Move Along

“Hey Mark, how’s it going?” “Hola Marcos, ¿cómo estás?”

It seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? It’s a greeting that we utilize so many times during each day that it’s almost automatic with everyone we meet, even people we don’t know. We say it without even thinking, and that’s usually how we respond.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

For about a month after Francisco took his life, I had no idea how to respond to that question. I wasn’t okay, and I didn’t have the energy to even try to fake it. But no one really wants to hear your problems if you’re not okay, so I responded thusly, “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know how I’m doing right now.” And I left it at that. So did most of the people I talked to because they had no idea what to say in response.

I’ve gotten to the point where I can fake being okay again, though it very much depends on the day. As an example: I’ll be fine on Monday, but on Tuesday I’m a basketcase. I honestly don’t know how my wife has been able to deal with my volatile moods of late, and when I say volatile, that is an understatement.

I gave up driving for a couple of weeks because I found myself screaming at everyone whenever I got behind the wheel of our SUV.

* * * *

“What the fuck are you doing, you goddamn morons!“

“Honey, you need to settle down. Those people were sitting at the bus stop.”

* * * *

I’ve expounded on my General Theory of Guys in previous posts. Guys are simple creatures. Amoebas are more complex than most guys. Guys essentially have two emotions: they are either okay, or they aren’t. And that’s about it. Guys are not built to process complex emotions.

For me, it’s as if everything inside my heart and head were pureed in a blender then poured back inside me, creating a mélange of melancholia suffused with sorrow and regret, with hints of pain and loss. And yet, somehow, there seems to be some vital ingredient missing…

I would like to take a moment to thank the Cooking Channel for making that complex emotional description even remotely possible for me.

* * * *

Perhaps Little Known Facts About the Grieving Process: There are five stages in the Grief and Loss Process — Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance. In situations like Francisco’s suicide, I think there’s a sixth step that precedes all of the others: Shock. And you have to recover from the initial shock before you can start fumbling your way through the other stages.

Progression through the five stages of grief isn’t linear — you bounce around in and out of all of them like unto a superball thrown in a hallway. It’s probably even possible that you can be in all five stages at once. More than once…

In addition, progression through the stages isn’t like playing a video game where you complete one level and move on neatly to the next. You can revisit each stage of grief as many times as you like — even if it’s a stage you’d rather not visit anymore. There’s no timeline on grief and loss. You can complete all five stages in five minutes and be done with them. Forever. Conversely, fifty years may not be enough time for you to get through one stage.

There are no rules. There’s no right way. There’s no wrong way. Every person goes through this process, and every person does it differently. When you look at it in that light, it’s amazing that any of us finds our way through the maze and comes out safely on the other side.

* * * *

Move Along is a song by the American rock band the All-American Rejects, released in early 2006. It was the band’s biggest hit, and it got a whole lots of radio air time. I bought the CD and have the songs on probably more than one of my playlists. The song, somewhat ironically, is more or less an anthem for suicide prevention. The lyrics encourage believing in oneself and persevering in the face of problems.

* * * *

It’s times like unto this that I wish life would take a time-out and give you the opportunity to get back on your feet before it kicks you in the balls again, but life doesn’t work like that. Life simply goes on whether you’re ready or not.

So I found myself in an incredibly vulnerable position when I lost another friend just a couple of weeks after Francisco’s death.

Her name was Hope. We were friends on Facebook. Hope was also a writer. In current lingo, I think Hope was what you would call an Influencer to most of her followers. She read at least one of my blogs, and had messaged me a couple of times about my blog. She thought I was a very good writer, so I thought she was a very cool person.

Hope was battling cancer, and I fell in love with her attitude. She was going to fight this disease, and she was going to kick its ass. In that regard, Hope was my polar opposite. I expect that I’ll be diagnosed with cancer sometime in the next twenty years or so. Unlike Hope, I have no intention of going into battle against that dragon. I don’t want surgery. Or radiation and chemotherapy. I plan on going on the M&M diet, and that is all.

M&M stands for Motrin and Morphine. Lea and I want to be as free of pain as possible. Beyond that, we don’t want any extraordinary measures taken to prolong our lives. We just had our Living Wills filled out this week and notarized here in Mexico because you never know when you’re going to need those kinds of things, and it’s better to be prepared than it is to wish you hadn’t procrastinated on getting that paperwork completed.

I followed Hope’s Facebook page daily. She had had at least one tumor removed before we became FB friends, and was undergoing radiation and chemotherapy when our virtual relationship began. No matter how lousy she may have felt physically, mentally and emotionally she remained positive and upbeat.

I enjoyed her numerous posts and her sense of humor — she swore a lot — and cheered on her progress against her disease, despite my opposing view on the level of treatment I was willing to endure. She was young and vibrant, and she felt she had a lot to live for. I am about twenty years older than Hope was, and I simply hope I have another ten to fifteen years left on this planet before God enrolls me in His energy recycling program.

Hope felt her treatments were going very well. Her scans were promising. All signs of her cancer had disappeared, and she believed she had won. Her jubilation was palpable, even on social media. All of her friends rejoiced with her. Including me.

Then her cancer returned in three places. Her liver, kidneys, and I cannot remember the third site no matter how hard I try. And within a matter of weeks, she was gone. I think she fought for as long and as hard as she could, and when her cancer returned, she had nothing left to fight with.

* * * *

In retrospect, I doubt Hope’s death would have hit me as hard as it did if it hadn’t come so closely after Francisco’s. Lately, I’ve had TV commercials reduce me to tears. Except the Charmin® commercials. They make want to kill those fuckin’ toilet paper hoarding ursine assholes.

Thankfully, Japan decided go ahead with the Summer Olympics despite the pandemic, despite the reservations of their people and some of the athletes, and despite the restrictions they imposed on anyone who wanted to attend the games.

The Olympic games — with all of their pageantry, ceremony, and competition — were just the distraction I needed. The backstories of the athletes were inspiring. Some of the competitions were riveting. Lea and I were on the edge of our seats more than once. And my lovely supermodel wife doesn’t really like the Olympics all that much.

She thinks the games last too long, and some of the events are, well, boring.

Because we’re US citizens living in Mexico who watch Canadian satellite TV, we found ourselves rooting for athletes from the three countries that comprise North America. And I always root for the athletes of the host nation. I think it’s the least I can do for all of the expense and effort that goes into producing and orchestrating these events.

The most significant moment of the Olympics didn’t have anything to do with performance or competition. It happened when Simone Biles dropped out of the women’s gymnastic events. It was the most courageous performance of any Olympics, ever. It highlighted the enormous stressors and pressures elite athletes are under, not just to perform, but to win at any cost. And when she said, No. My mental health is more important. It made a whole lots of people sit up and pay attention to an aspect of life that has been mostly swept under the rug.

* * * *

In a completely different but parallel universe, 25% of the front line nurses in America’s hospitals are seriously considering leaving their chosen profession because they just can’t take the workloads, the lack of support from their administrations, and the profound trauma that the COVID-19 pandemic has subjected them to.

I was a nurse for 30 years, and I can attest to the fact that nursing is a job you have to love in order to perform it — simply because it sucks far more often than it doesn’t. The worst part about nursing is it has a ton of responsibilities, but virtually no power. It is an incredibly toxic combination, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.

If you think being a patient in a hospital is bad, it’s nothing compared to working in one every day, year in, year out. Hospital administrators are about as empathetic as Genghis Khan, and studies have shown that T-Rex was capable of more compassion than most hospital administrators are today.

Nursing burnout has been discussed quietly, mostly in whispers in the dark, for a very long time. But now it is being shouted in the streets in the light of day. It is the singular most important issue the healthcare industry is going to have to address, and quickly, unless they want to deal with the fallout of a crisis of their own creation.

I’ve occasionally wondered how I would’ve responded to the COVID pandemic if I hadn’t retired when I did. One of my work daughters answered that question for me the last time Lea and I travelled to Arizona, which, ironically, happened to be one year ago this week. “Oh, you would’ve been the first person they fired.” she said. “Oh, no doubt,” my other work daughter agreed. “There’s no way you would have been able to go along with all the bullshit they put us through. You would’ve demanded better treatment, and they would’ve fired you. Absolutely.”

* * * *

The Olympics enabled me to do one thing I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do again, and that is hope. Yeah, another little bit of irony there. But maybe, just maybe, something good can come out of the deaths that have recently impacted my life. And maybe, just maybe, we will defeat this pandemic and life can assume a semblance of the normalcy we all once knew and took for granted.

That last part is very large maybe, given the resistance some people have about getting vaccinated against a disease that has killed almost 4.5 million people worldwide. And that’s with several lockdowns and quarantines. Face masks and social distancing. And all of the other safeguards that have been put in place. 4.5 million. How many more people have to die before everyone agrees that no one else should be sacrificed to the Coronavirus?

The sheer unmitigated stupidity of these people is just…indescribable. This isn’t an issue of freedom of choice. This is matter of life and death. Period. End of story.

* * * *

There’s nothing I can do to help Francisco, but his death doesn’t negate the promise I made to him. I’ve been working with a friend of mine, Dave Naisby, to put together a group of donors to financially provide for Francisco’s widow, Oyuki, and his three children for the next several years. We call it Francisco’s Angels. Every peso, every penny we collect goes directly to the family.

Oyuki needs roughly $10,000 pesos a month to put food on the table and pay her bills. That’s approximately $500 US dollars a month. I don’t think I’ve ever lived on that amount — even when I wasn’t making $500/month.

Several members of my country club have stepped up to donate on a monthly basis, but not as many people as I thought there would be. These are people who knew Francisco, and claimed to be his friend. That has been very disappointing for me. Several friends of mine from the States have stepped up and donated to this cause, which absolutely stunned me and left me crying tears of gratitude. These are people that didn’t know Francisco, and never will, and yet they opened their hearts, and wallets, to help provide for a family that is in desperate need of support.

Providing for the financial stability of Francisco’s family has become a huge honker of a deal to me. In psychological terms, I’ve sublimated my grief into this cause.

I never envisioned myself being in this position, probably because I suck at being a prophet, but I have no pride in this matter and will take help from anyone that is willing to assist me. If you would like to donate to this cause, you can contact me by leaving a comment. We’ll talk.

It’ll take about a month for your donation to get to us here. If you write a check, make a notation to Francisco’s Angels in the memo thing in the lower left-hand corner. Lea and I will provide a free one week vacation at the Chula Vista Resort and Spa, including meals, for anyone who contributes to this cause. That is a no-bullshit offer, but you have to provide your own airfare to Guadalajara…

My deepest gratitude and thanks to anyone that decides to donate to Francisco’s Angels.

Love is a Battlefield

Hey. How’s it going?

I’ve been taking a break from writing. My lovely supermodel wife and I have been going out into the town. We made a couple of trips to the Big City to buy some accessories for the house, and I’ve been doing some guy stuff in my bodega/workshop/man cave. It’s all been good.

My back is finally starting to feel better, and that’s another good thing. I actually screwed it up a couple of days ago, but I ended up screwing it up back to where it was before I screwed it up, if that makes any sense.

It feels good to be feeling better and doing something productive again.

* * * *

I started working for a living at the age of sixteen. I retired from the workforce at the age of sixty. During my years of gainful employment, I probably worked the night shift for thirty years, give or take.

I liked working nights, for the first twenty years. It was mostly quiet, and there were no bosses hanging around. I could pretty much do whatever I liked, and it gave me ample opportunity to read. I was a voracious reader at one time in my life.

But working nights takes its toll on you over time. You never really sleep, and you end up feeling kind of fuzzy all the time. I ended up hating working nights.

Some of my nocturnal positions included registered nurse, of course. I was also a long distance operator for the telephone company, a police dispatcher and perhaps the catchiest one of all: I worked 11-7 at a 7-11.

I was living in Lusk, WY at the time, and I think it was 1982. I was twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. Lusk is a small town in eastern Wyoming. I was living with a gal named Nancy at that time. I met her when I was working as a surgical technician in Elbow Lake, MN. She was a lab technician at the hospital I worked at.

Nancy was married when I first met her, and before you start thinking I spent my life breaking the Seventh Commandment as often as I could, Nancy’s husband, Jerry, got dead very unexpectedly, and that was how we got together. When she decided to move to Wyoming, I decided to go with her.

Yeah, there’s another complicated story I’ll have to get around to telling someday…

I made some good friends during the year or so that I lived there. Jim, the town dentist, who came down with Guillain-Barré syndrome and almost got dead. His darling wife, Deb. Their best friend, a guy who called himself Spud because he was from Idaho.

Spud was a good guy. We drank a lots of beers together at one of the local bars and smoked a lots of weed. He got me involved with the Lusk Jaycees, and we did a lots of community service stuff.

There was Laurie and Dean, teachers at the high school. They got married. Dina, the hot little waitress at The Pub Saloon. That was the local bar. I kind of wanted to marry Dina. Spud really wanted to marry Dina. I hope he did.

They were good people. I loved them all. Perhaps somewhat noticeable in her absence in the above list is Nancy. Well, I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me. Like I said, it was complicated.

I always thought I’d end up back in Lusk again someday, but that was not to be. It’s weird how life turns out sometimes…

* * * *

The 7-11 store I worked at was on Cedar Street, the main drag in Lusk. There were maybe 1,500 people living in and around Lusk, so there wasn’t a whole lots of customers in the store during the dead of night. Most of my customers at night were vacationers trying to get somewhere other than Lusk. Lusk was the kind of place people were from, not the place many people were going to.

The city cops and county sheriffs would drop in at the store from time to time and shoot the breeze, and I’d comp them coffee. That probably helped me get hired as their dispatcher.

Like all small towns, everyone knew everybody, and everybody knew everyone else’s business. Guys like me were a rarity. No one my age moved to Lusk, they usually moved out.

The hardest part of the job was staying awake until 5:00 AM until the morning rush when everyone in town dropped in to buy gas and coffee and stuff. I spent most of my shift cleaning the store and arranging display items.

When my shift ended, the day shift gal would relieve me. Her name was Wendy. She lived in an Airstream® trailer on the outskirts of town with her boyfriend and her three kids.

Yeah, you read that correctly. An Airstream®, about the size of a walk-in closet, maybe. It wasn’t even a trailer house. And I have no idea how she could do that either.

Wendy was a nice young gal. She was the assistant manager of the store, and she knew what she was doing at the store. Her kids were cute, like her. I didn’t like her boyfriend. No one in town did.

Well, his name was Rick.

* * * *

I think I had been working at the 7-11 for about a month the night it happened. It was a Friday night around 2:00 AM. I was sweeping the floor, so I could mop the floor, when a white Jeep pulled up to the gas pumps. I saw the Jeep out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t give it much attention until I heard a woman scream.

I turned to the sound, and saw Rick’s fist smash into Wendy’s face. She fell heavily to the ground. As she crawled to her hands and knees trying to get up, Rick kicked her in the ribs several times, then delivered one last monster kick, like he was trying to kick an eighty yard field goal.

He had to have broken every rib on the left side of her body.

I dropped the broom and ran for the door. Did I just see what I thought I just saw? I wondered. Rick had gotten back into the Jeep by the time I reached the door, and started driving off. Fast!

I thought Wendy had to have gotten dead after the punch and all the kicks she had received, but she jumped up to her feet, and ran the Jeep down as it turned onto Cedar Street. Then she punched the window out of the passenger door and leapt inside the Jeep as it made the jump to lightspeed and disappeared in the darkness.

I stood in the parking lot for a minute or two, still trying to figure out if I had actually seen what I just saw, or if I had imagined it all. When I found Wendy’s purse by the gas pumps, and the thousands of pieces of tempered glass littering the parking lot, I knew it had been real.

I took Wendy’s purse inside and called the police.

* * * *

The cops arrived within minutes. They wrote down my statement, and decided to drive out to Wendy’s Airstream® to make sure she was still alive.

“Aren’t you going arrest him?” I asked.

“Well, if Wendy wants to press charges this time we will, but this isn’t the first time it’s happened, and she wouldn’t file charges any of the other times.”

“How many times are we talking about here?” I asked. The two officers looked at each other and scratched their heads.

“What is this? The fourth time?” one of them asked.

“I think it’s the fifth.” the other replied.

“Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“Jesus! That’s fuckin’ terrible!”

“Yep. Damn shame.”

* * * *

I swept the parking lot that night, cleaning up the blizzard of pieces of glass, then I went back inside the store and mopped the floor. The police returned in an hour or two. They had Rick with them. He wasn’t wearing handcuffs. The cops drove him to the store to retrieve Wendy’s purse. Rick was too drunk drive back to the store himself. I handed the purse over to him.

“I’m really sorry about what happened.” he said.

“I’m not the person you should be apologizing to.” I replied. As Rick was walking out the door, one of the cops turned to look at me.

“Who’s relieving you?” he asked.

“Wendy…”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. We tried to take her to the hospital. She refused. She won’t be back here for at least a week.”

* * * *

Wendy called around 5:00 AM to tell me she couldn’t come in. I told her I was surprised she was still alive.

“Oh, it was all my fault. I was drunk and I started nagging Rick about getting a job again. I had to open my big mouth, and, well, I had it coming.”

“Wendy, I don’t care what you said, no one deserves to be beaten the way you were! That guy should be in jail!”

“No, don’t say that! He’s a good guy, really.”

“He’s a scumbag! I can’t believe you’re defending him after what he did to you!”

But she did, like he was the fucking Hero of the World or something. It was my first exposure to Battered Woman Syndrome. It’s a psychological condition the victim develops after years of being abused, resulting in a sort of learned helplessness.

I would come to know a whole lots of battered women who seemingly had their brains turned into Silly Putty® by their abusive partners during my career as a psych nurse. It’s a tricksy thing to treat, surpassed only by eating disorders in my opinion.

Suffice to say my fifteen minute conversation with Wendy didn’t do much of anything to change her mindset or her situation. She eventually came back to work. She continued to live with Rick in their closet on wheels.

I would leave the 7-11 not long after witnessing the brutal beating Wendy received from the guy that loved her. The cops were hiring, and I became their night dispatcher. I can’t remember how long I worked for the police, but when my strange relationship with Nancy fell apart, I decided to get out of town, and moved back to Minnesota in 1983.

I would start nursing school in 1985.

Like most of the things in my past, memories pop into my head at odd times, unbidden, yet somehow insistent that they be recalled, and perhaps admired before they’re returned to shelf where memories are stored.

It surprises me how things that were once so shiny and bright fade over time, and how things that were dark and miserable can take on a glimmer and sheen that were unimaginable at the time they happened.

I’m doing a lots of reminiscing of late. Maybe that’s what people do when they retire. Life. So sad, and so beautiful. So strange at times, and so sweet. And sometimes, far too short.

How to Save a Life

As a nurse, I was given the opportunity to save at least a couple of lives during my career. I never had to talk someone off of a ledge or anything cool like that, but I did talk to a lots of depressed people and helped them try to find a reason to keep living.

That’s really the key to surviving a serious bout of depression. Not killing yourself. Suicide greatly decreases your chances of ever getting better. And it really, really messes up your family. Suicide is never a good idea. Talk to someone. Get some help. Do something!

Please.

When I was a nurse, I was certified in CPR. I think it’s probably a requirement for most nurses nowadays. I went through periodic recertification every year or two. And you need that refresher training, unless you do a lots of CPR. It was a skill I had to utilize only a few times in my career.

I think the only time that I may have saved someone with CPR was at the MVAMC. It was in the dead of night, of course. An old manic guy had collapsed in his room, and one of the other nurses discovered him laying on the floor, unresponsive. She called out for help, and all nurses on the floor went running.

If you don’t perform a lots of CPR, it’s kind of a tricksy thing. There’s a series of steps you’re supposed to follow, but in an emergency you tend not to remember them, and you can’t call a time out to check the manual. Adrenaline takes over your brain, and you just react.

This guy wasn’t breathing and I couldn’t feel a pulse, so I started chest compressions. And, I probably broke half of his ribs. That’s actually normal, especially with an elderly patient.

If you’ve never had a broken rib, or a lots of broken ribs, it kind of hurts like hell. And that’s probably what revived the old manic guy I was working on more than anything else. He took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and then punched me in the mouth, splitting my lower lip open.

Oscar Wilde was correct, again. No good deed goes unpunished.

I’ve unsuccessfully performed CPR a couple of times. Unlike TV, where everyone needing CPR survives and lives happily ever after, there’s about a 10% success rate in reality, and not everyone that survives lives happily ever after.

That’s why healthcare professionals have Advanced Directives and Living Wills, and 80% of us are DNR/DNI. If I collapse in front of you, just step over my body and keep on walking. I will fucking sue you if you even think about touching me.

I’m serious. I may punch you in the mouth.

I was a psych nurse, and there’s a little known fact about Psychiatry. The vast majority of our patients were sincerely depressed and suicidal while they were being assessed for admission. And the moment they learned they were going to be admitted, they were no longer suicidal.

In order to get admitted, you had to meet criteria. If you so much as whispered the S-word, you had to be admitted. And believe me, our patients knew the drill. Getting into the hospital was their primary objective. Their lives had gone to hell, and the hospital was their sanctuary and refuge.

There are many anxiety provoking aspects of psych nursing, but one of the worst is a patient that sincerely wants to kill themself after they’re admitted.

If someone truly wants to kill themself, they’ll eventually find a way. It’s true. I could suggest you talk to someone that committed suicide, but…

Our objective as nurses was to make sure they didn’t find a way to kill themselves while they were in the hospital. I had four patients take their lives while they were on my unit in my thirty years as a psych nurse, and it was a traumatic experience for everyone, staff and patients, every time.

I performed CPR on two of them, and I knew both times I wasn’t going to be bringing either one of them back. You don’t have to be a coroner to know when you’re looking at a dead person. They became organ donors, so they were able to help others in that regard. I do not recommend this method of organ donation, ever.

Life and death, they become part of the job when you work in healthcare. You win some, you lose some. You go on, or you quit because you can’t deal with it anymore.

But what if you’re not an healthcare professional? And you don’t have a lots of training? What if you’re just a guy riding your bike to work one morning? Then you might be my brother, Tom.

* * * *

My brother used to be a cook at the Perkins® restaurant in Sauk Rapids, MN. Like me, when I was I nursing school, he had a car that started about half of the time he wanted to drive it, and when it wouldn’t start, he rode his bike to work.

It must’ve been a morning that his car wouldn’t start, hence, the bike. And as he was pedaling his way to work, a panic-stricken woman ran toward him, screaming.

“Help! Help me! My son! I think he’s dead!” And she pointed toward a pickup truck in the yard, then ran to the house to call 911.

Her son was a teenage boy, and his head was stuck in the door of his truck, which was up against a tree in the yard. There’s a bit of a backstory to this. The boy was teaching his younger sister how to drive his truck. I’m not sure why they were driving in the yard, but it was Minnesota…

So, his sister was driving, and her brother was walking beside the passenger side of the truck, with the door open, giving her instructions on how to shift the manual transmission. I’m going to guess everything was going fine, until the truck got close to the tree. It was a really big tree.

It’s kind of difficult to imagine how something like this could actually happen, but the girl drove the truck really close to the tree–the passenger door of the truck was right up against the trunk of the tree–and wedged in between the door and the body of his truck was the head of the teenage boy, with the tree trunk as a giant doorstop holding the kid’s head hostage.

“His head was really fuckin’ stuck! His neck was caught between the door and the chassis and the tree. It was something so stupid even you couldn’t have done that!” Tom said, when he described the incident to me. “I tried to pull him out, but I couldn’t. So I ran around to the driver’s side. The girl that was driving was scared shitless. She was white as ghost. She had one foot on clutch, and the other on the brake, and her legs were shaking like crazy. Her brother was making all these weird choking noises, and his face was purple.

“I told the girl to shift into reverse, and she said, ‘I don’t know how!’ She was beyond freaked out, you know? She couldn’t fuckin’ move! The truck was in gear, if her foot would’ve slipped off the clutch, she would’ve chopped her brother’s head off, just like that.

“So I reached across her, and shifted it into reverse, then I lifted her leg just enough to engage the transmission to back the truck up. And when her brother fell to the ground, I reached in and shut the truck off, you know, so she wouldn’t run him over.

“I don’t know how long the kid had been stuck like that, but he didn’t look good. I mean, I thought he was dead. He wasn’t breathing, and his face was all purple and shit. I figured he needed CPR, you know, but I wasn’t gonna kiss him! So I just pushed on his chest, real hard, and then he started breathing again. And then he started looking better, and not all purple and shit anymore, and that was a big relief.

“I could hear sirens coming, so I figured an ambulance was on the way. So, I got on my bike and went to work. I didn’t want to be late.”

And that’s how my own bro became the Unknown Hero of Sauk Rapids. And he probably saved that kid’s life. I know his mother thought Tom had saved her son’s life. And his scared shitless sister did too.

I’m not sure if that kid ever tried teaching his sister how to drive again, but I doubt he ever tried teaching her by walking next to the truck with the door open again.

Tom wouldn’t stay the Unknown Hero. The next time he had to ride his bike to work, the entire family came running out of the house to thank him when they saw him pedaling down the road. They more or less adopted him as their official Wonderful Guy. A few years later when Tom almost got dead from a motor vehicle accident, they all came to visit him at the hospital.

* * * *

The accident my brother was in was because of something stupid Gary did while driving his car, and Tom was his passenger. Dan, Shorty and I would hear Tom’s version of the story, and Gary’s. Tom’s version won. And Gary was officially stupid, stupid, stupid.

Gary’s car was totaled in the accident, and his leg was smashed all to bits. He had to be put back together with metal rods and a lots of screws. He would spend close to a month in the hospital.

Tom had been hospitalized overnight for observation, and there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with him, so he was released the next day. I think it was a Sunday. I drove down to whatever little podunk town Tom and Gary had been in at the time of the accident to pick my brother up.

Tom and I were roommates at that time of our lives, and that would’ve been around January of 1980, I think. I had just started surgical technician school. We had an apartment across the street from the Vo-Tech.

A night or two later, my brother started complaining of severe abdominal pain, and his belly looked like a damn watermelon. I possibly helped save Tom’s life by recognizing his spleen had ruptured and got his ass to the St Cloud Hospital where he had emergency surgery.

Tom has never forgiven Gary for almost killing him to death.

But we all did stupid stuff back then, me and all of my friends from back in the day. Tom, Gary, Shorty and Dan. It’s probably more than a few miracles that any of us are still alive today.

Shorty almost killed me more than once, and he almost killed Dan to death and wrecked his motorcycle beyond all repair once. Dan almost got me dead at least once. I have no idea how many times I almost killed my best friends. You’d have to ask them. But we saved each other’s asses more times than any of us can count.

And that’s pretty much what life, and friendship, are all about.

And Deliver Us From Evil

I had my third session with Diamond Dave today. He performed his usual therapeutic assault on my body. And he also gave me a lots to think about.

Diamond Dave suggested I start sitting in a different chair at home. The fact that I haven’t gotten a lots better is somewhat confusing to both of us, so there has to be something still aggravating my back.

We have a couch, a love seat and kind of a captain’s chair in our living room. I rarely used the captain’s chair in Arizona, but it’s been a different story down here in Mexico. Lea and her kit-ten have taken up residence on the couch, and I started sitting in the captain’s chair. I figured it hadn’t gotten much use in the last nine years…

I had actually considered the chair as a possible suspect for my back problem prior to my appointment today. We’ll see how this plays out. Today, I’m semi-sprawled across the love seat, looking at the mountains on the other side of Lake Chapala. It’s quite lovely, actually. And once my back settles down after getting pummeled, I may even feel lovely myself.

The other thing David suggested is that I wear shoes whenever I’m not in bed. I think the chair is a much better suspect for the back pain I’ve been experiencing than my tendency to walk barefoot. But I’m willing to try anything if it means I can put this behind me.

That was interesting, but today’s major topic of discussion was energy.

* * * *

I may have mentioned this before, but I find Diamond Dave to be a rather interesting guy. And I’m pretty sure he’s a guy. David likes to wax philosophic about any number of subjects. And while I’m not sure exactly what sort of training one has to endure to become a Bowen Therapist, I think understanding energy flow has to be part of it.

I’m going to condense most of what David said into the next few sentences. After that, it’s all me. Humans are incredible energy generators. Think of feelings. In essence, a feeling is nothing more than emotional energy. The energy we generate can be positive. It can be negative. And it can be evil.

Now, as a guy, I am hardly an expert on emotions. If you doubt this, you can ask my wife. Guys have three basic emotions. Okay. Not okay. And pissed. We experience varying degrees of pissed, and these are expressed by the swear word in front of the word pissed. Guys can also be happy, but we use the word tits when we’re in that state of emotional bliss.

As a psych nurse, I knew something about emotions. Mostly that you need to tone yours down, okay? Most of my patients were emotionally out of control, that’s why they were in the hospital. And my job was to help them get a grip.

Unless they were evil. Then my job was to make them disappear as fast as possible and make sure no one ever spoke their name out loud again, ever. Or the evil people would be back.

I didn’t meet a lots of evil people as a psych nurse, but I met far more than I would’ve liked. Evil people are flat out scary, even when they’re trying to be nice. Actually, that might’ve been when they were at their scariest.

The two most evilest people I ever met were two people that had separately set themselves on fire. On purpose. They, and everyone else on the planet, would’ve been better off if they had been given another gasoline shower and a lit cigarette to finish the job. You might think that harsh, but I don’t really care what you think. Not about this.

There were very few people that effected me the way those two did. I would’ve killed them if I ever ran into them on the street. I’ve given this a lots of thought, and I’m pretty sure that’s a true statement. Seriously, I would’ve gone over the curb to run them over with my car while they stood on the sidewalk. And then I’d call the police and wait for them to arrive, but only if the burned people were dead. Otherwise, I would’ve kept running them over.

* * * *

As a Christian, I was raised to believe in evil, a very evil spirit named Satan. Once I decided to walk away from everything I had been taught about God, I also walked away from my belief in the devil. I was never able to stop believing in God, but I find it almost impossible to believe there’s an embodiment of ultimate evil anymore.

This is not to say I don’t believe in evil. I do. Evil exists, and it is very real. I fear its influence on the world in which we live appears to be growing stronger. I may not believe in Satan, but I’ve encountered some weird stuff getting lost seeking the Truth. Satan or not, there are some evil-ass things lurking out there in the darkness.

Satan is a Hebrew word that means opposer, or adversary. In the Book of Job, Satan appears in Heaven as kind of a prosecuting attorney if you will, that God allows to test Job’s faith. Satan is hardly the embodiment of ultimate evil. He appears to actually have been God’s ally.

According to Christian belief, Satan was thrown down from Heaven. Jesus said he witnessed this event. And because Jesus said this, it has to be true, right? Jesus was quite good at saying one thing while meaning something completely different at the same time. But if satan simply means opposer, well, this statement could mean that nothing that opposes God is tolerated in Heaven, and nothing more. And it still makes sense.

My dad didn’t live in Heaven, but he had a rule very similar to the above stated concept. My house, my rules. Anytime you decide you don’t like my rules, pack your bags and get the hell out.

I’m not sure when Satan transformed into the black-hearted sonuvabitch he is today. It was Satan that tricked Eve, right? No, it wasn’t. Satan is not mentioned as being in the Garden of Eden. There’s a serpent in the Garden, but the serpent isn’t named Satan.

There’s a common myth that Satan the devil used to be an angel of light named Lucifer that fell from grace and was banished from Heaven. And there’s the story that the fall of Lucifer came about because he refused the command of God to kneel before God’s masterpiece of creation, Adam.

In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan famously states, “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.” I’ve given this some serious thought about that scenario. I probably would’ve done the same thing as Lucifer. If any of those myths are true, Lucifer/Satan doesn’t appear to be evil, he appears to be some kind of genius. With morals, and integrity.

He probably has me beat.

The Greek word for Satan is diabolos, which means slanderer. Satan is described as the father of all lies. However, lying is not a sin, and God doesn’t seem to have had any problems with the fact that all of the people He initially chose to interact with would lie about something, or even a lots of things.

From my point of view, there’s nothing that opposes the Will of God quite as perfectly as human will, and pride. And if that is true, then Satan lives and breathes inside of all of us. If I do this, it will please God. But if I do this other thing, it’ll please me! To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, Lead me not into temptation, for I can find it all by myself. In my experience, if Satan does exist, he’s never had to break a sweat to get me to “sin.”

I also find the concept of sin interesting. At this point in my life, I think the only real sin is thinking we’re separated from God. And as for the Ten Commandments, those are the building blocks of an happy life. If you do these things, your life will be much better. I have some experience with this. Personally, I’ve broken nine of the Ten Commandments, and my life was pretty much a mess.

One of the most amusing things to me about getting back into the church is the current Christian view about Satan, and how he is constantly seeking to distract and derail good Christians from their faith. Satan, it seems, has all kinds of spooky superpowers.

My darling daughter, Gwendolyn, told me this story about a Women’s Breakfast she went to at her church. There were electrical issues at the facility, and one of the organizers said, “Well, y’all, I guess Satan didn’t want us to have pancakes this morning…” Because, apparently, there’s nothing that will precipitate a crisis of faith like not being able to eat pancakes. Especially in Texas.

* * * *

There’s one other illustration of evil in the Bible. It concerns the Grigori, or the Seven Watchers. The Grigori were a group of angels that were supposed to keep an eye on God’s human children, and teach. But somewhere along the way, while the Grigori were, you know, watching, they noticed that the daughters of men were totally hot, and they started doing a lots more than watching.

The Grigori weren’t evil, they were good angels. Neither were the cute and adorable farmer’s daughters the Grigori had sex with. The Muffys of the ancient world couldn’t help it if they were irresistible to angels.

But their children were evil in a way that the world had never seen before, nor presumably, since.

And that’s not where Noah and the Ark come in, if you believe this story. God didn’t want to wipe out the human race, he wanted to wipe out the mutant children of the Grigori and the cute and adorable Muffys of ancient times. And behold, there was a great flood.

God apparently chose to feel some sort of remorse afterwards, and promised to never flood the earth like that again, and created the rainbow to remind Himself of His promise, just in cases, God forbid, He forgets.

We should probably all pray that rainbows never go extinct.

And one last word of warning. If you ever encounter an angel, whatever you do, do not have sex with it.

It’s Good Work (If You Can Get It)

I’ve been working on a few projects around the house for the last few days. Our dining room chairs need to be reupholstered, so I’ve been removing the staples, the hundreds of staples, that secured the old fabric to the chairs.

It’s been slow going, but there’s no deadline for me to finish this task, so I have that going for me. My back is still bothering me, and I have to pace myself. I do about one chair a day. I’ve finished four, and have two to go.

The current fabric is a kind of hideous blue, and the only reason it’s an hideous shade of blue is it doesn’t match anything else in our house. Lea wants to put a faux animal print on our refurbished chairs, I think it’s leopard, and that will totally match the jungle themed niches in the dining room. The finished product will be darling, I’m sure.

I’ll post pictures on my Facebook page when it’s all done.

I’m also planning on building a goldarn thing in the carport bodega. Bodega is a vague-ish Mexican term for a storage area. There are two bodegas at our house. The carport bodega is the smaller of the two. The larger bodega is down the patio stairs and to the right. It’s where I keep most of my tools and our Christmas decorations.

Goldarn things are immensely useful. They have a thousand and one uses, and can be made out of anything, and can be pretty much any shape. I’m planning on making my goldarn thing out of wood in a rectangle shape with a couple of doors on the front, and I plan on storing kit-ten supplies in it. I’ve got a couple of other ideas I’m kicking around, but nothing has crystallized yet

However, Lea has forbidden me to start working on any of my projects until my back is better. This could take awhile. To give you an idea how bad it is, I didn’t even argue with her, not that I would’ve won even if I had offered an argument…  I’ve basically had two pain free days since this started, and today is not one of them.

I’ve been watching a lots of HGTV and the DIY Network since I retired. That makes me a consistent viewer, not a master carpenter. I’m not interested in knocking down any walls to create a more open concept. Besides, we’re renting this house. I doubt Planet Janet would be pleased if I decided to do any major renovations her lovely house.

I’m kind of an handy guy to have around the house. I probably inherited that talent from my mom. My dad wasn’t very handy when it came to fixing anything. In fact, whenever he had a tool in his hand, we would make popcorn and gather around him to watch. It was better than cartoons.

My handyman talents were something my lovely supermodel wife didn’t realize or appreciate when we first got married. She was actually pretty handy, too. However, once she realized this, she bought me a truckload of power tools, and I’ve gotten a lots of use out of them over the years.

Acts of Service speak volumes to Lea, it’s her favorite Language of Love, but what she says she appreciates most is that I don’t overestimate my skills and take on a job that surpasses my talents.

Major plumbing repairs? Um, I’ll call a plumber. Electrical issues? Not going there. I peed on an electric fence at my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid. Once. I’ve had a very healthy respect for electricity ever since.

I did a lots of stuff around our house in Minneapolis. It was built in 1921, and it needed a lots of repairs and maintenance. Lea and I painted every room in our house. Twice. I painted the master bedroom three times, and added crown molding. I built a whole lots of shelves in the basement for storage.

Little Known Fact About Storage Space: The amount of stuff you have will automatically expand to fill the storage space you have available.

I made the end tables that compliment our coffee table. They’re all made of old barn wood, and while they’re technically not antiques, they look old as all get out. And I made an entertainment center to hold my TV and stereo equipment.

Not bad for a guy that had a hard time making a chopping board in shop class.

My home repairs in Arizona were mostly limited to my garage, and I did a lots of stuff out there to make it more functional, and create more storage space. The house was essentially a new house, and didn’t need much of anything from me. I limited myself to minor repairs, like repairing cosmetic issues and touch up paint jobs, though Lea and I did install a custom closet system in the master suite.

It wasn’t a lot, but it created the illusion I was providing a valuable service. That’s basically what I do now. And it gives me something to do. By the way, if you plan on doing anything like unto a repair, buy a pair of overalls and put some tools in your pockets. Even if you have no idea what you’re doing, you’ll look like you do. And sometimes, that’s all you have to do.

One of the things I learned when I worked Gero/Psych was many of our patients had lost their sense of purpose after they retired. As a result, they became depressed, or started drinking a lots.

Having too much time on your hands is not a good thing. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. I didn’t know the devil even had a workshop. Maybe that’s where platypuses came from…

Much like God, people need to have a purpose. After all, we’re created in His image, are we not? Purpose appears to be a necessary component of life. Like, oxygen.

Yeah, it’s that important.

More than a few retired people I’ve talked to have had problems transitioning from their work life to their retirement life.

I had nothing to do!

Most of us dream of the day when we’ll have nothing to do, right? And then we discover that doing nothing is, well, boring as hell. And when that’s all you have to do, it can be overwhelming. It may or may not have been the reason why my back is just about killing me now. I still like to think I’m better adjusted than that, but I cannot deny that my back is a disaster area right now. And the fact that there was no identifiable cause only makes it more suspicious.

And while the concept of doing nothing being stressful and difficult to adapt to might sound like the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever heard, let me assure you, it’s not. They call it a retirement plan for a reason.

Like it or not, what we do for a living becomes a big part of what we are. When you meet someone new, What do you do? is probably going to be in your top five questions. And the answer to that question had better be something. Especially if you want a second date.

If nothing else, working for a living gave me a reason to get out of bed and practice good oral hygiene. And it paid the bills. It also allowed me to start saving for our retirement, and I would encourage anyone that reads this to start doing that, if you’re not already doing so.

I took a lots of pride in what I did when I was a psych nurse, and I had high standards of performance not only for myself, but for all the people on my team. You better bring your ‘A’ game. That was one of the reasons people liked working with me. They knew I would do my job, and that made it easier for them to do their job.

Almost everyone wants to do a good job doing whatever it is they’re doing, even strippers. And if you don’t mind having a bunch of strangers seeing you naked, in terms of technical difficulty, taking your clothes off while you dance seems like it would be one of the easiest jobs ever invented.

One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from one of my co-workers. As I was sitting on the floor outside of my DON’s office waiting to clock in, she said, “I was so happy to your car in the parking lot this morning! I knew I was going to have a good day because you’re here!”

It doesn’t get much better than that. I almost had a multiple orgasm. And speaking of that little troll, one of the reasons I hated working with her was because I ended up doing half her job, along with all of mine.

I don’t receive many compliments for a job well done these days. For one thing, I don’t really do much anymore, and I don’t get paid for the things I do. I’m not going to be getting any more promotions or bonuses. The most consistent task I’m responsible for is cleaning out the litter box every morning, and does my cat ever thank me? No. The ungrateful little feline…

And watering my marigolds. They’re looking pretty good, now that the gardeners know not to fuck with them again. Ever.

Our self image is greatly tied to our ability to do something/anything well. And it’s not just how we view ourselves, it’s how others view us, too. We are judged by the quality of our work. It starts in grade school, and it never really ends. Fair or not, that’s just the way it is, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

So, go forth, and be successful. Do good work, and take pride in what you do. Bring your ‘A’ game, every day. If you’re contemplating becoming a stripper, send me a demo video, I’ll let you know what I think. Be one of those people that makes the lives of your co-workers better. Don’t be a troll that makes everyone groan when they see your car in the parking lot.

Success is measured by your accomplishments, and nothing else. No one gives a damn about the shit you almost did. What do you call the team that almost won the Super Bowl?

Losers.

Horrible Bosses, Part II

I’m struggling to figure out how to start this installment of my blog. Maybe if I acknowledge that, I can get started.

My lovely supermodel wife was in the hospital recovering from her fourth, and most devastating surgery of the five surgeries she would have in that time period.

My mother-in-law had died on the table in the Operating Room. Lea’s dad and her sister, Leslie, were using my house as their headquarters to contact their family to inform everyone about Wanda’s passing, and plan her funeral.

I can’t remember exactly how I ended up being chosen to write her eulogy…  It might have been because of all the things I said about her when we went to see her body the night she died. Dave was touched, and may have asked me to say something at her memorial service. I would spend a few days camped in front of my computer monitor, writing and editing and rewriting what I wanted to say.

My boss and her boss, Marj and Mary, had done the unthinkable. They had questioned whether I really needed to take a week off after the sudden death of my mother-in-law.

And that’s how this story gets started.

* * * *

I wasn’t particularly close to anyone in Lea’s family at that time. Her parents lived almost two thousand miles away. I hadn’t actually seen them in person more than a handful of times. I liked Wanda, she was a sweet gal. Dave was a difficult guy to like. Even the people that knew him best agreed on that.

This was my first time meeting Lea’s sister and her husband. She didn’t come to our wedding, she didn’t approve of Lea marrying a man she had known less than six months. Leslie and Lea were as different as two sisters could be. I didn’t quite know what to think of her the first time we met. But I really liked her husband. Bill was a really sweet guy, and he had a great sense of humor. We became friends almost immediately.

The relatives started arriving. They dropped by the house to see Dave and Leslie and Bill.

Shirley, Dave’s sister. Pat, Wanda’s sister. Gene, Dave’s brother. And Joan, Gene’s wife. I met them all and listened to their stories about Wanda. And that’s how I learned about her life and what kind of woman she was. And those stories would become the eulogy I wrote.

I focused on that, but in the back of my mind I started writing another paper. One that would take my horrible boss and her even more horrible boss out at the knees.

I split time that week between my house and Fairview Medical Center. Lea’s fourth surgery had resulted in the removal of all of her colon, and about ten feet of her small bowel as well. And there was one more thing. She had an ileostomy with an external pouch.

My lovely supermodel wife was devastated.

It was a difficult time for us. Lea was reluctant to tell me the result of her surgery. She was distant and distracted. I attributed her response to the death of her mother. I knew I would’ve been distraught if my mother had died. Her surgeon had informed me about the results of Surgery #4, so I wasn’t completely in the dark about what had got happened.

I spent hours at the hospital, saying nothing, watching my wife sleep. She slept more after that surgery than any of the others. I had many whispered conversations with her nurses and the visitors that dropped in to see her.

It was maybe toward the middle of the week that she told me she had an ileostomy. Tears rolled down her face like rain. I think I asked her what took her so long to tell me.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t think of me as a whole person anymore.”

“Honey, if wanted someone who was all there, I never would’ve married you.”

Sometimes, a guy just has to reassure his wife.

* * * *

Lea’s doctor had to write an order for a pass so Lea could go to her mother’s funeral service on Friday. I brought an outfit she requested to the hospital. It was probably the first time she’d worn something besides an hospital gown in a month.

Wanda’s service was held at a funeral home. Dave wasn’t a big believer in God. He never went to church, and he wasn’t about to start now.

Bill had also been selected to say a few words at Wanda’s service. The gist of his words was knowing when you’ve had enough and when to say when. And that was one of Wanda’s graces. She knew when she’d had enough.

And then I took the podium.

I first met David and Wanda the day before Lea and I got married in 1988. I got the impression on our wedding day that Wanda was quite a character, but it wasn’t until the first Saturday after we were married that I truly realized how much of a character Wanda was. And that was when the telephone rang at 6:00 AM.

Lea says she has been trying unsuccessfully for 22 years to get her mother to call her at a later hour. Lea’s sister, Leslie, had been lobbying for 30 years. It’s a certainty that what the two of them couldn’t achieve in a combined 52 years, I wasn’t going to change in the 6 years that I knew Wanda. Dave and I were talking the other day and he said, “The girls are really going to miss their mother calling them on Saturday morning.” I think I can speak for Leslie and Lea when I say, “Dave, if you want to call us at 6:00 AM on Saturday morning, please pick up the phone and give us a call.”

Speaking only for myself, I’d like to point out that 8:00 AM is a very fine hour. 9:00 AM is a good hour, also. Seriously Dave; anytime, any day, you want to call, call us. Any time.

I remember the trip Lea and I took to Harlingen, TX a couple years ago to see her parents. You can practically spit into Mexico from their mailbox, so of course we took a trip to one of the border towns nearby. Dave and I found we aren’t very good at haggling with the street vendors in Mexico. I’d see something I like and ask how much it cost and the vendor would say, “$50.00.” And I’d say, “Okay.” Wanda came to my rescue. And she was a tough negotiator, so Dave and I did the only sensible thing we could do under the circumstances. We left the shopping to Wanda and Lea, and we went to go have a few beers.

Another story I have of Wanda is one that Dave told me recently. When Dave and Wanda lived up here in Minnesota, they had season tickets to the Vikings games. Back then, the Vikings played football outdoors at Metropolitan Stadium. It was out in the elements, and football was football. The players got their uniforms dirty and everything. Also back then, the fans would have tailgate parties out at the Met, set up their barbecues an partied in the parking lot at Met Stadium–did all that stuff that no one can do now that the Metrodome is here. After one of the games Dave and Wanda and their group had their tailgate party going, and there was another group or two not far away. Back then, some of the Viking players would stop in and have a beer and a burger with the fans, and a former Vikings wide receiver named Gene Washington was doing that with a group not far from where Dave and Wanda were at.

A crowd of young boys had gathered around Mr. Washington, hoping to get his autograph, but Mr. Washington wasn’t in an autograph signing mood. He told the kids to leave him alone. When Wanda saw that she went over to Mr. Washington and told him, “Those boys idolize you, you’re their hero. All they want from you is an autograph–You should be ashamed of yourself!” And I can just see Wanda doing that.

I won’t repeat Mr. Washington’s reply to Wanda, but needless to say he wasn’t very polite, nor did he sign any autographs for those boys.

I was probably the same age as some of those boys were when that incident happened. When I was a young boy I worshipped the Vikings, I watched all their games, I idolized the players. They were my heroes. And Gene Washington was one of my heroes. But I have a different hero now.

There’s a saying that goes, “When you’re Irish, you know that sooner or later the world’s going to break your heart.” And it is true. It is so true.

If there’s any consolation for those of us gathered here to remember Wanda, it is this: Heroes, true heroes, never die. Their actions, their deeds and their legacies live forever. 

It would be the first of the four eulogies I’ve done in my life. It was the most difficult public speech I had ever attempted. Only my dad’s eulogy would surpass it terms of personal heartache for me.

Lea returned to the hospital almost immediately after the service. I didn’t take her back–I think Gwen drove her–but I remember walking into her room when I got to the hospital after the meal. There’s always food after a funeral in Minnesota. Lea’s clothes were strewn on the floor. Lea never did that. I knew her suffering vastly surpassed mine. I was afraid this blow might be too much for her to take. She was asleep in bed, again. I folded her clothes and hung them in her closet, then sat down and watched her sleep.

But in my mind, I was writing the paper I would send to my Director of Nursing at the MVAMC. A paper that would more than even the score against the heartless bitches that were making my life miserable at work, and get them off my back.

It would be the greatest thing I ever wrote.

* * * *

There’s only problem I have with my greatest work of prose now. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote anymore, and I didn’t save a copy of it.

I know I outlined the situation regarding my wife’s lengthy illness, and the life and death situation it had become. And I was especially clear about what Marj and Mary had said after my mother-in-law died, and how she had travelled up to Minnesota from the bottom of Texas to see her daughter one last time.

I know I talked about the qualities of caring and compassion that nurses are endowed with, except when regarding our colleagues. That’s really all I wanted. I wanted to be treated with a little compassion, and I wanted my goddamn bosses to stop hitting me with a guilt trip every time I needed to take time off because my wife was in the hospital fighting for her life.

I think my write up was about five pages long. I returned to work to another stretch of nights. I put my paper into an intraoffice mailing envelope, and addressed it to the DON. I would hear from my co-workers about its effect.

The DON at the MVAMC was a gal named Betty Theis. She was a no-nonsense, tough as nails administrator. Steel wished it was made of Betty, and when she got angry, grown men had been known to start crying under her unrelenting gaze.

I really wish I could have been present when Betty summoned Marj and Mary to her office. My co-workers told me Marj looked like she had seen two ghosts when she returned to the unit, and closed the door to her office. Her eyes were red from crying when she left.

Marj called me into her office when I returned to working days.

“I know you’ve gone through a lot lately, and I haven’t been as supportive as I could.” That would be the closest thing to an apology I would receive from Marj. Mary would only speak to me one more time while she worked at the MVAMC, and it would not be an apology.

But it was what Marj said next that truly surprised me.

“I think you’re depressed and suicidal, and I’m sending you see an EAP counselor.” I think I may have started laughing at her, and at the very least, I had to have flashed her a smile of amusement. Of all the things I anticipated she might say, this was one thing I most certainly hadn’t expected.

Nurses might have a lots of duties and responsibilities, but no part of a my job description, or Marj’s for that matter, had anything to do with diagnosing anyone. I probably could have gotten her dumb ass fired for that remark, but that had never been part of my agenda.

So I went to the EAP Office to meet with my counselor. He met me at the door. He was a nice guy that had trouble believing I was the suicidal guy he was supposed to save.

“You drove here yourself? No one accompanied you? I heard you were an imminent suicide risk!”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard, too.”

I told my counselor my story. By the time I finished, I think he wanted to kill Marj.

“I don’t think you’re depressed, or suicidal. I think you’ve been through a lot of stress, for an extended period of time, and I think both you and your wife need some time to just take everything in so you can put your lives back together.”

I was hoping his recommendation would be for me to take a month off.

“Look. You won the battle. Don’t lose the war. Go back to work. Keep your head down, and I’d look for a new position if I were you. Your boss,” he said. “Is nuts!”

That guy gave me some good advice when I needed it most. The more I thought about Marj’s response, the more I started thinking maybe I should make getting her dumb ass fired part of my agenda.

But the last thing I needed at that time was to fight a war on a second front. I took his advice. I went back to work and kept my head down. I tried not to turn my back on my horrible boss, just in cases she had a knife in her hand.

And I took the first opportunity I had to apply for another pysch position at the MVAMC,. A staff nurse position opened up on the other psych unit, and I interviewed with Kevin. It would end up being the smartest career move I made at the VA, and once free of Marj, I would start to become a great psych nurse.

And more importantly, my wife would finally start getting better, and our lives together would finally begin to achieve some measure of balance.

But that would be in the future, and there would be plenty of challenges waiting for us to face. And one in particular that almost destroyed our marriage.

A Rose By Any Other Name

I first met Rose when I started working at MIHS, Maricopa Integrated Healthcare Services, otherwise known as the County. Maricopa Medical Center was the ancient hospital that was its primary treatment facility. And by ancient I mean it was built in the 1970’s. There’s not a lots of historical places in Phoenix.

MIHS also provided psychiatric care, and they had two facilities for that. The first was the Psych Annex. That’s where I worked. It was a nondescript two story building behind the medical center. The second was Desert Vista, a much newer, incredibly secure building in Mesa. It’s the place you’ll end up at if there’s ever a petition for court ordered examination/treatment filed against you.

I’m sure I’ve suppressed some of the memories I have of working there, mostly because I hated the management there so much. I really liked the people I worked with, and the patients I cared for weren’t terribly different than the patients I’d taken care of at the MVAMC.

I left the MVAMC in October of 2007, and started working for MIHS in November. And that’s when I met Rose.

What do you think of when you think of a rose? A beautiful, fragrant flower, right?

Yeah, that wasn’t Rose.

She was loud, intrusive, disruptive and did I mention loud? She was rude and undisciplined. Her hygiene was crude, her manners were random and unpredictable. And watching her eat could ruin your appetite for a few days. On top of that, she was also one of the most profoundly psychotic persons I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine what happened to her to transform her into the person she became.

Rose was possibly cute at one time, but those days were long gone by the time we crossed paths. She always looked disheveled, even after she had just showered. She had no fashion taste. Her outfits could cause seizures. Even if you were blind.

But the most distinctive thing about Rose was her voice. It was harsh, discordant and gravelly. Clint Eastwood sounded almost gay compared to Rose. And after listening to Rose for eight hours, even someone speaking into a megaphone sounded like they were whispering.

Rose could easily be described as a problem patient. She needed a lots of redirection. And there was no such thing as telling Rose something once. It was constant. And exhausting.

“Hey, Rose! Turn down the volume over there, okay!”

“YES, SIR!” I have no idea why, but Rose always called me Sir. She called other staff members by name, but not me. “I’M GONNA TURN DOWN THE VOLUME, ISN’T THAT RIGHT, JEFFREY?” Rose was constantly talking to Jeffrey MacDonald. You might remember him. He was the guy accused of murdering his pregnant wife and two daughters. He was apparently Rose’s imaginary best friend. “YOU HEARD WHAT MISTER SIR SAID! TURN DOWN THE VOLUME OVER THERE, ROSE. WHAT ABOUT YOU, JOHANNES? He was one of the BHT’s at the Psych Annex. DO YOU THINK ROSE NEEDS TO TURN THE VOLUME DOWN? I KNOW JEFFREY THINKS I NEED TO TURN IT DOWN, RIGHT JEFFREY? THATS FUCKING RIGHT!”

And she swore more better gooder than two Portuguese sailors. I purposely deleted about seventeen swear words from Rose’s dialogue. Anyone that knows me knows I don’t have any problem swearing, but even I was shocked by the amount of profanity Rose unleashed in casual conversation. And when she got upset, it was like getting hit by a fucking tsunami.

Rose was rarely violent, but she tended to provoke it in others. I think she wore on the nerves of everyone around her until they just couldn’t take it anymore. And most of the people on the same unit as Rose weren’t all that tightly wrapped either. She made more than one person lose it, and half of them were people I worked with.

I spent a lots of time with Rose. I may have even begged her to quiet down, I’m not sure anymore, but it’s not out of the question.

Rose was at the Psych Annex when I started working there. I’m pretty sure she was still there when I quit six months later. Rose was one of those people no one wanted within fifty feet of their facility, let alone inside it.

I worked Gero/Psych and did a stint in management at Banner Del E Webb for a few years, then moved on to St Luke’s Behavioral Health–straight psych–I was back in familiar territory. I hadn’t been there long, maybe a couple months, when I did something stupid. I started wondering what had happened to Rose.

There’s a rule when you work in Psychiatry: you never, ever mention the name of a discharged patient. You know, I wonder how So and so is doing? If you do, the person you invoked will invariably get admitted. The only way you’re safe doing this is if the person got dead, except if they had gotten dead, you wouldn’t have to wonder how they were doing…  For chronically frequent flying psych patients, the only way you can totally get rid of them is death. I know that sounds terribly callous, but it’s also true. You can ask around, if you so desire.

I never said Rose’s name aloud, not even to myself or any of my imaginary friends, nor to any of my co-workers–none of the people I worked with at St Luke’s knew Rose.

But they would.

Never underestimate the craftiness of a psych patient, especially the really crazy ones. They are spooky beyond belief. And like any other organism, they evolve. When I first started working as a psych nurse, a name had to be spoken out loud. By the time I was getting ready to retire, a simple thought would suffice.

I was walking into work at St Luke’s from the parking lot one day, and I ran into someone from the day shift.

“How was your day?” I asked. What happened on the day shift rarely had anything to do with how the evening shift would go, but it was always nice to ask.

“Oh. My. God. Turn around and leave now! We got a new admit today, wait until you meet Rose!”

I stopped in my tracks, and slowly turned toward my co-worker. I briefly described the Rose I knew, knowing there could be only one Rose that could effect that kind of reaction.

“Oh. I see you already know her.”

Yep. That was my Rose.

AP 5 was my home unit at St Luke’s. It was the court ordered unit. You didn’t have to be court ordered to be admitted to my unit, but if you were court ordered, it was the only unit you could be admitted to.

Rose was permanently court ordered. She was usually admitted to the Psych Annex, or Desert Vista. But the staff at those facilities were burned out by Rose. She was sent to St Luke’s purely out of desperation.

AP 5 was a chaotic place. It was two large dayrooms with the nursing station in-between. The patient rooms were dotted around the perimeter of the dayrooms. The unit was a giant echo chamber, it was concrete and linoleum. The other units had artwork. Some of them had carpeting. AP 5 was like the basement where your family locked up your crazy aunt, and no one ever talked about it. There was no no artwork, nothing for noise abatement. It was almost as loud as the artillery firing range at Fort Sill, way back when I was in the Army.

Added to the abnormally normal pandemonium, was Rose.

“WELL, HELLO, SIR! HOW ARE YOU! I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN THREE AND A HALF YEARS!”

I had to stop and think about it, but she was correct, almost to the day.

“Hi Rose. Say, could you do me a favor, and turn down the volume a few hundred decibels.”

“TURN DOWN THE VOLUME! YES, SIR! WHAT DID I TELL YOU, JEFFREY! MISTER SIR STILL WANTS ME TO TURN DOWN THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ VOLUME! YES, SIR! I’LL TURN THE MOTHERFUCKIN’ VOLUME DOWN!!”

I hadn’t even started my shift, and I already had a motherfuckin’ headache.

I filled my fellow evening shift staff members in on Rose. This was perhaps the best crew I would work with in my career. Deb Goral. Luis Hinojosa. Anthony Tafoya. Rachelle Carson. I loved those guys. We were a well oiled machine. And Rose had all of them pulling their hair out within the first hour.

I started herding Rose to her room to remove her from the mileau. She started peeing on the floor. I think Rachelle was ready to kill her.

I spent a lots of time talking to Rose once more. It didn’t happen right away, nor did it happen overnight. I didn’t even notice it at first, probably because it was always so noisy on AP 5, but Rose actually did turn down the motherfuckin’ volume of her voice. She didn’t swear anywhere near as much as she normally did, and she stopped peeing on the floor altogether. I think she actually became one of the better patients on the unit.

I have no reasonable explanation for it.

And then something really weird happened. Rose came up to the nursing station one evening and actually whispered something.

My name.

“Maaaaaaark!”

It was, like, the spookiest thing I’ve ever heard.

Deb could do a perfect imitation of it, and she did it often. But only because she loved me. She became my first work wife, ever. And then she became my first ex-work wife.

I’m in a lots of relationships, and they’re all complicated.

Unlike my first encounter with Rose at the County, her stay on AP 5 was relatively short. Maybe three weeks, maybe a month. She came back again almost immediately, but was discharged later that same week. We had to have set a record for her shortest hospitalization, ever.

I never saw her again, not that that’s a bad thing. There are people you meet in your life that you’ll never forget, but you don’t miss them when they’re gone.

I know a lots of people like that.

I like to think Rose was able to gain a measure of control of her insanity, and she’s doing better.

But that’s doubtful at best. More likely she’s standing on a sidewalk somewhere in Phoenix, saying, “Maaaaaaark!” Very softly.

Dallas, Part I

It was February of 1978. My good friend, Shorty Girtz, was flying down to Dallas, TX for two weeks. He was going to visit a friend of his named Hillary.

Hillary was a telephone salesperson, and she had coldcalled Shorty’s service station one day hoping to sell him something. The company she worked for sold all kinds of stuff. It was kind of the precursor of Amazon.com, maybe.

Shorty loved talking on the phone. He and Hillary hit it off and became friends. They talked to each other frequently, almost every day, I think. Shorty invited Hillary to come visit him, and Hillary accepted. She flew up to Minnesota in August or September of 1977, and in return, she invited Shorty to visit her in Texas.

I had met Hillary when she came up to Minnesota. She was attractive, taller than me or Shorty. Come to think of it, Shorty was taller than me. Hillary had long black hair, a decent body, and she liked to party. We hit it off. All of Shorty’s friends liked her, except Shorty’s girlfriend, Robin.

You know what? I think that’s why Robin went out with me when I started dating the Banana Split Girls in September later that year!

Shorty asked me if I wanted to go to Dallas with him. I asked him where we were going to stay. We would stay at Hillary’s apartment, so we wouldn’t have to pay for lodging. I thought about it for about five seconds and said, “Yeah, sure. I’m up for that.” I put in my two week notice at work and prepared for a trip to Dallas.

I was getting tired of being an orderly at the nursing home anyway…

I didn’t need to do a lots of preparing. I bought a half pound of weed, and called my buddy, Sergeant Raoul Sanchez, to let him know I was going to be in Texas. I got out of the Army in July of 1977.  Raoul was still in the Army, and was still stationed at Fort Sill. He would drive down to Dallas to meet me while I was in town.

I didn’t tell Shorty I was bringing a half pound of weed with me. I didn’t want him freaking out. But I had a perfect solution. I had a Mamiya Sekor 35mm camera and a metal Copal camera case. It looked like a metal briefcase–the kind spies and secret agents carried. I removed the big telephoto zoom lens, put the big baggie of weed in the big leather lens case, and locked it up. If airport security didn’t do a lots of snooping around in my camera case…

Robin drove us to the airport. She was very quiet during the trip. She was anything but happy about what her boyfriend was doing. She kissed us both goodbye, and charged me with taking care of Shorty while we were in Big D.

I was a little nervous at the airport, but just a little. I had learned a lots about transporting drugs when I was in the Army. And the first rule is Don’t panic. Come to think of it, that’s pretty much the first rule of everything.

I was pretty sure the airport security guys wouldn’t be too attentive when they checked my camera case. I mean, who smuggles dope to Texas from Minnesota? If you’re going to smuggle dope, it’s the other way around. And I was right. The security guys barely noticed us. Once we were through Security I told Shorty what I had done. I was right to keep him in the dark because he totally freaked out.

“You did what?!?” he hissed. We were walking to our gate. I turned into one of the bars and ordered a couple shots of whiskey.

“Relax. If I was going to get busted, it would’ve happened back there. We have nothing to worry about now.” I had checked my suitcase, but my camera case was my carry-on bag. I wasn’t letting it out of my sight. Or grasp.

“I can understand you bringing a little weed, but a fuckin’ half a pound! We could go to prison for that!!” Shorty said. I hailed the bartender for a couple more shots.

“You afraid of flying?” the bartender asked.

“No, he is.” I replied, nodding toward Shorty. The bartender poured him a double. I gave him a nice tip.

Our flight was uneventful. We took off from Minneapolis, where the temperature was probably -10°. We landed in Dallas where the temperature was probably in the mid-fifties. Waiting for us at DFW airport was Hillary.

And her live-in boyfriend, Michael.

“You didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend!” I whispered to Shorty.

“She didn’t tell me she had a boyfriend!”

I was having second thoughts about this whole Dallas trip, but it was a little late now. Well, if this thing fell apart, I could always call Raoul. He would drop everything and come get me if I asked him to. We could go hang out with him in Oklahoma as Plan B if we needed to…

Michael and Hillary took us to a Friday’s® near their apartment. We ate, drank a few beers and played several games of pool. I’m a mediocre pool player at best. Shorty was probably less than mediocre. But we played pool and told jokes, it was a good ice breaker.

Michael was a carpet layer. The company he worked for was right next to Hillary’s office. That’s how they met. Michael was a tall, skinny guy with long curly black hair. He was a handsome guy. He had moved in with Hillary about one month earlier, after Hillary had broken up with her previous boyfriend, George.

I didn’t know anything about Hillary’s complicated lovelife, nor was I much interested in hearing about it. Shorty knew all about George from the almost daily telephone conversations he had with Hillary, and he knew all about their acrimonious break up. However, he didn’t know that Hillary had hooked up with Michael. Nor did he know the true depth of hatred that existed between Hillary and George.

I wasn’t paying much attention to the chatter. I wasn’t too wild about the live-in boyfriend thing. I mean, Michael seemed like a decent guy and all. Maybe this vacation thing was probably going to be okay. At least we weren’t freezing our asses off in Minnesota…

We eventually went to Hillary and Michael’s apartment. It was in a new-ish complex designed for young urban professionals. It was filled with hundreds of singles, and at least half of them were women. The apartment we would all call home for the next two weeks was on the sixth floor.

I really liked the whole lots of single women thing, but…  I still wasn’t sure about this situation.

Once in the apartment, I opened my camera case and produced a very large baggie of weed.

“Wanna get high?” I asked our hosts.

“I wasn’t too sure about this thing when Hillary told me about it, but I think this is gonna work out okay.” Michael said. He had a big ol’ Texas sized grin on his face.

I was glad to hear I wasn’t the only one that thought this was kind of a fucked up mess, but I didn’t say anything. I did breathe a sigh of relief, and smiled at Shorty and winked.

I had just hit a grand slam.

We had gotten through that mess.

There were so many more to follow.

Glenda K

Glenda was one of our patients at the Banner Del E Webb Medical Center. Prior to being acquired by BannerHealth, Del Webb and its sister facility, Boswell Hospital, were managed by SunHealth. SunHealth was a very small fish in the large healthcare pond in the Phoenix area. When Banner offered to purchase their facilities, SunHealth quickly agreed.

The employees weren’t thrilled with the acquisition. SunHealth was a very good employer. The mostly elderly population that used and staunchly supported the SunHealth facilities were extremely upset. Del Webb and Boswell hospitals were their hospitals. They didn’t want a bunch of strangers roaming the hallways of their getaway retreat hospital spas.

That’s exactly how they thought of them.

Those little old ladies even had bake sales to raise money for a new MRI machine! Do you have any idea how many cookies that is? That’s, like, a trillion fucking cookies!! Maybe they should’ve put on some cute outfits and stood on the corners in Sun City and Sun City West…

Gero/Psych nursing is a sub-specialty area of Psych nursing. Elderly psych patients generally come pre-equipped with a whole slew of medical issues, and all of those issues have to be effectively managed, as well as the psychiatric disorders they are admitted for.

Glenda was an older gal, all of our patients had to be at least fifty-fifty years old. Most of our patients were closer to one hundred seventy-fifty years old. Glenda was married, and she was a hot mess. Her husband was a sweet, supportive, long suffering man.

Glenda had asthma, emphysema and COPD. As a result of her respiratory disorders and diseases, she suffered from chronic anxiety and depression. She was a very frequent flyer on the SAGE Unit, the Gero/Psych Unit at Del Webb. I would get to know her and her husband very well in a relatively short amount of time.

In all honesty, I was extremely uncomfortable in Gero/Psych. I was not a Real Nurse. I was a psych nurse. I had worked in a strictly psychiatric setting for twenty years. When we had patients that were that physically sick at the VA, we transferred them to a Med/Surg Unit. I had to learn how to start an IV, how to draw blood all over again–even do blood transfusions. 😓 In order to transfer one of our SAGE patients to a Med/Surg Unit, they essentially had to be dead.

If you don’t use those skills, you lose those skills. I had to be retrained in almost everything. It was good to be able to master all those skills again, but I had the same underlying fear that I’d had way back in nursing school. I was sure I was going to kill one of my patients, or in a worst case scenario, all of them.

When my senior manager offered me a clinical management position, I took it out of self-preservation.

Glenda was probably what you would consider a difficult patient. We certainly did. She was anxious and depressed at home, so she desperately wanted to be hospitalized. She was depressed and anxious once she was admitted to the SAGE Unit, and she’d demand to be discharged. That’s where I came in. The staff nurses would call me and ask me to come try to reason with Glenda.

As a clinical manager, I didn’t have anything to do with her patient care, but I had a lots to do with patient and family education and satisfaction. One of my managerial duties was to round on a random sample of the patients on the SAGE Unit to assess their rating of the service being provided to them. In the world of BannerHealth, everything revolved around Patient Satisfaction Surveys. And do you know what I discovered? Old people suck!

Man, they hated everything!! That’s when I started calling them Raisins, the sunbaked asshole/bitches that they were. It was almost impossible to get them to give us high satisfaction ratings on any service we provided on those goddamn surveys, and we needed at least an eighty percent satisfaction rating or there was hell to pay! 😭😭😭

I had worked in healthcare for twenty years by this time. I knew when we were doing a great job. I knew when we were doing a bad job. The SAGE staff was extremely talented, and they did an amazing job. They should’ve gotten elevens on a scale from one to ten.

My Filipino Posse, that’s what I called them–a lots of the RN’s were from the Philippines–Al, Julius, Liligene, Wei, Jing. Julie and Ethel. I loved them all. Well, most of them. Almost all of them were great nurses. Except two. And everyone knows who they were. And they weren’t Julie and Ethel. Those two were so darlingpreshadorbs!!

I worked with another rockstar nurse there, Rhonda Dolatshahi. Rhonda told me she wanted to be listed in one of my Reflections posts someday. Well, Rhonda, today’s your lucky day.

I told she’d have to be naked in the story I wrote. So I want to thank Rhonda for coming into my office, closing the door, and taking off all her clothes and saying, “You’re a nurse. What do you think this is?”

Yeah, that never happened. Unfortunately.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Glenda.

Glenda was unhappy about everything. The nurses were rude. They weren’t doing anything to help her. They never answered her call light when she turned it on. And so on, and so forth. Blah, blah, blah.

I did a lots of redirection and refocusing with Glenda. I doubt I did much of anything to actually change Glenda’s mind, but I did spend a lots of time with her, and that’s probably all she really wanted.

But there was that one thing about Glenda. And that one thing was her tooth.

Glenda had one tooth. And it seriously looked like that picture. She had dentures, but she rarely wore them. So when I went to listen to her litany of complaints, her tooth jumped into my field of vision, and it was the only thing I could see. It was like her tooth was talking to me. It was like watching a train wreck. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t.

I stared at her tooth as if it were the only thing that existed in the world. I knew I was staring at her tooth. And so did Glenda. She eventually started putting a finger to her mouth when she talked to me, obscuring her mutant tooth. I actually laughed the first time she did it. So did she, come to think of it.

Glenda’s respiratory problems eventually got the best of her. She died at home, thank God. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork involved when someone dies on a psych unit. And there’s always a follow up investigation, even if the person dies from natural causes.

Vaya con Dios, Glenda. I have to believe you went to a better place, and you’re at peace now. And you have all your teeth once more.

Sorry about that whole staring thing.

The Jawbone of an Ass

My jaw has been bothering me quite a bit lately. It’s been a little over eight months since I was assaulted, resulting in the nondisplaced mandibular fracture that certainly doesn’t feel all that nondisplaced to me.

My dentist at Surprise Smiles 😆 told me it could take up to a year for my jaw muscles to realign to the new profile of my bite. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear back then, but if it will truly take that long, the good news is I have a mere four months to go.

I have sustained several physical injuries during my career as a psychiatric nurse. I also sustained several more injuries during my career as a drunken moron. These two careers overlapped each other for at least ten years, so it’s hard for me to separate them sometimes. The net result is pain, and for anyone that lives with daily chronic pain, it really doesn’t matter where or how it originated. You simply have to learn to live with it.

I was physically assaulted on three separate occasions during my nursing career. That averages out to one assault roughly every ten years. Somewhat oddly, I was struck in the face each time.

The first time, I never saw the punch coming. I was working at the MVAMC. My back was turned to the guy that hit me. Merrill came up behind me and suckerpunched the right side of my face because he wanted to go smoke, but I had taken away his smoking privileges because he was being an asshole.

It took me a moment to figure out what the hell got happened, and then it hit me, so to speak. That sonuvabitch punched me! My first response was to immediately punch him back. Yeah, guy logic, if there is such a thing.

My co-workers intervened. Merrill was quickly whisked into a seclusion room. I was sent to Employee Health be evaluated. I sustained no serious injury, but the doctor gave me the rest of the day off, just because.

The second assault occurred at Aurora. It was my second year there. I remember it as The Year of the Borderlines. My unit was generally designated as the  Marginally Functional Psychotic Unit, but that year we got hit with a tsunami of patients with Borderline Personality Disorder.

One Borderline can be enough to stand your unit on its head. A gaggle of Borderlines (?) A gossip of Borderlines…  I like that! A lots of Borderlines gathered together is rarely a good thing, particularly if you’re a psych nurse. And especially if the gossip is gaggling on your unit.

It takes an awesome skill set to effectively manage that.

The patient in question was Melissa, maybe. I used to remember everything about every one of my patients, but they eventually melded into one multi-headed mutant patient. Mel was having a difficult day obtaining the level of attention she desired, so she decided to go full on Drama Llama and had a VPM–Very Public Meltdown. Mel was good for usually one of these a day. She would set off a chain reaction with the rest of her Borderline buddies, and chaos would ensue.

On this particular day, I didn’t respond the way she wanted me to (I didn’t call the doctor to get injectable meds), so she stormed off to her room to slam the door and scream.

Karen Rae Goff, social worker extraordinaire, happened to be on the unit at the time. Karen also happened to be Melissa’s social worker, so we went to her room to see what Mel had planned for her next move.

“Get out of here!” Mel screamed at us as I opened the door.

“I need to know that you’re going to be safe.” I said, from the doorway.

“Leave me alone, or I’ll kick your fucking ass!” she screamed. And then I did something stupid:

Melissa launched herself at me and started swinging. I blocked her first punch or two, but then she caught me with a left jab that knocked my glasses askew on my face.

That stirred something inside Karen, and she let loose on Melissa with her Mom Voice, and Mel was so stunned she stopped acting like a temper tantrum toddler.

“I can’t fucking believe you did that.” I said, and calmly readjusted my glasses.

“You asked for it.” Melissa replied.

“Are you going to press charges?” Karen asked me. It’s a felony to physically assault a healthcare worker in Arizona. Melissa let a momentary look of panic escape, and that’s when I fell in love with Karen. We never had another problem with Melissa. She was a little angel for the remainder of her stay.

And that brings us to Assault #3, which also happened at Aurora.

That day started out like any other day. Dr Sbiliris, the psychiatrist assigned to the Canyon Unit, came onto the unit to meet with his patients. One of them, a young kid named Desean asked to be discharged. Dr Sbiliris kind of laughed and said, “No, probably Friday. Maybe Wednesday.”

Desean seemed to accept that, even if it wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.

And then something happened that should’ve sent my Spidey senses tingling. A patient on the Canyon Unit started loudly acting out, and when the staff from other units rushed over to aid and assist, Desean bolted out the unit doors and made a break for freedom.

We took care of the Yelling Guy. Desean fell short in his sprint to escape. He returned to the unit with an escort, and went to his room. And there was peace in the Canyon once more. Until 2:00 PM.

That’s when Desean entered the dayroom and started yelling and throwing stuff.

My boss of bosses, Lori Milus, must’ve been having a rare quiet day because she had come down to chat. I went into the day room. One of the BHT’s was trying to verbally redirect Desean, and I provided back up. But Desean wasn’t having any of that shit.

“Come on, man.” I said. “You know how this works. Sbiliris says that to everyone. He wants to see how you’ll respond. You know acting like this isn’t going to get you out of here. If anything, it’ll extend your stay, and you clearly don’t want that. Use your head, think about this!”

Desean and I were standing in the doorway of the dayroom. The nursing station and the unit doors were behind me. The hallway leading to the patient rooms was behind Desean.

He didn’t say anything, as if he were contemplating the veracity of my words. He appeared to me to start turning to his right, and I thought he would keep on going and go back to his room. I also started turning to my right, thinking my work was done. But Desean was merely loading up. He stopped turning to his right and reversed direction. His right fist came flying at me at about the speed of light, catching me squarely on the jaw.

I was launched into space, much like that. I landed by the unit doors, seven or eight feet away. Desean may have howled in triumph. He ripped off his shirt, daring me to get up and fight him.

Like that was going to happen.

I didn’t lose consciousness. I even kept my head elevated so it wouldn’t hit the floor. But I don’t think I could’ve gotten off the floor just then if my life had depended on it.

One of the darling nurses I worked with, Lindsey Stirling, picked up my glasses and protectively leaned over me as I lay on the floor, trying to out figure out what I should do next. Another nurse, Brea Bils, one of my darlingpreshadorbs work daughters, tried to check my blood pressure. She later told me she no idea what she was doing. She thought I had gotten dead.

I knew I didn’t got dead, so I think I even said that.

“I’m not dead. I didn’t lose consciousness. My jaw…is really sore, but other than that, I’m okay.”

A group of BHT’s had escorted Desean into one of the Overflow rooms. Aurora was the only psychiatric facility I worked at that didn’t allow the use of seclusion and/or restraints to manage a behavioral crisis. Desean got several injections. And he was kept under close observation by several large men.

Once Desean was medicated and no longer actively assaultive, my boss asked me if I wanted to press charges. I did.

If Desean had been psychotic and responding to internal stimuli, that might’ve changed my decision. But Desean wasn’t psychotic. He didn’t get what he wanted, and he decided to act like a thug. That definitely was a factor in determining my decision.

The police took my statement. They took Desean into custody. Thankfully, Frankie Baby wasn’t there, or the police would’ve had to arrest him for murder. And there was peace in the Canyon once more.

I didn’t find out my jaw was broken until the following day when I had a CT scan. Because my fracture was nondisplaced, there wasn’t much of a treatment. I was on a soft diet for six to eight weeks; nothing but soups, smoothies and ice cream.

I bought the world’s most expensive smoothie. I lost ten pounds. I gained all of them back once I could eat real food again. And now I’m learning to live with my new occlusion pattern. It’s a process. Some days are better than others. Today, it hasn’t been too bad. Yesterday fucking sucked.

And as Forrest Gump said, That’s all I have to say about that.

Get out and vote.

I’m Too Sexy For My Clothes

**This is the post that landed me a three day suspension from Facebook**   

It wasn’t what I wrote so much as it was the accompanying picture (See above) that FB had an issue with. And it was their decision–a process that has no appeal, you’re simply denied access to your account–to block my page that ultimately led me to create this blog. So, if you’ve enjoyed anything you read here, send Mark Zuckerberg a thank you card.

I’m not sure what it is about crazy people and clothes, or rather, the lack of them–but crazy people love to get naked.

There was Duane. He was a frequent flyer at the MVAMC. No Brain Duane would start disrobing in the parking lot. By the time he reached the front door, he was doing the Full Monty.

I called him No Brain because it rhymed, and because he just looked…gone. It was usually a time consuming process to get admitted. Duane got a police escort straight to my unit, completely bypassing the Admission Office. Now that I think about it, the guy was a frickin’ genius. When Duane could keep his clothes on for 48 consecutive hours, we knew he was ready to go home.

Old Joe didn’t come into the hospital naked, but once inside, Joe must’ve thought he was at a nudist camp. He rarely wore clothes.

I was working a double shift one evening. Old Joe had been admitted earlier that day. I was on the phone, taking report on another admission.

“Well, goodbye.” I heard Old Joe’s voice with half an ear while I took notes on the patient we were going to get. When I finished, I looked up and saw a wrinkled ass and scrotum swinging in the breeze as Old Joe walked off the unit in the general direction of the front of the hospital. Our units were ‘open’ back then. Our patients could come and go as they pleased, as long as they signed out at the nursing station and checked in with the staff when they returned.

That would change when a former patient walked onto one of the units carrying a knife.

“Hey, Joe!” I called out. He stopped and turned around. “I used to think you were crazy, but now I see your nuts. Don’t you think you should get dressed before you leave?”

Old Joe looked down, and almost seemed surprised to see his penis. He nodded, said, “Oh, that’s a good idea,” and returned to the unit. He must’ve forgotten he was leaving when he got back to his room because he didn’t try to streak to freedom again. Old Joe was another guy we knew was ready to go when he could keep his clothes on for two days straight.

There was another semi-naked guy. He was a young guy at St Luke’s, and he was actually kind of handsome. He crapped on the floor one day, then picked up his turd and ate it.

“EEWWW!” all the female staff howled in unison, then looked at me and asked what they should do, like this happened to me all the time.

“Whatever you do, don’t kiss him. His breath probably smells like shit.” was the only advice I had to offer.

Crazy guys are far more likely to strip and go naked in public than crazy girls are. Men are also far more likely to masturbate in public than women. I called it ‘playing the skin flute.’ I’ve lost track of the number of guys in the Skin Flute Band, but there were a lots of them.

If you want to play an imaginary instrument, what happened to air guitar? But it’s not as bad as playing the rusty trombone, I suppose…

I can only recall one girl that masturbated in front of me. She was a cute-ish young Korean American girl at Aurora, I called her K-Pop. She rang her joy buzzer, a lots. I went to her room to give her her meds one morning, and she was…busy.

“Just leave them on the table, I’ll take them when I’m done.” she said without missing a beat. She was laying in bed under the covers, but there was no confusion about what she was doing. She didn’t seem to be embarrassed in the least by my presence. I can’t do that, I replied. “Well, you don’t expect me to stop now, do you?” she asked. I’ll close the door on my way out.

There was another Asian girl, from China. She was acting weird in the community and running around outside naked, of course. Most Asian families will try make it through a situation like this without seeking professional help, but once the clothes come off, all bets are off.

From report, I learned she didn’t speak English. So I went to the Babblefish Translation site and printed some greetings and instructions in Chinese and English.

You’re at the County Hospital. 你在縣醫院
We will take good care of you. 我們會照顧好你
Are you hungry? 你餓了嗎？
Please keep your clothes on. 請保持你的衣服

My niece, Amber Rowen, could verify this because she knows Ung Fu Chinese.

China Doll read each page, then looked at me and smiled sweetly. She nodded her head in what I guessed was understanding. I went to the kitchen to find her something to eat. When I returned, China Doll was standing in the hallway where I’d left her, wearing nothing but a smile. She was probably the only psych patient I’ve had that I didn’t mind seeing naked. She was really quite lovely.

Rondi, on the other hand, was not. She had been my patient at the VA many times, and her main problem with all of her previous admissions was her Borderline Personality Disorder.

Da Do Ron Ron was a tough-looking, heavy set lesbian. In regards to her nudiditity, all I will say is if Samson had been female…

On her last admission as my patient, she went off the deep end and started flashing her boobs at me, then my co-workers. She eventually went full throttle stripper. All she needed was pole.
You might wonder why a lesbian would disrobe in front of a guy. I can’t explain it, but one of the ward clerks I used to work with, Justine Henley, once told me I was very ladylike, so it might be that.

I tried to talk Da Do Ron Ron back to Earth. Hell, we all did. I almost begged her to stop.

“When you come out of this and you’re on the other side,” I said. “You are going to be sooo embarrassed. Do yourself a favor and stop doing this now.”

Rondi eventually did get better, but she was mostly naked for almost a month, I think. And she was incredibly embarrassed by what she had done. She got so much better she actually got a job in the Billing Office at the VA after she cleared. I’d see her in the hallway occasionally. She couldn’t look me in the eyes. She couldn’t speak to me. I felt so bad for her.

Rondi is the only person I can think of that improved after a series of Full Frontal Nudity therapy, or I might be inclined to recommend it. Oh, and the guy at St Luke’s got better too, but he was on a specialized diet.

Send me a private message and a picture if you’re curious about this, I’ll let you know on an individual basis. If you’re a guy, let me save you some time. Keep your damn clothes on.

Creepy clowns and zombies are bad enough. We don’t need a Skin Flute Marching Band and the Joy Buzzer Corps added to the mix in our society at this point in time.

When I tell people what I did for a living, they give me a certain look most of the time. They nod knowingly, and say, “I’ll bet you’ve seen it all.”

I reply that I’ve seen a lot, but there were a couple times when I saw it all.

Horrible Bosses

When I was a manager for BannerHealth, I went to classes on how to be a good manager. Did you know seventy-five per cent of employees that leave a job do so because of poor management?

I’ve left at least three nursing positions because of my manager, including BannerHealth. As it turns out, Banner wasn’t as interested in being a good employer as they claimed to be.

My first horrible boss was Marj. She was my manager during the years Lea was so very ill, and I was working at the Minneapolis VAMC. Lea and I learned an interesting thing during that time period. During a time of crisis, you find out who your friends are. During a time of extended crisis, you find out who your real friends are.

Marj was understanding with our situation at first, and she was even very supportive. Then she became less understanding, then she became a bitch.

There were two In-patient psych units at the MVAMC. 1K &1L. Marj managed 1L. Kevin, the guy that would eventually make a baby with Sue Severson, was the manager of 1K. Marj called me into her office around the time of Lea’s fourth, and worst, major surgery to talk to me about my attendance.

“You’ve been missing a lot of work lately.”

“My wife is in the hospital fighting for her life. I think I’d almost be expected to be missing a lot of work under those circumstances.”

“Well, this has been going on for quite a while…”

“And you think I somehow missed that?” I asked.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ve had to cover for you, a lot. I’ve had to use float nurses and PRN staff when you’re not here.”

“Yeah, well, you know, that’s your job.” I replied. “Right now, my job is to be with my wife, but if it’s any consolation to you, she may not survive this time, and you won’t have to cover for me anymore.”

That’s when Marj started crying. If there’s anyone in this office that should be crying, it’s me, I thought. But I gave Marj a hug and told her to hang in there, she was doing a good job.

She had her boss, Mary Erdman, talk to me after that. I would end up writing them both up and pissing them off forever in the process. I would eventually transfer to 1K and live long and prosper under Kevin’s management. Mary Erdman was also Kevin’s boss, but he never asked her for help in managing me, so she became a non-factor in my life after that.

There’s a lot more to this story. We’ll be back.

Lea and I moved to Arizona in October of 2007. My first job in Phoenix was working for Maricopa Integrated Healthcare Services, or as it’s commonly called, the County. My boss at the County was Karen Swine, I mean Stein. She was an unpleasant woman that wore clothes about two sizes too small for her, which may have had a lot to do with her unpleasantness.

Karen and I never got along. She thought I was the Know-It-All new guy, so… Hey, we did agree on something after all! Who knew?

Karen didn’t like my methods, not that she would’ve known anything about them if it weren’t for the day shift nurses. The day shift nurses spent what seemed to me to be an inordinate amount of time tattling to Karen about me instead of actually doing their jobs.

I worked the evening shift at the County, and my crew would spend the first two hours of every shift getting the unit settled down and establishing a semblance of peace. The patients on our unit used to give the evening shift crew a standing ovation when we walked in. The day shift nurses hated us.

Karen and I had brief chats in passing, until the day she called me into her office. I had been at the County roughly six months. She asked me to explain why I did whatever it was I had done–something related to de-escalating a patient, I think. I started to explain —

“That’s not what I heard.” she interrupted.

“Yeah, well, that’s why I’m telling you what really happened.”

“That’s not what I heard.” she said once more. You know, she did kind of look like a pig that had learned to stand on its hind legs and wear makeup.

“You’re not interested in what I have to say, are you?”

“Not really,” she kind of oinked. I got up and opened the door of her pen, I mean office. “I’m not done–”

“I am.” I handed in my two week notice, and moved on. Next stop, Banner Del E Webb Medical Center.

I loved my boss at Del Webb. Jane Stevenson, you’re the sweetest boss I ever had. BannerHealth had just acquired the Boswell and Del Webb hospitals in Sun City and Sun City West. FYI: BannerHealth is the second largest employer in Arizona. Walmart is Number One.

I started out as a staff nurse at Del Webb, but Banner wanted a lot of middle management people. Jane asked me if was would be interested in one of the clinical manager positions. I pulled a quarter out of my pocket, flipped it in the air, and said, “Yep.”

All was well at Del Webb until the second year of Banner’s ownership, and then Banner showed its ugly side. In something like unto a Nazi blitzkrieg, Banner started firing all the managers that had been in place before they bought the Boswell and Del Webb hospitals.

My darling boss had lost her husband about a month before this happened. He had a heart attack and died quite suddenly and totally unexpectedly. Jane was probably still in the Denial Stage of the Grief/Loss process, when the Banner Nazis attacked.

What they did to her is a sin in every organized religion, including Atheism. All they had to do was terminate her–bullet to the head, get it over with. They didn’t need to eviscerate her and eat her liver in front of her before she bled out.

I knew I was next after Jane’s departure. My new manager was very cordial, and assured me I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted. Would I like some Kool-Aid?

I goddamn near jumped out of her window, and her office was on the fourth floor.

The rest of my Arizona bosses have been okay, though I probably would’ve left Aurora if I hadn’t retired. That place was getting kind of kooky…

Management. It can make or break a place. And even if their expressed purpose isn’t to make your work life miserable, that’s probably what they’ll end up doing anyway. It’s the people you work with on a day in, day out basis that truly make the most difference in the workplace environment. They will likely be the greatest factor in whether you stay or leave at any job you have.

Back When I Was in Oklahoma

Looks like a twofer kind of day. I just finished going through all the boxes of stuff we had shipped to Mexico. And I’m on Day Two of my No Fumar Permitido program. I haven’t killed anyone or anything yet, but I’ve been damn close. I need this to preserve my sanity.

Unlike Captain Ken, when I was in the Army I wasn’t stationed outside the US, and I didn’t really spend a whole lot of time with my commanding officer.

I was called into my CO’s office several times so he could scream at me. You may find this hard to believe, but I wasn’t the best soldier to ever serve this country. I didn’t like being in the Army all that much.

I joined the Army because I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after I graduated from high school. I had a vague idea of becoming a dentist, maybe, someday. So I enlisted in the Army to become a dental technician.

In retrospect, I should’ve given a bit more thought to becoming a dentist, and I sure as hell should’ve given a whole lot more thought about joining the Army as a means to an end. But I didn’t, and this would be my first serious journey down a road less traveled.

When I arrived at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, which was my permanent duty station, the last thing they needed was another goddamn dental tech, so I became whatever the Army needed me to become, unless you count that whole good soldier thing…

I drove a truck. I took x-rays. I drove a different truck. I worked in the Ortho lab. I worked in the Dental lab. I took more x-rays. I drove yet another truck. I was a company clerk. And, I took even more x-rays. The Army loved me, except my attitude–but they were never able to rehab it the way Barb Hansmeier would.

I had been in the Army for roughly two and a half years, and I was on CQ duty at Dental Clinic #2, which was attached to the front of Reynolds Army Hospital. The Army takes care of its own, and the Army required a 24 hour clinic for dental emergencies. And the person that handled these emergencies was called the CQ, Charge of Quarters.

Most of the time there were no emergencies, and CQ duty was a piece of cake. Most of the dentists I worked with weren’t all that thrilled about having to come into the clinic in the middle of the night. Many of them would pre-write prescriptions for 3-5 Percocets or something like that, and have the person follow up with them the next day during regular clinic hours.

It was close to a perfect system. I rarely had to call the docs and disturb them. If anyone came in with a toothache, I’d offer them a prescription, and nine times out of ten they’d take it and make a follow up appointment. It was an incredible rarity that one of the doctors would ever have to actually come in to the clinic to handle an emergency. That more than one doctor would have to come in was unheard of.

It was Christmas Eve, 1976. While everyone else was snuggled in bed with visions of dancing sugar plums in their heads, I was listening to Christmas carols at the clinic and randomly waking friends and family members up by calling them to wish them a Merry Christmas at three or four or five in the morning.

My CQ shift was drawing to a close. The sun was starting to lighten the eastern horizon, when a guy walked into the clinic with his wife and two small children. He was a young officer, first lieutenant or a captain. Good looking guy, his wife was some kind of supermodel or something. She was entertaining one of their children, the youngest was asleep in her arms. The guy didn’t have a toothache. He wanted me to look at a sore in his mouth.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked. I did not, I only knew what I’d seen did not look good.

I called the Dentist on Duty. He came into the clinic, took a look in the guy’s mouth, and called the Oral Surgeon on Duty. He came in, took a look in the guy’s mouth and called his boss, the Chief of Oral Surgery. Colonel Kleehammer came in. I had worked with him a lot over my time at Fort Sill. He was probably the only high ranking officer on base that wasn’t concerned about my indifference toward being a good soldier. I took really good x-rays, and that was all he cared about.

I had pulled a lots of CQ duties during the time I’d been in the Army and I had never seen anything like this in my life. I was talking to the guy that was going to relieve me on CQ duty, the dentist that I’d called in, and the oral surgeon that the dentist had called in. The two doctors were tense, and they didn’t want to say what they’d seen, and that’s when I knew they’d seen the same thing I had.

Colonel Kleehammer joined us after he completed his exam. If there had been any snow on the ground that Christmas morning in Oklahoma, his visage would’ve been whiter than that.

“Thank you for coming in, all of you. You can go home now. But I have to figure out how I’m going to tell this young man and his family that he has cancer.”

I’ve had to have some tough talks with family members over the years. It’s incredibly difficult to deliver bad news to someone, and to have to do it on Christmas Day…

You’re a Nurse

Being a nurse has been the best accidental career decision I’ve ever kind of made, and most of the things that I did in my life have been accidents. And by accident I mean something that happened without much, or even any, prior thought or planning.

I know people that have planned their life out, complete with goals and objectives, like where they wanted to be in five years, ten years, and so on. I’m pretty sure the only things I’ve ever given any serious thought to before I did them was get married and quit drinking. Everything else more or less unfolded in front of me. I took a lots of roads less traveled than…

Nursing is not a job. Being a dishwasher or being the President is a job. Nursing is a career. It’s like the difference between having clothes and having a wardrobe.

Nursing also offers a wide variety of specialty areas, so if you don’t like the specialty area you’re in, you can try a different one. That’s how I ended up Psychiatry. My first nursing position was in Cardiac Care, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I left after six months. Once I started working in Psych, I could never convince the doctors I was better, and none of them would discharge me…

Being a nurse made me a better person. Nurses adhere to a high moral and ethical standard. I sometimes marvel at this because I was somewhat blithe of scruple prior to becoming a nurse. I don’t think I had any morals or ethics, but I kind of admired people that did.

Nursing helped define the things that were important to not just my professional life, but my personal life as well. I became grounded on a firm foundation for the first time in my life.
People started seeing me differently. I had become someone worthy of respect. I will never forget the first time my daughters told me I was wise. It’s not the kind of thing I was used to hearing. It was both gratifying and humbling.

Yeah, being a nurse was mostly cool, except for the parts that sucked. Working short staffed. Picking up an extra shift so your relief teams aren’t working short staffed. Problem patients. Asshole managers. Lousy healthcare benefits. It’s not as glamorous as they make it look on TV. And I never even got to have sex in the exam room! Where’s my agent?!? Get his ass in here, STAT!

That’s probably the coolest thing about being a nurse. You get to say that word. Only two or three types of people can use that word. Doctors and nurses, we can say it ever we want. I need a crash cart, STAT! I need that medication, STAT! Social workers can also use that word, but only if they’re ordering a drink.

However, there was one aspect of being a nurse, and all my nurse friends will vouch for this–the one thing that totally bites ass. You’re off duty. You’re at a party or something, and someone will come up to you and say, “You’re a nurse. What do you think this is?”

The first time it happened I was so excited! It was also the last time I was excited.

Do you ask your friends that are hair stylists if they brought their scissors to the party? Maybe you could just trim this up for me. Thanks.

Do you ask your mechanic friends if they could listen to your engine, and maybe give your car a tune up and an oil change? It won’t take long. This party’s gonna last awhile, bro. I’ll hold your drink.

You’re a nurse. What do think this is? Once I got over my initial thrill, it was all over. Hmm, let me see… I started throwing out vague illnesses and diseases. Cholera. Prader-Willi Syndrome. Jakob Creutzfeldt disease. Pika. Beri beri. Yeah, could be that.

Sometimes I made stuff up: cerebrolithiasis. Let’s see if anyone besides me knows what that is.

And people STILL asked me, What do you think this is?

And then it came to me. The perfect answer to that annoying question. “You’re a nurse. What do you think this is?”

“That? I can’t be sure, but that looks like cancer. You should probably go see your doctor, just to be safe.”

I’m a nurse. Do I know what’s wrong with you? Yes, I probably do. But I’m a psych nurse. I also know what’s REALLY wrong with you. You should see your doctor if you want an answer to that question. She probably has kids she’s putting through college, and she could use the money.