitchy, all the things I don’t want to be, all the things that are toxic to me.

Sure, I volunteer at the free clinic, but that is only a few hours a week.  I’m getting out with friends, but the sad fact is that I need to have some money coming in if I’m to continue that.  I haven’t been on a real budget in years, so watching every dollar is tiresome - if necessary - to me.

No, I am not headed for the poor house.  I have a nest egg, a sizable one, but I don’t want to dip into it.  I’m only 62, after all, and I plan to live a long time.  That money is for my old age, not for now.

I have resisted applying to work with any other Hospice organization, but I just made the decision to do that.  I made it as I wrote.  Medical Center is opening an inpatient facility, and my agreement with them was that I would apply for and take the shitty job that is home care nights and weekends and that nobody wants.  If I agreed to do that, they assured me a full time position in the inpatient facility.  I’m not sure I can trust them any more.

I’m going to apply at other places and then plan a dinner party for some of my friends, my close friends who will bring a bottle of wine or an appetizer.

I know I can do this, but it certainly is a roller coaster ride that keeps my head spinning and my spirits in jeopardy.  Hell, I have survived a year without Clint.  I can do anything..

(I burst into tears when I wrote that last sentence, and I had a hard time stopping.  I am really whining, and I'm going to whine and cry for a long as I want).

Heat

06/14/10

I promised  myself I would not write anything today until my house was clean!  Hah!  What a gratuitous lie that was!

To begin, it is as hot as the hinges of hell here is Macon, Georgia, and even the air conditioner cannot stay ahead of 95º with a heat index of 104º.  (By 3:00, it will be 98º)!

Here, in my little air conditioned house, I have cleaned my bathroom and the guest bath.  Period.  Sweat is dripping down my cheeks and my sports top is glued to my torso, feeling like a wet bathing suit.  Yes, I do remember wearing one of those, but not lately.  To make matters worse, I’m wearing a back brace that my 14 year old doctor says I should wear when I work around the house.

The copper fountain has lost its splash, needs to be cleaned, the water merely draining from one leaf to the the other with no more than a faint hum.  Water evaporates quickly in this heat. 

Both of my dogs are lethargic with crabby expressions on their faces.  They know that their walk will have to wait until 8:00 tonight...........

...................Back from cleaning the fountain.  I couldn’t contain myself.  Once I wrote it down, it became real and I was so ashamed of my neglect of it that I had to do something.  Guilt is a great motivator.

My room is scary.  I can only see a few little spots on the top of my dresser, so strewn it is with stacks of old journals, new journals, my iPod, notes to myself, - some written weeks ago - my new vocabulary lists.  There are several of them because when I add a new word, I frequently am unable to find the last list.  There are stacks of books, one of them on the verge of causing an avalanche of sorts, framed photos, a head band and two clips, my coffee cup from this morning, and the tiny brass lamp Kristy gave me one time.  Last week, cheat that I am, I moved everything around a little and dusted with one of those Swiffer things that goes 365º. 

My bedside table, oh, shit, my bedside table.  I have to leave the tubes of medicine there or I will forget my dogs’ maladies.  Honey has an eye thing, and Belle has an ear thing.  I can’t put my lip balm in the drawer or I will forget to use it before I go to bed.  Ditto the nail stuff.  Mine are little stubs.  I need the CD remote so I can turn on my relaxation music when I turn out the light.  Pictures of Clint and Addie, well, there is no room for negotiation there.  They stay.  And I dust them off every day.  Mr. Palmer, my betta fish, lives on my beside table.  He’s the only thing in the house that looks at all cool.  I guess I’ll take the dirty glass and empty Gatorade bottle to the kitchen.  The trash can in here is overflowing.

Never  mind the chair in my room, just never mind.

God, I hate this sweat.  For the uninitiated, here in the Deep South, the humidity invades our homes, even with the air conditioner cranking out air that is supposed to keep us cool.  Someone once told me that an AC can only effectively cool a home more than 20º below the outside temperature.  I believe it to be true.

I’m going to tackle my dresser, then take a cold shower and lie naked beneath the ceiling fan that hangs over my bed......or maybe I’ll clean the den first.

It Came and Went - © Claudia Schlottman

06/11/10

The first anniversary of Clint’s death came and went, leaving in its wake waves of sadness and loneliness and yes, despair.  I knew I would not wake up on Wednesday morning and be well, but I didn’t expect be so painfully sorrowful.

My wonderful friend, Loren, lost his father on Wednesday, and his loss reignited my grief - once more.  Will it go on forever?  

I am dressed to go out to run errands, but I'm having trouble getting to the door.  My toenails really do need a top coat.  I need to read my favorite blogs and take time to comment.  I need to clean my house, which was left in a moderate state of shambles by the get-together on Tuesday night and to which I have not done one fucking thing.  It was yesterday morning before I loaded the dishwasher and late in the afternoon when I unloaded it.  I found some Burger King sacks and some greasy spots on the cocktail table in the TV room, but I didn’t do anything but throw away the bags. 

Last night I went with my usual group to Bonefish for happy hour drinks and food.  It sat and wished I could be anywhere else in the world, anywhere I’m not known and friends won’t look at me with their furrowed brows and whisper, “Are you all right?”

Hell, no, I am not all right.  I have been a widow for one year and that’s not long enough to be all right.  I have done some healing, and I love my friends for their support and caring, but no, I am not all right.  I want to escape but don’t know where to go.

This morning, I cried while practicing yoga.  I think crying during yoga might be against the rules, so I pushed aside my tears and dammed up the rest for later.  And there will be a later, maybe tonight or tomorrow or today in the middle of Wal Mart.  They are there, lurking, watching for an opening.

I want to be NIN’s Sabina for a day or two.  No, I don’t want to have her sexual exploits, but I want to pretend I’m someone I’m not, flirt with strange men, eat exotic food and surround myself with people who have no idea who I am or what I want or what I need. Maybe on some level I do want to have gratuitous anonymous sex.  But would I come away from it any different?  Would it heal me?  Would it hurt me?

So many questions, so much sadness and uncertainty have me feeling lost and confused and impotent to live my life as I know I can.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.  God, I hope so.

2 Weeks from Hell - Part 5

06/06/10

So we had Clint for three more days - at home where he wanted to be.  In turns, we lay with him, whispered our love in his ear, even napped with him.  That's Kristy in the photo with him. Until noon on Monday, he knew all of us, and we guarded our secret that he was here and dying.  None of us wanted to waste one minute of our time with him to answer the door and take a casserole from a well-meaning friend or neighbor.  None of us could eat, anyway.

On Monday morning, when his breathing became laced with rattles, none of the others could bear the noise.  But I stayed with him, and until noon, he answered me every time I said, “Iove you,” with his stock reply, “I love my darling.”  After that, he would open his eyes when I spoke, but as the afternoon wore on, he stopped even that, and I knew he was safe in a coma, away from his pain.

This is one of my poems I wrote only a few weeks ago, but this is where it should be.


Your Leaving

I grow a shell  armor
against your pending death
steel myself for the blow.

And then you get too tired
to live and we dress you
in your soft sweater
and I drop moprhine under
your tongue to give you peace
and let you go.

I lay my head on your
chest, cashmere soothing my
tear stained face and listen
as your heartbeat fades &
you breathe the breath that
is your last.

Now I’m a turtle on
my back  feet fighting the
air flailing to upright
myself  hemorrhaging
tears & wondering how
I got here.

I rock hard, roll back and
forth  struggle to right my-
self and crawl after you.
I fall deep in the dark
grope in the ink-black place
for your touch - one more touch
allow myself to sink
dreading the time I will
paddle to the surface
to find you gone.


I have a long way to go.

Two weeks from - Part 4 - We go Home - © Claudia Schlottman

05/30/10

It was the middle of the afternoon when we arrived at our house, and our hospice nurse, Nicole, was waiting for us.  After the EMTs had deposited Poppy into his bed, I began pulling off his hospital gown.

“Mrs. Schlottman,” said Nicole, “you may want to leave that on him so it will be easier to keep him clean and dry.”

“No hospital gowns,” I said.  Clint sleeps in boxers and a cashmere sweater, and that is what he will wear.”  

She looked skeptical but did not argue.  

“He has a catheter and a rectal tube,” I said.  That will keep him clean and dry.  He’s not going to die with a gown on.”  

So, I chose his softest sweater and a pair of Tabasco boxers with an alligator on them, and we dressed him for bed.  He was asleep in 30 seconds.

I had a meeting with Nicole to go over hospice procedure.  Having been a hospice volunteer, I was familiar with the routine.  She ordered medicine for anxiety and pain for Clint, to be delivered by a local pharmacy.  

“Mrs. Schlottman....has Dr. Schlottman asked for any alcohol?

“No,but if he does, I will give it to him.”

“Right answer.”

And I said the truest words that ever left my lips, 

“I will not deny him anything he wants.  I will not say ‘no’ to a dying man.  If he says he want to soak in the tub - he soaks every day - we will get him in the tub. He might die there, or it may take the fire department to get him out of the tub, but believe me when I say I will deny him nothing.”

Two Weeks from Hell - Part 3 © Claudia Schlottman

05/29/10

The gardenias didn’t bloom last year until after Poppy died.  Today, I’m at my desk, looking out over the back yard, and it is filled with hundreds of blossoms and the perfume sneaks around the closed doors and windows.  Maybe they bloom for him?  Or me? 

A year ago, early in the morning of May 4, 2009, around 1 AM or so, Poppy was restless and pulling at his tubing and fussing at me.  The ER doctor walked into our little room - not even a real ER room because they were so busy.  

“His ammonia level is over 330,” he solemnly reported.  

“Oh,” I said.  “That explains his crankiness and confusion.”  (Normal ammonia levels in human beings range from 10 to 40).  I asked for the papers, the ones I swore to Clint that I would sign if there were no hope.

“Care and comfort only,” I said.  Try to get him stable enough to take home.  He does not want to die here.”

I called Kristy, and she came right away, then we decided to call Robert.   We saved our call for Gretchen until after daylight since she was 1200 miles away.

Clint was transferred to a real ER room, and a friend of our family, Donny Robinson, a chest surgeon, drained a liter and a half of fluid from Clint’s chest cavity.  It was not pleural fluid, it was abdominal fluid called ascites which collects in the abdominal cavity in the last throes of liver failure.  There was so much fluid, it had breached Clint’s diaphram and was what was causing all his dramatic shortness of breath.

I stood at the head of his bed and whispered “Fight, Darling, you have to fight.  I know you can do this.  Don’t give up, keep fighting.”  He looked into my eyes and slowly moved his head back and forth to say no.  I could read in his eyes that he was too tired to fight, so I told him we would go home.  He nodded yes.

“I’m ready to start the discharge process,” I said tearfully to Kristy and Bert.  “Poppy is not going to get well this time, and I want to take him home to die.”

“I have to hear it from the doctor,” said Kristy.  I don’t believe he is dying right now.”

“Then let’s talk to the doctor and see what she says.”

We made an appointment to see Dr. Bickley on her lunch hour.  She agreed that this was Clint’s terminal episode, but she had good news, too.  There will never be a way for me to thank Kristy for insisting on seeing the doctor.  Dr. Bickley asked to keep Poppy overnight, saying there were some procedures to bring down his ammonia level so he would be more himself.  Then we could take him home.

We called Gretchen and got her on a plane.

They moved Poppy to ICU, so we couldn’t stay with him, so on Thursday night I went home and tried to rest.  Gretchen got home at 2 AM, and I got up at 4.  I dressed and went to the hospital and begged the nurses to let me in to be with Clint.  His nurse told me that, three times during the night, he asked her to call me to come get him and take him home.

We made hospice arrangements, and I went to tell Poppy we were going home, and that we would be taking hospice with us.  He said, “I think that’s a good idea.”

His mind was clear, his ammonia level was normal, but it was only a matter of time before more fluid would build up and his ammonia level would, too.  

So we went home, but not before he ate a lunch of roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans

Two Weeks in Hell - Part 2

05/28/10

On Thursday evening , May 29, Clint was in so much respiratory distress that I was afraid to go to sleep, so on Friday, I called for home oxygen.  That night we both got some rest, but he continued to deteriorate.  His son Robert, helpless as the rest of us, wanted to help his father with his breathing treatments, so I turned them over to him.  Though Clint was never able to complete a treatment, Robert hung in there and got as much medication into him as he could.  

The sound of the O-2 concentrator made me physically ill, reminding me as it did of the one my brother John had when he was dying of kidney cancer.  It was the sound of death lurking around the corner, but I continued to tell myself that it would not come right away, that we had months more time with Clint, maybe even a year.

Denial is an incredibly strong emotion.  I am a nurse, for God’s sake, and I could not see that my husband was dying before my eyes.  I listened to his chest, hearing breath sounds that weren’t there, calling them muffled or diminished.  I did not check his blood pressure.

We struggled along.  Clint became more and more confused, but I couldn’t see it - called it fatigue.  In Robert’s absence, he tried to give himself his breathing treatment, not wanting to bother me, and he tore up the adapter and I had to call for another one. 

The days were filled with long naps, coughing spells, useless breathing treatments and attempts to watch old movies.  Clint was cranky with me and I was exhausted.  Why did I not see that he was not himself?  Why did it take me until the following Wednesday night, June 3, to realize that if I didn’t take him to hospital, he would die at home - in agony?

Late that evening, I called 911, asking for an ambulance only to help me transport Clint to hospital.  After I called them, Clint got into his chair, wheeled himself into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, gathered his dop kit and peed.  By the time the EMTs were here, he was coming around the corner into the living room with his dop kit in his lap saying he could get himself outside to the ambulance.  He could hardly breathe, but he put up an incredible front.

Since the stretcher was already in the living room, the EMT very gently suggested that they go ahead and put Clint on it, and he acquiesced.  (The ambulance had arrived, siren blaring and with a fire truck close behind, thundering and honking).  So much for asking for transportation only.  I’m sure everyone on the block was awake to see the ambulance pull out of our driveway.

I followed in my car, scared out of my mind that he would die before I got to the hospital.

Two Weeks in Hell - Part One - © Claudia Schlottman

05/26/10

On Monday, May 25, 9009, I admitted presented Clint a the emergency room with a blood pressure of 81/40!  He had fluid in his chest cavity and was having a great deal of trouble breathing and was in pain.  (When he admitted he was in pain, he was in PAIN, so stoic was he).  His blood work was all crazy, and he had an irregular heart rhythm because his magnesium level was so low.  We were assigned an “Hospitalist,” a dreadful new trend in medicine.  Our hospitalist had never laid eyes on Clint.  We told her that we knew his condition was related to liver failure due to alcohol use.  Clint patiently explained to her that he knew his life was limited and that he had no intention of stopping drinking.  Then she refused to give him any pain medicine that had to be processed through the liver!  (Did she not get it, that it was too late to worry about his liver, that is probably looked like cheesecloth at that point)?

I had some of his home meds in my purse, and I gave him something for the pain.  We asked to be transferred to the hospital where our doctor works and went there for one night.  

When we got him on Wednesday, Clint was weak but stable.  Emily had an All Star softball game that night, and Clint wanted to go!  His breathing was not good enough, and he was cranky - and secretly relieved) when I refused to take him.  He needed complete bed rest, and I saw that he got it, in spite of himself.

Screaming in the Shower - © Claudia Schlottman

05/25/10

Last night night I stood in the shower and screamed, shampoo running into my eyes and into my wide open mouth.  I thought I would drop to my knees, but I held myself upright, rinsed my eyes and mouth, them slid down the shower wall and covered my face and screamed until my throat ached and I was hoarse.  I washed but couldn’t remember what parts I had washed so I did it all over again.  I poured conditioner on my hair and finally stood to rinse it out.

One year ago today, we had been home from New Orleans and Baton Rouge for 3 days, and Clint was dying.  He tried to tell me, but I could not hear.  My depression was getting on his nerves, and he was getting on mine because he was so cranky.  (Later I would learn that his blood ammonia level was getting high, which is part of end stage liver disease and causes personality changes).  

We drove to New Orleans on May 13, spending one night on the road because travel was so hard for Clint.  His 50th Medical School Reunion at Tulane was on Friday, the 15th, and I wanted him to have a day to rest.  (I believe in my heart that he willed himself to stay alive to go to that reunion and then drive to Baton Rouge to see Prentiss and Susan).  When I look back at how erratic his behavior was on that trip I should have suspected he had elevated ammonia levels.  But my denial was overwhelming. I was not capable of believing what I knew in my nurse’s head but could only work with what was in my heart.  I was not ready to believe he would die.  I’m still not ready for him to die, and he's been dead nearly a year.  These next weeks are going to be hell.

The Longest Year © Claudia Schlottman

05/24/10

My recording of Grey’s Anatomy just finished, so the TV is turned off, and I am lying here staring at the ceiling fan telling myself not to cry.  It’s not working.  It’s miserably hot for May, and I cranked down the temperature on the air conditioner so I wouldn’t be too warm in The Red Sweater

I need the Red Sweater tonight, need to feel covered up with Clint, even sprinkled it with a fresh dose of Old Spice.  I need to smell him, touch his skin, feel his arms around me, his mouth on mine.  Soon it will have been a year since he died, and it has been the longest year of my life.  I will never smell, touch or kiss him again - not for as long as I live.  But I still want it, still weep for its loss, still burn in my gut with emptiness.

Friends exclaim, “I can’t believe it has been nearly a year!”

I respond, “You wouldn’t say that if it were your husband who died.”  

The nights have been longer, the days more tedious than one could imagine.  I still wake, in fact I did this morning, reaching for Clint and finding only Belle, my Boxer.  I wake with things to say to him, the need to touch him, but the bed still stretches on forever, barren and dry except for my dogs, my best friends, my little saviors who love me so much and who so unconditionally accept what I have to give them.  They are my little family, and without them, I cringe to think what kind of shape I would be in today.

Working has been the only thing that has made me feel better.  My preceptorship, while harrowing at times, was the best 4 weeks I’ve had in more than a few years.  Since I am still waiting on my regular job to open up, I signed on at our local Volunteer Clinic for patients who are working but don’t have health insurance.  That helps.

But when I get right down to it, I am facing  the heartbreaking milestone that will come with June 8 at 6:33 PM.  And it’s killing me, eating me alive knowing that on that day I will relive those last hours when, burning with fever, my one true love, faded and left this earth.  I still wish I could have gone with him.  

Sad - © Claudia Schlottman

05/17/10  

When I first typed the date above, this is what it looked like:  10/17/05.  It’s a perfect example of how I feel.

The tears, the paralyzing, sobbing kind, began on Thursday, and they are still with me often.  On that day, after having  a pep talk with myself, I drove to the AT&T store to clear up some minor issues 

with my Blackberry.  Then I drove back home, skipping the grocery store altogether.  So much for the fucking pep talk.  After I drove into my garage, I collapsed onto the steering - sobbing uncontrollably.

Working around the house offered no comfort, so I listened to Proust for a while.  You cannot listen to Proust and cry.  But I got tired of having to concentrate on him, and went to bed for a while, calling Lisa for a ride to Bonehead.  I didn’ t feel I could drive - too many tears.  

My dogs stayed close to me in my bed, sharing their warmth with my chilled spirit. I was determined to get out of the house.  I didn’t hear from Lisa, so I dressed and drove alone to the restaurant.  

No wrecks either going or coming - except in my heart.

I spent the weekend mostly in bed, felling drained of all energy, both emotional and physical.  I made myself take the dogs for walks both days.  I knitted a little, but nothing penetrated the sadness, and I was too distracted to read more than a few pages of NIN’s A Spy in the House of Love.

And now it’s Monday morning, and I’ve been awake since 1:00 AM, sometimes weeping, sometimes not.  I tried yoga but only made it through half of my practice.

Jesus.  This is awful.  Just typing it has been an ordeal.  I give.  Uncle.  This is all I have in me today.

Where is my Job © Claudia Schlottman

05/13/10

The waiting is killing me.  I’m trying to be patient and act like an adult, but it gets harder every day.  I have a license to practice nursing.  (Aside to Clint:  I know how proud you would be).  There is supposed to be a job waiting for me at Hospice of Central Georgia, a job that was posted months ago and which no one wanted because it is a shitty job with lots of “as needed” and nights and weekends on call.  I am willing to take it, eager to take it so I can get my foot in the door.

I’ve done a preceptorship with Hospice, received my license, and the job has mysteriously disappeared from the Medical Center’s job site.  Every time I log on, I get this: 

Category: Nursing 

 Location: Hospice of Central Georgia (325) 

 Schedule: All 

 Results: 0 Job(s)

There are no positions at this time under this category. Please check back often as positions are added daily.

I have talked to Hospice management, and they have no clue as to the reason Human Resources took down the job.  They have assured me that they want me to take it and have even contacted HR with a request to repost the job so I can apply for it.  They have said on more than occasion that they want me to have the job so I can use it as a stepping stone to an inpatient job when the house is finished.

And here I sit, frustrated and suffering a dearth of original thinking and wanting to drink too much. Even my dogs are beginning to act depressed.  Depression is contagious, you know, especially to those who love us the most. 

I am depressed.  There.  I said it.  Well, as you all know, I am chronically depressed, but this is just more shit on the toilet paper.  I hate it, but I know how to deal with it.  I can’t go out and buy something because I don’t have a fucking job.  So, I’ll go grocery shopping and plan to meet the usual suspects at Bonehead Grill at 5.  I renamed the restaurant in honor of my wonderful and hardheaded friend, Loren.  He’s one of the usuals.

Yesterday, Frances, my sweet 82 year old friend, had to have her dog, Ollie, put to sleep.  I have been crying for her off and on since I learned of it.  I have been missing Clint so much that  got out the letter he kept on his bedside chest - the one I wrote to him on our 33rd wedding anniversary - and read it in a shower of tears.   I have been crying a lot about that, too.  All those memories still make me miss him more than they comfort me.  

Shit.  I’m going to get dressed and get out of here.  And I’m taking my dogs, too, so they won’t be so depressed.

Baton Rouge Part 2 - © Claudia Schlottman

05/07/10

I don’t know  where to begin.  I’m still exhausted from my drive to Baton Rouge and the marathon post I wrote the morning after I arrived.  I should be on my way home to Georgia, but I decided to stay an extra day for a couple of reasons.  

First, I came here with the intention of knitting a skinny summer scarf for Susan, but somehow it took on a life of its own and was wider and longer than I planned.  It’s made from tie-dyed ribbon in shades of blue and some red and gray and screams for the wearer to release her inner hippie.  It’s going to be beautiful with denim.  So, yesterday afternoon, it wasn’t finished, and I was so stuffed with Soufflé Potatoes and Eggs Benedict from lunch at Galatoire’s that I couldn’t concentrate on it without making multiple errors.  And yes, there is a Galatoire’s here.  It opened after Katrina.  I got to eat lunch at one of Clint’s and my favorite restaurants in the world, and it was just as good as on Bourbon Street.

Then, as I was struggling to knit, Prentiss told me that they had a couple arriving tomorrow evening that I should stay and meet.  Charlie is an MD who specializing in anti-aging medicine, and Prisilla is a nurse who I met in 1973 when she was Prentiss’ girlfriend and Clint and I went with them on a trip to Las Vegas.  I have seen anti-aging doctors on TV and I have read about them, and I’m fascinated by the subject, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to meet one.  (And then there was the thing of being very curious about Priscilla).

Road Trip (Prelude) © Claudia Schlottman

05/05/10

I’m on my first real road trip since Clint had the temerity to die last June.  (Yes, I still have anger issues and have no idea how long they will last).

When Clint started first grade in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Prentiss Smith was in his class.   They knew each other but were not close friends.  Clint’s parents were, in a word, laissez -faire, in their parenting skills, and Prentiss’ parents were more traditional, so the two boys didn’t travel in the same circles.  In fact, while Prentiss was having lavish birthday parties, Clint never had one at all.  No wonder he told me when we met that he wasn’t sure if he could love because he didn’t know how it felt to be loved - neither by his parents nor his wife.  He knew the love of his children, but that’s light years from the nurturing of parents and the passions of romantic love.

When the two boys were in fourth grade, Clint’s father, a superintendent for the Illinois Central Railroad, was transferred to Jackson, Tennessee, the first of six transfers between that time and his final transfer to Vicksburg, Mississippi, when Clint was in ninth grade and where he would graduate from high school.  (Gad!  Listening to Proust has elongated my sentences in a spectacular way).

I need to get back to the road trip, but there is more vital background to be laid down before I can do that.  I’ll try to give you the short version.  After all those years of separation, Clint and Prentiss found themselves in the same Freshman class at Tulane Medical School and, and both married with children, went through medical school together but took different paths in residency.  Clint did his undergraduate work at LSU, and he chose to go into urology and returned to LSU to complete his residency in New Orleans at Charity Hospital.  Prentiss went to the University of Miami and pursued his residency in cardiovascular surgery.  Stay with me.  By 1995, they were both in private practice, Clint in Macon, Georgia and Prentiss in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Then, in April of 1968, both having been drafted into the Army, they found themselves once again united.  This time in Saigon at the Field Hospital, where they operated on GIs for the next 13 months.  When Clint arrived in Viet Nam, all billets for urologists in the field were taken, so he went to Saigon to do general surgery.  (When he got home in July of 1969, he had callouses on his hands from operating).  Prentiss did all of the cardiovascular surgery with the help of a couple of others, but he did more general surgery than anything else, and he and Clint worked together, mostly at night, because that was when most of the flaps occurred.  They performed the first kidney transplant in Southeast Asia, and many days, when they should have been sleeping, they drove across Saigon to the civilian hospital and operated on locals, both from South and North Vietnam  - for free.  A long term, long distance friendship came of that time in Vietnam, fed, also by the common thread that brought their lives together at three turning points in their lives.  As they got older, the two men became closer and tried to visit one another occasionally, especially after retirement.

Whew. Now back to the road trip.

I am convinced in my heart that Clint, though actively dying at the time, kept himself alive to go to his 50th Medical School Reunion in New Orleans last May and to come to Baton Rouge to see Prentiss, who was too ill to attend.  I won’t go into his troubles; this is already out of control. 

I’m in Baton Rouge, dogs and tow but boarded because of the Smith’s cats.  We are having drinks and talking about Clint, sharing memories and our love for that exceptional human being.  He can hardly walk, and Prentiss just brought me, unbidden, a glass of Chardonnay.  (It’s 3:30 PM over here).  I thanked him sweetly.  He is better but still very sick.  Susan reminds me of me when Clint was dying.  Prentiss is an alcoholic, as was Clint, and she is as patient with him as I came to be with The Love of My Life.  We lost our battles with the alcoholism and learned to choose to be happy (as much as is possible when your husband is killing himself) rather than be right.

This could go on for days, so I’ll give it a rest and pick up another day.

A Zona Rosa Exorcise

04/29/10

As I have mentioned before, I attend a writer’s workshop in Savannah, Georgia, that has been ongoing for more than 26 years.  We meet (usually) on the first Saturday of every month, except August, when Rosemary is on sabbatical.  I joined in 1996, and over the years my attendance has been spotty from time to time for a variety reasons with which I will not bore you. The group is called Zona Rosa, and it is the brain child of Rosemary Daniell, a wonderful writer and teacher.  You can find out about Rosemary, her books, and the group by visiting http://www.myzonarosa.com/.  Please stop by and see for yourself.  

Anyway, each month, Rosemary assigns us what she calls “exorcises,”  short essays that make us think.  There are always several from which to choose, and some of us, and we know who we are, make up our own, like the time at one of our retreats on Tybee Island, I wrote a note to every man I ever slept with.  In the notes, I told them why I did it, and I gave them a rating.  It was very cleansing for me, and I recommend it to any woman - or man.

Here are some of the latest exorcises:

*Are women today as happy as they were in the past?

*What are the differences among satisfaction, pleasure and happiness?

*How does weather (or aging or money) affect my writing?

I have decided to make up my own exorcise again this month and write about how Clint’s death has affected my writing.  So, here goes.

Clint was a man of great integrity.  I could leave my journal open on the bed, and he wouldn’t so much as glance at it.  Everything, except my address, has been reshaped by his death.  No corner has gone untouched.

My writing has taken on a life of its own, I think.  My energy for writing was so sapped by Clint’s illness that it very nearly dried up.  I was overwhelmed with responsibility and heartache, with little of me left to be creative.  I have heard it said many times that hard times make for good writing.  Not for me, at least not then.  Today is a different story altogether.

Losing Clint gave me back my energy, and my crippling grief gave me a reason to write.  I almost have survivor’s guilt when I say that, which is absurd on its face, but there is nothing rational about grief or, for that matter, any emotion.  They are what they are.  Period.

Writing about Clint the way I did opened up in me a writer’s heart that I never really believed I had.  Before I lost him, I felt like a fraud, an impostor when I wrote, or tried to write, stories and essays and poems.  Now I am sure of every word I put on the page, even the ones I will later take out or change.  Some of them are just plain shit, but most of them are good, and I proudly claim all of them.

My poems are stronger and more raw, fueled in large part, I believe, by the suffering I have endured at losing The Love of My Life.  It created for me a platform from which to scream and cry and rage.  I could not survive without putting it all out there - all of it.  I cut open my bruised creative veins in public and hemorrhaged words all over anyone who would read them.  

And I am a stronger and more confident woman than at any time in my life.  I have proved to myself that I can survive without Clint, that as much as I want him back, his leaving opened not just doors, but windows from which I could shout my truths, my story.

Even from the Other Side, he gives me strength and courage and self-worth.  No wonder I loved him so madly, that losing him nearly killed me.

This Thing with Proust

This Thing with Proust

If My Dead Husband were here, wearing his red cashmere sweater and propped on an elbow reading Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples (for the third time), he would scoff at me and the thing with Proust.  Rather, he would pretend to scoff and be secretly proud of me.  He would laugh and say my quest for the works of Marcel stemmed from my need to find a genre in which I need not have a plot at all if I didn’t want one.  

I don’t think that’s right.  I don’t know why I am doing this.  Maybe it’s because of Elaine Hughes, a writer and teacher of writers who went to high school at the same time as Clint.  (They even had a few dates).  He attended a Brothers of the Sacred Heart school, while she attended the public school in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  I met this tiny and loving and talented woman in 1994, when she and Clint were united on one of our trips to that dreary town.  She had been living in Manhattan for years, teaching at Nassau Community College.  She died of breast cancer seven years later, but during the time we had, we formed a bond around our mutual love for Clint and of a love for words and writing. She was one of the best friends I ever had.

She begged me to restart my long abandoned journal and to read Madame Bovery and Proust.  I immediately restarted my journal and have continued to write in it to this day - except for the two months after Clint died when I couldn’t write a single word, the pain of reliving his death too much for me to bear.

“Which Proust?” I wanted to know.

“Why, A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, of course”

“All of it?.”

“All of it.”

So, 16 years later, I have finished Madame Bovary (I’ll make another post of that). and am reading only Proust and - on the side - NIN.  To be totally honest, I am not reading Proust.  He is being read to me by an outstanding narrator and routed through my iPod and into my ears via a hot pink set of ear buds.  I am really reading NIN for myself - A Spy in the House of Love - for the second time.  I love it.

Yesterday, I finished Swann’s Way, and today I will begin to listen to Within a Budding Grove, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower.  I’m saving it for dessert after I work on some poems and write this post.

I love the flowery prose, the descriptions of the caste system in France at the time.  (I believe all societies have caste systems, even today).  I love Proust’s use of the involuntary memory, perhaps because it so often happens to me.  It’s the source of many of my poems.  I find the descriptions of persons and their attire and of their habits fascinating.  The characters are drawn so skillfully as to seem real and plastic all the same.   Charles Swann is a friend of the narrator's family, and he is ostracized from much of high society for marrying "beneath" himself and for his political views.

The narrator, whose identity is carefully undisclosed in the book, is widely believed to have been Proust himself, is a whiney mama’s boy who fancies a desire to be a writer.  So far, he has only read dozens of books and wandered in the garden and taken long walks with his parents around their country home in Cambray.  His pathological attachment to his mother is  disturbing to a great degree, but I find his love for flowers and plants appealing.  I don’t know whether I have ever seen a Hawthorne bush, a plant of which he was particularly enamored, but I am now planning to put at least one in my own little garden.

I aready have a psychiatrist and a therapist, thank God. 

I Sank to Her Level

04/21/10

I need My Dead Husband today, need him more than usual.  My son, who is 40 and has severe bipolar disorder, is being harassed by his sperm donor’s wife.  She is sending him facebook messages chastising him for past sins, real and imagined.  I want to find her and bite off her head and spit it down a mine shaft.

Clint was the only father Parrish knew, except in the most superficial of ways.  When P was two years old, I left the sperm donor, and when I did, the sperm donor abandoned his only child.  Any contact they had was engineered by me, who, fool that I am, thought a father and son should have some sort of, well, father-son relationship.

Wrong.  There was always conflict with the wife du jour, and I have wished a million times that I had just told P that his father were dead or in prison or somewhere outside his reach.  All my good intentions caused my child more harm than good, and he grew into manhood without the love and respect of his  biological father.  He grew into manhood believing - and rightly so - that his father did not love him.

Now this.  If Clint were here, he’d calm me down if it took a fire extinguisher to do it.  He would have advised me, in all his wisdom, to teach P how to block the bitch on facebook and forget about it.

But, he’s not here, and I went into kick-ass mode and sent the following message to the spawn of Satan:

There is a front row seat in hell for people like you, and I am certain that the devil is keeping one warm for you.  Don't you have anything better to do than to terrorize Parrish on facebook?  He has severe bipolar disorder, and for the first time in years, his doctors have his medications stable and he can actually function.  Chastising him for past sins will only make him sick again, so for God's sake, leave the man alone.  Thanks to your and Lawrence's unwillingness to accept that he is mentally ill, Parrish has spent time in prison when he should have been in a mental facility.  Aren't you proud?  Clint's death was very hard on him as he was the only REAL father Parrish had.  I am begging you.  Leave him alone.  His computer instructor is teaching him how to block your messages, so just give it up.  You have done all the damage you will ever have a chance to do.  And believe me when I say, if he dies before I do, you will not be notified.  Take your poison and spew it at someone else.  

It didn’t make me feel one bit better.

The Red Sweater: No Smoking

The Red Sweater: No Smoking

No Smoking

04/11/10

My preceptor turned her dark red Altima off the blacktop onto a rock road, or what should have been one if the torrential rains of spring had not washed much of the gravel into deep trenches carved out by the runoff from the rain.  The car was dusted yellow with pine pollen, and we could feel its grit in our eyes and noses, even with the air conditioner trying to filter the air.  

Then she turned left onto a dirt road, rutted and potted by the rain, large roots exposed and, along with the pots, making for a bumpy and swaying drive up to the back of the trailer.  The dirt yard was littered with old toys, a rusty tricycle, paper fast food wrappers and the skeletons of two old cars sitting on the dirt, wheels long gone.  

Two operational vehicles - both red muscle cars -  were parked beside one another, their pointed hoods aimed at the back stoop, which was supported by an arrangement of boards and concrete blocks which also served as steps.  There were three open packs of unfiltered Pall Malls on the rail. 

Our patient stood alone on the stoop, shirtless, shoeless, wearing only an old stained pair of beige Bermuda shorts, his is steel gray hair in disarray.   He waved, and we tooted the horn while we tried to find a place to park without blocking in the other cars or running over a nail or broken beer bottle.

Mr. X has no voice box.  His larynx was removed several years ago in an effort to cure the cancer growing there.  He breathes through a hole in his neck.  Now, on the right side of his neck, there is a gaping wound, tunneling inward, and next to it is a tumor the size of a small roma tomato and the color of a ripe plum.  It looks as though it might rupture at any minute, but it has looked that way for a while.  I think it is bigger today.  We advised his daughter - the one who came from Texas to help him die -  to keep dark towels at hand for when he bleeds out.  

He opened the screened door for us, and we walked into his dark living room where the out-of-focus TV blared from an entertainment unit pushed against the opposite wall. He took his usual seat in an old loden recliner in the corner and pumped the handle on the side to kick his feet out, then waited for us to start taking vital signs and asking questions about pain.

His daughter from Texas came into the room and helped interpret for us.  The way he moves his lips makes it hard to read them.  She is in charge of his drugs, which she keeps under lock and key.

The others, two sons and another daughter with a small girl in tow, walked past us out onto the stoop, scooped up the Pall Malls, each lit one and got into one of the red cars, tobacco smoke swirling around the child's head.  They said they were going to Wal Mart.

Brain Crisis

04/08/10

I’m having a brain crisis.  I’m in left brain overload, and my right brain feels like it’s shriveling up getting ready to dry out.  It’s the studying and testing and practical thinking that my nursing re-entry requires that’s causing it all.  I know why it’s happening, but how to I shift back into my genetic right-brained mode without becoming a ditsy nurse?  Am I over-thinking this?  Probably, but I feel like, along with Niagara Falls behind my eyes, I now have the Sahara Desert in my right brain.

When I think up anything interesting to say, I'll get back with you.

Baptism by Fire - Part 2

04/03/10 

In hospice care, we expect our patients to die.  Our job is to help them - and their families - make the transition as painless and peaceful and as possible.  But, without contradicting myself, I can say that some of them are, indeed, unexpected.  It was Friday afternoon, March 26, and we had seem this precious little man the day before.  He was not actively dying when Debra and I saw him, and had in fact made plans to see his dentist.  He lived in a personal care home, and one of the residents had wandered into his room one night and stolen his upper plate, so he was going to get his new one.

Debra was at lunch, and since I live right around the corner from the restaurant, had, in lieu of eating, asked her to drop me at my house to check on my sick dogs.  

She got the call at about 2 PM and (as much as Debra can) rushed to pick me up.  It’s our job to be first responders, even though we are only there to confirm the death before anyone calls the family or the funeral home.  He was, indeed, dead, had fallen over in the bathroom and was discovered by one of the workers.  With help, she put him back in the bed and covered him.  He was fully dressed, and Debra and I put light dressings on the wounds on his arms that he sustained in the fall.  His family didn’t need to see that.

I can think of nothing worse that getting a telephone call saying a loved one is dead, (I has happened to me). so we gathered the family by phoning to say our patient was worse and maybe they should come see him.  That took about an hour, and we waited for them on the front porch to tell them the sad news.  Maybe the only thing worse than a phone call would be finding your daddy dead on the bathroom floor.

This all sounds clinical and detached, but stay with me.  It’s just background.  I promise not to go through these details in future posts.

The average time from death until departure for the funeral home is two to three hours.  We were there for 3 because we waited for a son to drive from his home, which was about an hour away.  We didn’t have to stay.  We chose to because that’s who we are.  The preacher came and prayed over all of us, which I suppose didn’t do any of us any harm.  I have my own ideas about spirituality that might have made him say extra prayers over me, but that’s another post altogether.

So, we left at 5:00 PM, the hour at which we went “on call” until 5 AM.  We still had two routine follow-ups because of the extra time spent with our grieving family, so we went and took care of those and grabbed a wrap for dinner and ate it in the car.  Between patients we were notified of a pending admission, but we had to wait until the patient was dismissed from the hospital and had arrived at home before we could do anything about that.  

Then the phone rang again.  It was our on call nurse who fields phone calls after hours, and she delivered a message from the daughter of a patient with whom we were not familiar.  Remember, we were on call.  Her nurse was off duty.  “I think Mama has stopped breathing.  Please come.”  Our phone nurse gave us the information we needed about her diagnosis and directions to the house.

At Debra’s usual breakneck pace, we hunted down the house .  When we were almost there, we got another call saying “Mama has started breathing again, but would we please come by and check on her?”  It was dark.  It was in a semi-rough part of town.  I’ve been in worse.  We parked on the street and waded through the crowd assembled on the porch and spilling out onto the sidewalk.

Then we walked into the room, and there in the hospital bed, was a perfect, tiny, light brown angel wearing a baby blue knit hat pulled down over her ears, bedcovers pulled up to her neck.  Her eyes were light brown and round as plates and from them emanated love and and kindness and light.  She flashed a short toothless smile, and I don’t think I have ever seen a more beautiful face.

Her daughter was at her bedside drenched in tears, and I was drawn to her and she stood and we embraced and I offered her my power and strength.  She held me fast and took it, pulling gently away to once more take her place at her mother’s side and wipe away her tears.

That winsome little lady had experienced a long period of sleep apnea, but she was far from dying.  Her eyes followed us all around the room as we checked on her vital signs and reassured her family.

It was a good thing.

It was 10:00 PM, and our admission was still waiting to be dismissed from the hospital.

Why, you may wonder, have I chosen this subspecialty of nursing?  After all, My Dead Husband has been gone less than a year.  I find it healing to offer comfort - when I can - to patients and their families.  I know where they are.  I have watched the light go out in the most precious eyes in the world, and it in a strange way completes me to be able to help others through the same experience.  Clint did dying right.  I would give my fingers to have him back, but he is gone.  Some people, patients and families, need permission to express their sadness, to say their good-byes.  I want to be the person who gives them that permission.  Some of them just can’t do it, and I want to be the person who listens and understands when they say that, too.