In September, I hike with the three friends in the Ragtag Daily Prompt photograph. I have not really backpacked into back country in years. The last time I carried the pack was in Italy with my daughter, a few years ago. She wanted to plan the trip as we went and stay in hostels. We did.
We hike in the first day, up switchbacks from the parking lot at about 3200 feet, to a pass at 5400 feet, over and down to a campsite. The sites for cooking are separate from the sleeping sites and there are serious big metal bear boxes. We are to put everything in them, including the deet and toothpaste and anything that could possibly interest a bear.
We pack day packs the second day and climb back up to the pass. We peel off there to the trail to Sahalie Glacier. After being on oxygen at sea level for a year and a half, I am beyond delighted that I can actually do this. We go up and up and the trail gets worse and worse, until it is rather nasty scree. Two other people coming down say it is even worse, slippery, unstable, if we go on.
So, like sensible people, we stop for lunch. The slope is very steep and we each find a place to perch. Lunch tastes good. Then the other three want to go on. I don’t. I want a nap. They go on, I find a slab and the view from it is the photograph: down, down, down to the lake far below.
They will get me on the way back down.
And I do go to sleep. It’s all that night time call I’ve taken over years and years. I can sleep practically anywhere, including in a noisy casino in the past. I tuck up against the rock and the sun is almost warm.
I wake up. Two other people have come by. My inner clock thinks my people should have come by. Do I wait? Do I stay? There are more ominous clouds building up and this will be much more slick and dangerous if it starts raining. And we are exposed, for lightening.
Then I see a hat, on a curve of trail below me, moving. I swear it’s one of my party. But how did they go by without seeing me or waking me. THEY ARE DITCHING ME ON THE MOUNTAIN. No, that is ridiculous. Hmm. She is not with either of the guys. I debate for a minute, shout and then grab my things and head down.
I catch her. Once they left me, there really was not a clear trail. There were multiple sort of trails. And it was tricky. They separated a bit. She lost track of the other two and then picked the least difficult way down, which seemed to be a trail. It was NOT the trail that went by me, but she didn’t know that.
We found one of the guys below us, waiting. The last came down a bit later. None of them had come on the “right” trail by me. We headed down and stopped to put on rain gear. It rained lots! We were also above the tree line, but also I would say that we were above the marmot line. We saw eight hoary marmots marmoting around on our way down. They did not seem deterred by rain at all.
So that is how I was left in the scree to dream. I would have returned by the time it started raining anyhow, and the trail was good once we got past the scree. Not all the way to the lake in the photograph, the trail ran along a ridge that is not in the picture and wound down near the lake.
Lily’s person moved two days ago, much closer. Supposedly to a place where Lily the cat can go, but instead of a private room, there is a roommate. It took me a month to get Lily cat to let me pat her, so the roommate won’t work. We are all very very frustrated. And next week daily treatments for Lily’s person start, thirty minutes away, without enough warning to get volunteer drivers. So it will be me. I am tired. But I suppose it’s anti-matter, right? We were given 24 hours notice by the nursing home and by the physicians about both the move and the treatment and they wanted to start the treatment the same day that she was moving. Whether we can provide all the transport seems to be irrelevant.
The stealthie is from Whidby Island. Right, I’m just an irrelevant shadow as far as the medical dysfunctional machine is concerned.
My friend M is twenty years older than me. A friend of my parents since college. When I went to college in Madison, WI, I got to know her and her husband and their two sons. I lived with them my third year of college and it was a ball! I loved the family.
I visited over the years and more often when her husband had lung cancer and died. She wanted me to come out for her younger son’s fiftieth birthday. Her daughter-in-law said, “It’s nice to meet the daughter.” Apparently M considered me a daughter. I was delighted, since both of my parents had died by then.
A year ago M was feeling less well. She started losing weight. A work up was done, finding no cause. She had a rare cancer that had been treated two years prior. But by July, she had lost thirty pounds.
Thirty pounds! As a primary care doctor, RED FLAG! Very high likelihood of dying, if that went on. She was eighty years old.
I flew out in September. We took a road trip, just the two of us, from Michigan back to Wisconsin. We visited multiple old friends of hers. She thanked me afterwards, because one friend had Parkinson’s and died ten days after our visit. We saw her sisters-in-law and we did a circuit around Madison.
Afterwards, she said that was her last time driving on highways.
By December, she had dropped another ten pounds. Then she had difficulty walking. The daughter-in-law called me. She was having trouble getting any medical attention. They had had trouble for a year! Over a week, M went from walking to not being able to support her weight or stand up. I flew up right after New Years.
Something was wrong, clearly. She’d carried her own bags in September. I was the out of state doctor. The daughter-in-law, B, was moving her from bed to chair alone. I couldn’t. I am 5’4″ and M was 5’10” and now my weight. B found a private practitioner.
On my third day there, M had chest pain. We took her to the Emergency Room. The Emergency Room did the usual things. Then the ER doctor came in. “She is not having a heart attack and she doesn’t have pulmonary emboli. So you can take her home.”
“No, something is wrong! She can’t walk! She could walk two weeks ago! We did a road trip in September!”
The ER doctor shrugged. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Figure out what is going on!”
“She is eighty.” he said. As if eighty meant we stop caring.
“No, we won’t take her home. It isn’t safe. We can’t move her. M, do you want to stay?”
“Yes,” said M.
The ER doctor looked annoyed. “All right. I’ll admit her for placement in a nursing home.”
The inpatient doctor was scarcely more interested.
“What do you expect me to do?” he said, knowing he was dealing with an annoying out of town doctor.
“Steroids.” I said, “Maybe it’s a weird form of polymyalgia rheumatica. She deserves a trial of steroids.”
He too shrugged, and started steroids.
The next day she was stronger, and the third day she could stand. It was SOMETHING, but not clearly polymyalgia rheumatica. The hospital was small and did not have a cancer doctor and did not have a neurologist. They were sending her out on steroids. Follow up outpatient.
We looked at a nursing home, but went to a private assisted living instead. The staff were minimally helpful. We took turns sleeping there. Physical therapy and occupational therapy were started. M was a bit better but not the miraculous return to normal that steroids cause in polymyalgia.
I flew home. The private physician saw her. M was set up to see the U of Michigan. B kept asking if it was lymphoma, because that can be a side effect of the treatment for M’s cancer. M’s cancer doctor said no. M got covid and the appointments were delayed two weeks.
In February she went to the U of Michigan. The neurologists came through and said, nope, not polymyalgia rheumatica, and not neurological. The cancer doctor came through. The GI doctors did an upper endoscopy and biopsied. Cancer. Lymphoma.
M said no to treatment. She was discharged to hospice. She died within 24 hours of reaching the hospice.
The cancer doctor sent an apology to B, who was right all along. This was a particular lymphoma that responds to steroids for a while. M had said that if it was another cancer, she would refuse treatment.
“These people who live a vigorous life to 70, 80, 90 years of ageβwhen I look at what those people βdo,β almost all of it is what I classify as play. Itβs not meaningful work. Theyβre riding motorcycles; theyβre hiking. Which can all have valueβdonβt get me wrong. But if itβs the main thing in your life? Ummm, thatβs not probably a meaningful life.”
Ok, so now some doctors don’t care once you reach 75. That’s it. They define everything as “useful and productive” and if you are not doing meaningful work, well, you’d might as well die. I hope that doctor does die. Slowly. And that everyone around him refuses to do any tests to see what is happening. And who the hell defines what is meaningful work? That can be helping raise grandchildren, like, hello!
I have another friend who is going through the same thing. She is failing and the medical community in my town is shrugging their shoulders. She should have a head MRI, says the cancer doctor. So that was a month ago and it still isn’t scheduled.
Some of this is pandemic fatigue and backlash. People refusing to get vaccinated, people refusing to believe that Covid-19 exists, doctors and nurses dying of Covid-19, people refusing masks. If everyone is exhausted, what do you let go?
Apparently people over 75. But NOT everyone over 75. If you are wealthy, you will get care. Our Senators and House of Representatives certainly get care after 75. It is the isolated, the rural, the poor, the ones who don’t have an advocate, who will be sent home to die.
I took my friend here to her primary. “What do you want me to do?” he says.
“Here is the Home Health paperwork and she needs disability tags.” My friend is falling, five times that week.
“Ok,” says the primary. “I will set those up.”
When Home Health arrived, she had fallen. She had been down for 15 minutes and unable to get up. Home Health called the fire department. The fire department helped and also came back to put no slip pads on the steps. If she can buy the wood, they will build a ramp for her.
And I will go with her to the cancer doctor and I will rattle cages. She lives alone, she has no children, she has a brother in Alaska. But she also has an advocate. One who knows the medical system and who is not in an ethical stupor.
I dream of monsters howling and I go to them. They could be sick or hurt or need help! I must go to them! And the monsters are very noisy but they are babies. Abandoned and dirty and dark and hungry and cold.
This has nothing to do with my childhood. Do you believe me?
I have a pack and supplies in the dream. I carry the monsters up up into the light. I feed them and bathe them and diaper them and wrap each one in a blanket and hold them. They howl until they are too tired to howl and then they sulk. At first they do not know how to respond to kindness and love. But they learn and grow and are beautiful.
I am not comfortable with the angels.
I dream that all the stars start falling and then I see that they are angels. I am so frightened, why must they fall? I don’t want to be an angel and then I am falling and crying. The angels are at perfect peace with falling but I am not. I don’t understand, Beloved. Why do the angels fall?
I ask the Beloved over and over. My poems are questions. Why, Beloved, why?
The angels fall down and up, over and over. They are good then bad, or labeled bad, then labeled good.
Just like people.
The angels are seen as black or white. But I see them as black on white heaven or white on black heaven, it doesn’t matter. Do not let the color be a label. And after someone falls, they are burnt in the sky. They are seen as a devil or a monster!
Angels falling, fallen, monsters.
And I am here for the monsters. Who are angels, in disguise.
I used to have a favorite agate, chalcedony nodule found on the beaches here, during Covid. Surprising me. I did not expect anything and only long to find something to sustain me, just a little. I find a stone shaped heart, agate hard and not clear. Not chalcedony, murky with impurities. Yet the stone sustains me and I keep walking. Even when I see that the impurities are on the outside too. Camouflage, refusing to be washed clean, refusing change.
That one is lost, back in its’ native mud and sand. Someday it may be polished clear, but it shrinks as it is tossed among the other stones. It is running out of time and surface area. It may not be heart shaped any more. My favorite now is clear, a rich red with tiny streamers of darker red inside. I carry it with me, I carry it in my heart. It is more nearly shaped like a heart, a real heart, then the conventional one that is lost.
Be warned, then, that that one may be on the beaches here. Or it could be that it has already been picked up and taken, the finder hoping to wash it clean and see the clear beauty as the light shines through. Transparency is rare. I walk a mile of beach to find even one clear stone. Don’t be fooled by that one: the dirt is embedded. I won’t say never, but the chances of transparency and love shrinks as it is worn away by the restless tides and crashing against all the other rocks.
I am taking your dreams because you don’t want them. You don’t want him. Your small child. You let him out to play with me, for a while. But you say you you are always happy. You say things are perfect. You say our friendship is forever. Then you start to back away. You take music first: I can’t sing along. You stop teaching me your instrument. You stop me from listening to practice. You sing to me on my guitar but you never listen.
You keep me from your friends.
You keep me from your family.
You don’t want to say
that you love me as a friend.
The connection dies as you hack parts away.
Only the beach is left.
Your small child plays and laughs with me
at the beach.
And that is gone too.
I am hurt. I block the connection for a year.
A year is gone.
You won’t come back.
You can’t come back.
I do not want you back.
But I open the connection.
I want your small child
and all the monsters you keep hidden.
Bears and monsters, come.
Come with the small child and play.
Is it unethical to steal a soul
if it is not loved?
If it is not listened to?
If it is trapped and frightened?
I am stealing your dreams because you don’t want them.
And I do.
___________________
I look for dream stealer myths. Not a succubus. Nor a dream weaver. Something else. Maybe something that is not textbook. Or a kitsune?
After today’s international zoom on Cardiovascular Complications of Long Covid, I am thinking about one of my former partners. An ex-partner.
I got influenza in 2003. I was working full time plus all the call, had two small children, my mother had died two years before of cancer, and I was worrying about my marriage. Quite a stress load. I got influenza, running a temperature of 104 for a week and tachycardic. My heart rate was 100 at rest instead of my normal 62, and when I walked across the room slowly, it went up to the 130s or above and I got short of breath. I did not figure that out the fast heart rate immediately.
I tried to go back to work a week after I was out. By lunch time I thought, I feel like I’m dying. I stuck the pulse oximeter on my finger. My heart rate standing was 135. Oh. Normal is 60-100 and 135 is not ok. It’s exhausting. My office manager chose that moment to call me into her office and scold me for missing work. I was so freaked out by my heart rate that I did not show ANYONE in my clinic. I left and went to my physician, upstairs in the same building.
The tachycardia continued for two months.
I didn’t understand it, my Family Practice doctor didn’t understand it, and my partners accused me of malingering and were pissed. My instinct was to lie on the couch, so that’s what I did. Rest and wait. That level of tachycardia makes a person anxious, so my communication skills were challenged. After six weeks, I had an echocardiogram, which was normal EXCEPT for a fast heart rate. After two months, it went away. I staggered back to work, still frail and tired, and still down ten pounds.
One of my partners said, “I could understand you being out two months for heart disease or cancer, but not for influenza.”
At the time I didn’t say anything. That comment really, really hurt. I told myself that I should TRY to be a nice person and not wish that he would get a bad case of pneumonia with tachycardia. That took some major effort on my part.
Now with all the people with a fast heart rate after Covid-19, he can eat his words.
When someone tries to hit me
I fight back
I didn’t worry much in clinic
even when patients yelled
it indicated they were upset
and usually I knew why
Not much fear there.
So what do I fear?
Abandonment and lies the one who says they care that we will be friends even that they love me and later walk away
But that has already happened more than once and I survive and the Beloved is still here and there and everywhere I am and everywhere you are and everything is connected so there is no fear and even a chance that abandoned I still thrive
____________________
The photograph is from Marrowstone Island in July 2022.
Untie my heart and go find I am not looking anymore I am playing for the summer Back to work in the fall but my heart is untied and has escaped control. It might be wild or quiet or silly or angry. It might like this today and that tomorrow. It might wail with sorrow and then laugh and laugh.
Heart untied and
Gone.
The white furry object is not a tie. It is a Barbie stole made of rabbit fur and lined with pink fabric. Both cats are enjoying carrying it around the house and shaking it and pretending that it is a live rabbit. That stole has to be nearly 50 years old, so I am letting the cats choose it as a toy. Good that I have great ancient cat toys.
Discover and re-discover Mexicoβs cuisine, culture and history through the recipes, backyard stories and other interesting findings of an expatriate in Canada
Engaging in some lyrical athletics whilst painting pictures with words and pounding the pavement. I run; blog; write poetry; chase after my kids & drink coffee.
Refugees welcome - FlΓΌchtlinge willkommen I am teaching German to refugees. Ich unterrichte geflΓΌchtete Menschen in der deutschen Sprache. I am writing this blog in English and German because my friends speak English and German. Ich schreibe auf Deutsch und Englisch, weil meine Freunde Deutsch und Englisch sprechen.
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