DOG is the way

I took care of a lady last night whose gastric band had slipped, causing her tremendous amounts of pain and a surgical emergency. She lived somewhere 2 hours inland from San Diego, and the hometown hospital where she was treated for 18 hours was clueless as to how to manage her. Her husband, a church pastor where she is the pianist, got scared because he saw the medical team treating the symptoms troubling her, but not the source. He had an intuition (divine providence as Glenn Beck would put it) that his wife's problems were grave, and that they were related to the gastric band. The man finally called her surgeon's office, which the hospital treating her refused to do, and the surgeon's on-call covering physician arranged an ambulance transport and emergency surgery after the two-plus-hour ride. I saw her briefly after the surgery was completed before I was off my shift and she looked good. It seems that she will live, and I am glad for her and her family.

I was more concerned, however, with the mechanics of my job than the substance of her unfortunate circumstances while I was managing her care as her nurse. The computer system was down for a scheduled tune-up, which to me is actually kind of fun because generally I am bored to death by the lack of action on the new floor where I am working. My only real engagement comes from the anxiety of being somewhere new and trying not to fuck up. The time passed quickly and the process of keeping this patient safe while having to simultaneously transcribe orders, override medications out of the dispensary machine, navigate new logistics that rely on a vacuum-tube system and carbon copies, get her admitted and then prepped physically and mentally for emergency surgery...it was a trip and oddly enjoyable when compared to my recent weeks of up all night with twitter and solitaire phone aps. (A Type-A sort of person would have used the time more constructively to at least clean the house, but alas, I am more akin to Type-F.)

I came home for the first time in a long time a little bit jazzed-up after work, so when I walked in the door and was greeted by Mae I decided to take her to the beach to play. I glanced out the sliding patio doors to check for sea gales, sharks and/or an oncoming tsunamis that frequently hamper my beaching in San Diego (ahem), and saw Roscoe and his Owner sitting close together at the top of the steps down to the beach. Now as a dog-lover and dog-coveter I knew that this was the sign of something being off. A dog doesn't stop at the top of the stairs to go down to the beach. A lab, as this dog is, has to be restrained from going down the stairs to the beach. That is unless the dog knows that the trouble going back up the stairs is too difficult a task. And a middle-aged woman does not sit on the ground with her dog unless she is seizing the moment with this dog as it is apparent that these are some of the last ones. I know this situation well. So I told Mae, "Let's go to the beach."

We approached Roscoe and Owner, and she said to me, "He's not doing well today." Without being prompted she worked herself up to tears telling me that he hadn't pooped in two days and he won't go down to the beach for the first time ever. She said he hadn't wagged his tail, and wouldn't budge from that spot. Almost thinking aloud she looked at me and declared, "I'm going to go get the car and pick him up and take him to the vet." I offered to wait with him and she obliged the offer. She took off up the hill and Roscoe decided that was enough motivation to get his ass in gear, and he started to follow her up a steep pitch. Mae and I coaxed him and told him it was okay to stay, but he wanted to be with his mom, and he started huffing and puffing, swaying almost, to follow her. Luckily Owner was only parked at the top of the street, if this tells you anything about her dedication to Roscoe, and Ros didn't have to go far to meet her again. She then picked up the dog's front and back ends to get him into her jeep. Her parting comment was, "Luckily the vet is a personal friend and I'm just going to go to his house." I wished her well and walked back toward the water.

Roscoe's day may be at hand, this was obvious. I hope it isn't, but I recognized in him a dog that isn't sure it's all worth it any more. I thought how lucky Roscoe is in a sense that someone can end his suffering so readily, and I wondered how Owner was wrestling with her role as his decision-maker. And then I questioned my judgement of the situation. I could be wrong about the prognosis. Roscoe could maybe be propped up with some steroids and antibiotics, just like what just happened in the last two weeks to my grandfather.

My grandfather was sent home from the hospital for his third pneumonia in a year on steroids and antibiotics...and on hospice care. He has end-stage emphysema that has stolen his quality of life for a long time now. Over the course of two or three years, he has shrunk down to a 115-pound 6'0" tall 86-yr-old man who can't hear unless someone is shouting at him, who lives 22 hours of each day in a lazy-boy recliner in front of soap operas and baseball games in closed-captions, who has fallen multiple times and who has developed pressure ulcers on his butt from so little physical activity and such poor nutrition. And now he has lung cancer. But, the decision was finally made: no more. To my utter dismay, this decision has caused terrible strife between my grandfather, my grandmother, and their children. They all love each other, but they all doubt each others motives and sincerity, and no one wants to be the one to wave the white flag. I suggested it two crises ago, but was met with silence. It was finally the physician at the hospital who sat the family down and said, it's time. No more. Even my mom, who I have been talking about the inevitability of my grandfather's situation (in fact the inevitability of all of our situations) for years, had difficulty with discontinuing medical treatment.

Now I realize that I have a unique perspective on death and dying. I've seen what it looks like and I know that the process of it sucks. It's painful and anxiety-provoking. But I also know that once someone dies, they no longer suffer, and they get other bonuses such as not having to work or pay bills or exercise. No matter what happens to their consciousness (in my opinion, nothing) I can say with all certainty that the dead person doesn't give one shit about any of it. They are relieved from the bullshit that this life has engineered for us. They don't have to contemplate going down the stairs to the beach.

And so this lesson repeats itself over and over in nature. In flora and fauna, there is no avoiding death if something has the experience of being alive. This is an undeniable truth of existence, and therefore nature should command our respect. Nature, the natural course of events, should not try so violently to be avoided. I learned this lesson today. I didn't learn it from the piano-playing church pastor's wife who was almost killed in her effort to undo a lifetime of unconsciousness that led to 250 pounds of lard ass. And I can't teach it to a bunch of grown-ups who won't acknowledge the inevitable. Today I was able to experience a universal truth with a dog who loved his Owner and decided that he wasn't going down the steps.

France in Retrospection

I had a wonderful fantastic vacation. Sitting in San Diego, where the weather is beautiful and where I have a second swing at summer time, it's hard to feel the forlornness that accompanies the back-to-work reality post-vacation. But France was so good.

In trying to come up with my single favorite part of the trip, it's really the totality of the experience that ranks as the shiniest highlight. It was in a word, (practically) perfect. I say that in light of watching a man die and feeling helpless to assist in his rescue. I feel compelled to mention the unfortunate incident because it was indeed a very traumatic and sad occurrence; to pretend it didn't happen denies the humanity of all of us that participated in the moment, and disrespectful to the man himself. However, France also offered this experience to me and for that I accept it and am grateful.

But I think a new standard for measurement of a vacation is going to be this trip. When the trip is a dream fulfilled, the end of a wondering and longing, and teaches the traveller something about themselves, that's a tall measuring stick. I feel the fullness of all those sensations, though. And I think the traveller in me is still in her infancy. There is more to enjoy in this world than I have here to fore dared to acknowledge.

One terrifically surprising revelation was that on any given day, I'd rather visit a church than a museum! It's the damnedest thing. I'm just not a museum person, especially an art museum. The art does not communicate with me. I respect the ability that allows someone to reproduce something that their mind intended, and I try to dissect the technique that could have been used to accomplish the art. But there is no emotional reaction to hardly any of it, and I couldn't really tell you what's good and bad, and what I like and don't like. I know that all that religious painting just irritates my sensibilities, and so I start thinking about how much I loathe religion, which is definitely not what was the intent.

And I tried out the art museums in France and Italy. In Rome, Ty and I paid 16 euro to get into the National Museum of Modern Art, but that was mostly to enjoy some air conditioning. What I took away from the museum was that I could probably fling my own feces on a white canvas and smear it around and it would be considered art. (In fact I've tried versions of this at work a couple of times, and it's just called a mess.) In Nice, I went to the Musee de Matisse, where I learned that Henri Matisse had an unhealthy life-long obsession with a modestly attractive Ukrainian woman who was not his wife. I found the Musee d'Orsay quite pretentious though it was the best of the bunch. And the Louvre was just overwhelming and underwhelming all at the same time. It wasn't DaVinci Code good, that's for sure, and I like IM Pei's pyramid a lot.

The funny part is that when I go to a church, or more accurately a cathedral, I feel the emotion intended immediately, despite the fact I don't believe in one iota of the dogma that inspired the desire in an architect to convey that reverent emotion to me. But it happens for me. I'm in awe that in the 1400's someone was able to build such a monstrous structure with beautiful stained glass windows as high as the sky. I'm immediately able to get to that place in myself where I simultaneously feel small, unimportant, and absolutely confident in my place in the scheme of things. I feel peaceful in those buildings, and connected to myself. This I think is more a credit to the builder than to the church. It's possible to admire a person's talents without admiring their motivations.

And so when I was in the Cathedral of Notre Dame and at St Peter's I really enjoyed myself. I didn't want to leave. I even thought about praying, but the fact that no one is listening on the other end ruins it for me. So I decided it was good enough to feel grateful for the moment and experience of it. It's the best that religion has to offer me, and I it.

There's so much more I could blather on and on about that happened in France. The food....the architecture....the people....trains, planes, music, hotels, streets, spontaneous tours, walking everywhere, wine, cheese, crepes, nutella... But those experiences were for me and for Ty. The fact that we finally did that together after 13 years and we did it well, did it the exact way that we wanted to, that is my most treasured experience of traveling to France.