Tag Archives: courage

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Bolster my courage

I am having nightmares. About clinic. Yesterday I bolstered my courage and sat down to write my dream out. What are my dreams trying to tell me? Should I extend my contract or not?

I dream that in clinic I have a male patient with his wife in the room. He is very dramatic, saying, “I am so ill, help me, help me.” He says, “I am on quercetin. You have to help me.”

He won’t tell me what his symptoms are, so I respond to what he says: “Who prescribed quercetin? What is your diagnosis?”

“Oh, you don’t want to help me,” he says. His wife just watches.

“Do you have pain somewhere? Any chest pain? Any abdominal pain? Any pain anywhere?”

“No, no, you don’t understand!” he says, “You aren’t listening!”

“I am trying to help you,” I say. “Can we reschedule you for a longer visit?” This is one of the impossible 20 minute ones. Honestly, he doesn’t look like he’s in pain. I do a quick listen to heart and lungs and feel his abdomen.

“No, I need to be in the hospital, I can’t go home!”

“I can’t put you in the hospital without a diagnosis, but we can move you to the emergency room.” Of course, the ER won’t be happy about this.

I leave the room and call the ER. The ER doctor is understandably grumpy, since I have no idea what this is about and am suspecting a psychiatric cause. “Urine drug screen,” I say. “He doesn’t smell drunk. I do not think it’s meth withdrawal.” “Make sure you do a note,” snarls the ER doctor. Good luck, since he won’t answer any questions. “How behind am I?” I ask the nurse. She just rolls her eyes. I probably have at least four or five more on the schedule. I come back to the room. Now two preteens are in the room, looking in the drawers and taking things out. Their parents do nothing to stop them.

“Please sit down now!” I say. “Put that down!”

The teens sullenly comply. The father is moaning. He has the prescriber on his cell phone. He hands it to me. I introduce myself. “What is your diagnosis?” I say. “Why is he on quercetin?” The person at the other end mumbles. “Excuse me, what did you say?” He’s gone. I say to the mother, “Please take the children to the waiting room. Sir, are you requesting that we call 911?” It would be a call saying man moaning, no idea what he’s on about. Vitals are normal, he denies chest pressure or pain, he doesn’t have an acute abdomen, his oxygen level is fine, no fast heart rate, no fever. Drama.

I wake up, thinking that I may have to call 911 to get the wife and kids out and I have to have someone monitor him while I see other patients and we just don’t have enough staff and I am ready to just cancel the rest of the afternoon. If I were in a hospital, I could call security, but we are a satellite small clinic.

So… what the heck is THIS dream about? And do we really get patients like this? Yes, but not often and I haven’t had any like this here. I think it’s funny that this dream has so much detail, down to the supplement that the man is taking as well as the clinic room. I usually work in room 1 and 2, but this was in room 5.

To be continued.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bolster.



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Incomparable courage

I’ve chosen incomparable for today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt. Yesterday I posted one version of the song Waterbound. Rhiannon Giddens does the traditional version, but then I come across this song. Wow. And yes, such courage in people enslaved and there is still slavery in the world.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: incomparable.

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Volunteer

I wrote this thinking about the increasing number of homeless because of housing costs and that incomes aren’t keeping up. And even if the income has kept up, a lay-off and an illness can put people so far behind that they can end up homeless. In Denmark, they rent rooms to students in nursing homes. Part of the payment is that they have to spend time with some residents. When will we set that up here?

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Volunteer

A man I know slides into kidney failure.
He’s already there when I meet him,
care for him
for a number of years.
He’s a really nice man.
Over time a bit more disheveled
unkempt
dialysis twice a week.
Even so, once on dialysis,
people die younger
than the rest of us.
Over time he is in and out of the nursing home.
loses touch with friends,
in the home so much
that even when he isn’t there
he goes there
and volunteers.
They have become his family and home.
At last he is so tired
he stops dialysis
and goes to the nursing home for the last time.
The staff call me, crying.
“He is hurting,” they say, “Do something.”
He can’t swallow.
I see him and place a fentenyl patch.
He mostly sleeps then
but is no longer in pain
He dies a few days later.
I haven’t seen this before:
The nursing home staff cry
for this man
this volunteer
this friend
and I do too.

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One reason that he did well at the nursing home was that they understood how frail he was and that he couldn’t do very much. They gave him very gentle volunteer jobs and enjoyed his company. Sometimes when people are very frail or ill, others avoid them or just do not understand.

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mask up

Care for your family and friends and community. Mask up and do the best you can not to get nor give Covid-19 this season. The winter is dark but the sun will start returning to us soon. Like the seeds in the ground and the trees with no leaves, we can get through this dark season caring for each other.

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broadcast

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: broadcast.

“Were you, like me, brought up on listening the the radio? Or do you prefer more modern ways of communication? How do you broadcast your news? And how do others broadcast to you?”

I was not brought up on radio. More record player. No television until I was nine, and I think my parents mostly got their information from newspapers. And they discussed articles and ideas…

But the deeper answer to this question is that mostly I don’t.

I am introverted and shy. I also failed small talk in school very early and learned to shut up. I was comfortable talking in my family and would talk to friends after I’d known them for years. We moved every 2-5 years while I was in school so my peer friends were really my sister and cousins. When we moved, I pretty much would only talk to teachers for the first year. After a year, I might try to make a friend, having studied everyone. After a year, they might or might not be interested.

I got to know one woman from high school after we’d graduated. After a while she said, “I thought you were shy in high school.” I laughed and said, “No, I just didn’t talk.” This is really about opinions: I was way more opinionated than she realized and when I got comfortable enough to talk, I could talk a lot.

I also found that smart women are not admired, so I hid it. There are different ways of hiding it: mine was to be multi talented. I played instruments, scored equally well on the math and english part of the SAT, read voraciously, and mostly talked to adults. My parents’ house had a wild array of interesting and unconventional adults. Artists, trumpet players, singers, world travelers, university professors, rich women, poor women, beggerwoman, thieves, doctors, lawyers, native chiefs. I didn’t discover sports until college, other than hiking, skiing and swimming. My high school had no swim team.

My daughter complained about small talk in preschool. Why were kids she didn’t know talking to her? And why did they talk to each other when the teacher was talking? If everyone would just shut up and listen, they could move on to more interesting topics. I sympathize but also think that we all have to live with and care about each other. So how do we do that when we are so different?

In clinic all of my patients are smart. I treat them all as smart and the result is they ARE all smart. Now, that doesn’t mean that they immediately do smart things like quit smoking or quit drinking a 6 pack of coke a day or quit eating too many donuts….But change is incremental. It is hard to change.

Also, all of my patients ARE smart, about something. It could be car engines or church organs or comic books or Russian. I have an elderly woman who is fluent in Russian and feeling rather lonely. Another turns out to be a silversmith, though her lungs won’t tolerate it now.

I had a new patient recently who said that she didn’t understand what I was on about. I slowed down, explained the meaning of some of the words, and I think she understood. At least some of it. I am very happy that she felt comfortable saying, “I don’t know what that word means.” I was talking about a pathology report and needed to back off and define the words. I feel the same way when I talk to my accountant: wait, what does that word mean? I don’t know the language. I need bookkeeping for dummies…

I wish that we all broadcast that everyone is smart. Imagine what it will be like when we all assume that everyone has secret talents and genius.

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sing for the girls

Sing for the girls who grow up in war zones.
Sing for the girls who grow up scared.
Sing for the girls who grow up abused.
Sing for the girls unprepared.

Sing for the girls who grow up with alcohol.
Sing for the girls who grow in broken homes.
Sing for the girls who don’t tell anyone.
Sing for the girls alone.

Sing for the girls who grow up beaten.
Sing for the girls who grow up raped.
Sing for the girls who care for siblings.
Sing for the girls who learn to hate.

Sing for the women who now look frozen.
Sing for the women who now look old.
Sing for the women who survived it anyway.
Sing for the women who told.

Sing for the girls who grow up broken.
Sing for the girls who break everything.
Sing for the girls who break the silence.
We are broken and breaking: sing.

I took the photograph at the US Synchronized Swimming Nationals in 2012.