All those years ago...

My high school class is gearing up for its 30th reunion. First, let me say that hardly seems possible, as I refuse to admit I am the matronly lady my age implies. But the advent of this reunion day sort of cements that the number on my driver's license is, in fact, accurate.

Second, though, it's also made me realize something else: I should have gotten to know these people better 30 years ago.

High school was a funny time for me, and I'm finding out I wasn't alone in not having any idea which "group" I belonged to. At the time, I was beginning to realize that perhaps I could end up forging a career as a writer, so I hung around a lot of teachers who helped mold my work. I was newspaper editor and started the school's first creative-writing book, and I spent a lot of time writing and editing, alone, in the school's j-lab.

I had a couple of steady boyfriends and a handful of close friends, and I knew a lot of people, but not well enough to hang out with them. In reality, I wasn't great at letting people in, so looking back, I missed out on a lot.

But now, thanks to Facebook, I'm realizing what an amazing group of people came out of Dowling High School's Class of '81 -- and I'm not basing that on the illustrious careers some of them have aspired to and achieved. I'm talking about the committed social workers and teachers, the health-care professionals and stay-at-home moms. I'm talking about people raising children with special needs, surviving cancer, and dealing with the devastating illnesses of parents and siblings ... the people who manage to get out of bed every morning knowing that the world may very well be preparing to throw them yet another pile of something they never asked for.

And here's something funny: It's not just the beautiful girls who are beautiful now. Age truly is the great equalizer, and in our case, it's equalized everyone positively. What a great-looking group of people we have turned out to be -- and shame on us back then for perhaps not appreciating Cathy's and Steve's beautiful eyes or Tom's and Johnne's sweet smiles.

The best thing about preparing for this reunion, then, is the knowledge that even though we're not getting any younger, it's not too late to pick up where we left off -- or never started at all. And best of all, something tells me we're not going to have to worry one bit about being judged according to whether our blouses match our knee socks.

In a perfect world...

In a perfect world, all families would care for their elderly members at home until the end.  They'd place a hospital bed in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the family room, and even if the elderly person couldn't participate in the activity or even the conversation, at least he or she wouldn't be lonely.

But here's the reality.  Sometimes the elderly person:

• Needs 24-hour care
• Can't handle commotion
• Becomes disoriented and agitated
• Loses control of his or her bodily functions
• Pleads to be left alone
• Yells and cries

Still, though ... families in olden times didn't have nursing homes and skilled-care facilities and palliative care.  How did they cope?  They just did. Of course, most of them were homesteaders and ranchers and farmers, and they all worked at home, so they could provide the care the elderly person needed. 

Our society isn't set up that way; also, people live far longer than they used to.  So times change and "solutions" change, and there's a genuine need for clean, safe, pleasant, rehabilitative senior communities that provide families with the help they need.  Luckily, my sister found one of those places -- a good, four-star, good-smelling, pretty, welcoming place -- and our dad is sleeping there tonight.

However you slice it, though, every day, old people are left alone in strange rooms, away from their homes and families and dogs and possessions and familiar sights and smells and textures.  And more than anything, they just want to go home.  I don't care whose old person it happens to be -- yours, mine, no one's.  It just seems wrong, and I wish I could get past that point, but I can't.  

Peace and comfort

Tomorrow, we're moving Dad to skilled care at Edgewater, a retirement community west of Jordan Creek in West Des Moines. He's not ill enough to stay in the hospital and is too frail to go home, so the premise is that during his stay at Edgewater, he'll receive physical-therapy services and other attention he'll need to regain his strength. If he grows strong enough to go home, hallelujah. If not, we'll have a decision to make after 120 days.

The goal for most of us, I think, is to keep our parents in their homes as long as we can. Thanks largely to my sister, who showered Dad daily and managed his medications, we were able to keep him home until the day he turned 91 and a half. The cold, hard fact is that there's no way he can return home now ... he is too frail to walk, and his wife, at almost 80, can't be expected to transport him to and from his bed, the bathroom, etc.

He's had two other stays in skilled care, once at Iowa Lutheran and once at Arbor Springs. Both times, he was able to regain his strength and return home. This time, he's lost a significant amount of ground, so who knows. My prayer for him -- and for all of us -- tonight is that tomorrow will go smoothly, and that he'll understand that we are not, as he said tonight, "putting me away somewhere."

I'm sad, and I'm tired, and I realize this is not about me. So I'll close by asking anyone reading this, if you're inclined to pray, to say an extra one tonight for my dad's peace and comfort.

This one is going to tick off my nurse friends. Sorry.

To my nurse friends, right off the bat, I apologize. And I know that a couple of days ago, my blog post was all about how wonderful nurses are. Most of them still are. Just not the one who is taking care of Dad tonight.

Seriously, why would someone for whom compassion is not a strong suit decide to become a nurse? And why is it -- Tric, I know you will answer this one -- that things that seem so simple to me as a lay person are things that absolutely cannot happen in the hospital because they violate some sort of procedure?

Case in point:

My dad -- who, mind you, is 91 and frail -- is in a lot of pain because of a pressure sore on his lower back. I call the nurse and ask her if anyone has looked at his back today. She responds, "Hmmm. I don't know." And then she shrugs. OK, don't you have a chart? And doesn't the chart note potential problems, things that need to be watched, etc.?

So I ask her to look at his back. She rolls him over, looks, and says, "Looks like yeast." And she proceeds to roll him back over and walk away. I say, in my nicest only-slightly-dripping-with-sarcasm voice, "Can you please put some Nystatin on it, and maybe cover it up so the friction doesn't bother him when he moves in bed?" She says, "We don't cover those, and we don't have Nystatin up here, and I don't want to have to call the doctor this late."

What?? Last time I looked, my dad and his insurance were helping to pay the doctor and the hospital. So I say, "Tell you what. I'll call the doctor's office, see who's on call, and ask that person to authorize some Nystatin." She glares at me -- GLARES -- and says, "All right, I'll call."

Mind you, this whole time, my dad is sitting in bed, saying over and over, "Oh, my God. It hurts. Oh, my God. It hurts." And so I turn into Shirley MacLaine in "Terms of Endearment" and say to the nurse, "THANK YOU. CAN YOU CALL HIM NOW? BECAUSE IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE WAY TO HANDLE THIS WOULD BE TO CALL FOR SOME NYSTATIN, THEN COME BACK IN HERE WITH A PAIN PILL BECAUSE, YOU SEE, MY DAD IS IN PAIN. HOW ABOUT IF WE DO THAT?"

And she turns on the heel of her little pink Crock and walks out and picks up her phone, probably to call the doctor and complain about this psycho-b*tch of a daughter she's having to deal with.

But, no, I'm not done.

She comes back 15 minutes later with two Oxycodone. I ask, "Can he please have his Ativan, too, as it's close to bedtime and he's been afraid to go to sleep?" And she actually challenges me. "What do you mean?" she asks with what I swear is some sort of haughty little snort. "Why is he afraid to sleep?"

Now, again, I am not a medical professional, but even I can reason that a sick 91-year-old man probably is afraid to sleep because he's afraid he won't wake up. I suppress the urge to ask where she earned her degree in compassion and say, "I know you're very busy. You have other patients. You need to get to them. So can you please look on my dad's chart, see that Ativan can be given every six hours, and" -- I said this next part through clenched teeth -- "Give. Him. His. Pill?"

To make a long story not quite as insufferably long, he did get the Ativan, and he drifted off into a nice, presumably pain-free sleep. But there's still steam coming out of my ears.

Let me put it this way: If you are a nice medical professional, I am your best friend. No one respects more than I do the fact that nurses, doctors, techs and aides work very, very hard. If you're nice to me or my loved one, I will be courteous to you and thank you and bring you baked goods and write nice letters to your bosses. I'll tell others, near and far, how wonderful you are because, by God, we need to be damned grateful to people who keep us comfortable and make us well and even save our lives.

But if you're a mean medical professional, I'll write blog posts about you. I'll also be tempted to use your name, but I won't. Know why? Because the compassionate part of me is telling myself, "Maybe there was a reason for her behavior. Maybe someone hurt her feelings. Maybe she's not feeling well. Maybe she, too, has a sick family member."

I'm sorry, though -- you're taking care of a lot of old people tonight. And there's enough inherent indignity in being old that you really shouldn't make it more difficult. You may not think so now, but you won't be 24 and healthy forever.

"I wanted to be here for you"

I found it: one good thing about yesterday.

My son, Scott, is 22 and a senior at Iowa State. He gets out of class early on Mondays, so he decided to drive down and see his grandfather, my dad, who's been hospitalized for a few days.

Scott arrived, and Papa was a little out of it -- glad to see his grandson, but also medicated and just not having a good day. Later, over dinner, I apologized to Scott for the fact that his visit with Papa probably wasn't what he wanted to be. And he said, "It's OK, Mom -- I wanted to see Papa, but I really came down for you."

My daughter, who is 19 and lives on campus at Drake, had said something similar when she had visited Sunday. And I thought about their comments, and about the comment a friend left a few days ago on Facebook: My kids are seeing me help care for my father. They realize that caregiving is hard work, and that a little support can be a welcome thing. And most importantly, they're seeing that this is what you do when someone in your family is ill. You put other things in your life aside, and you care for that person as best you can.

My kids are caring people, and they may have come up with that plan on their own. But it's not a bad thing for them to see me live the lessons I'm trying to teach them. That's always my goal, but it doesn't always happen. Cases in point: "Get more sleep." "Don't take on too much." "Count to '10' before you send that angry e-mail."

And I think my father, even as fragile as he is, may derive some satisfaction from the fact that his children and grandchildren rally 'round when something goes wrong, and that the support isn't just for the person who happens to be ill.

Really, Monday?

Here's why today really didn't need to have happened:

1. Dad's not doing great in the hospital. He was very nervous and sad, and I could do nothing to help. Not sure what the plan is from here.
2. The company that moved our offices at work broke two of my favorite picture frames, "favorite" meaning "special because I received them from my kids years ago, and I have no idea how to replace them."
3. My brand-new Droid is messed up -- all if a sudden, I can hear nothing unless I put the sound on speaker. Need to replace it. Hate standing in line at Sprint.
4. I covered a meeting, and the wireless Internet was not working at the venue. Had to fly to Barnes & Noble with 15 minutes to spare until the story needed to be filed. And the story wasn't great because I was in too big a hurry.
5. Headache. Big, snarling headache.
6. Tomorrow really doesn't look much better; and Tuesdays at work have a tendency to be horrible anyway. No idea why.

On the bright side, the kids and Kevin and I are healthy and safe with a roof over our heads and plenty to eat. Life is good, and I'm grateful for it. But I really, really could have done without today.

Yay, Nurses

To put it mildly, nurses amaze me. There never seem to be enough of them to go around, and almost without exception, they still manage to be upbeat, patient and compassionate. Nothing at all against physicians, but they're not the ones who have to change the catheter or the soiled bed, or deal with frustrated patients losing their tempers because they're not getting enough attention, or getting it quickly enough.


A nurse with a big, booming voice and a wonderful Bosnian accent just had Dad laughing -- no mean feat, given the fact that he really can't hear. When Dad was hospitalized downtown last year, a wonderful nurse named Tricia traveled to West Des Moines on her own time to bring us the walker we had forgotten. Another named Marina, who has taken care of Dad many times over the past two years, brought us Russian recipes and helped keep our spirits up. And those are just three of many.


My sister is a nurse, and for her, it's not just been a vocation, but a lifetime passion that has carried over into her care of our father. My profession is inherently so self-focused that it humbles me to be in the presence of people who spend their days not thinking a whole lot, if at all, about themselves.