Pennies from Heaven, Jean & Jaki Jean

November 4, 2012

Day 26 of life in the hospital with Jean.

Today’s Palabra del diá  is Siesta.   In honor of the fall time change.  Yesterday’s Word of the Day was Splendiferous.

Splendiferous – a magnificent word.  Its syllables roll off the tongue, filled with the expression of something glorious.  With the promise that the joyous syllables will result in a magnificent experience.  A good day. 

Yesterday was not splendiferous. 

 

Kinder, gentler Jaki Jean made few appearances yesterday.  Complacency meandered throughout the second floor & Jean waited an hour for a response to a request for a change. 

As my true nature emerged, the self that convinces people I am a natural red head with the fire attributed to the admoni, my perception of complacency intensified.  I escalated our request, I called our case manager, I asked for a supervisor, for the supervisor’s cell phone.  I asked for the nurse, only to be told she was on her lunch break.

Another half hour passed.

My friend the elderly gentleman in socks wandered the halls of our wing in only one robe instead of his usual garb of one robe open to the back & one robe open to the front.  Not a palatable sight.  

I, too, wandered the halls, gazed out the windows at the roof.  My anger, frustration, disbelief & dismay palatable to all who watched my movement.

Are you having fun yet?  A patient from our wing whispered from his wheelchair as he rolled past me to his room.

Something is not going your way.  The security guard making his rounds commented.

Indeed.

When our Nurse Erica emerged from her lunch break, she listened patiently as I recited my writ of frustration.  Told that she was needed to change Jean’s dressing on her wound, she went to the room & took over the aborted process of cleaning Jean.

I continued to pace, my failed attempts to resurrect the all too often elusive kinder & gentler Jaki Jean indicative of my failure to write a splendiferous text for the day.

There was evening & there was morning & then there was Sunday, the 26^th day.

Sundays are one of my favorite days here in our wing on the second floor.  Breakfast includes oatmeal & French toast with our eggs.  Lunch every other week is turkey & cornbread dressing with a side of seasoned green beans & for dessert, pumpkin pie.  Patients have a steady stream of visitors & family in attendance.  

But not Jackson D. Joglekar, my friend the gentlemen in socks who sometimes has wings.

No wings for Jackson today.  No exhibition costumes open in the back.

On this Sunday, the 26^th day of our soiree, Jackson wove a blanket into a robe, draped around his shoulders, carefully covering his gaping hospital gown.  His efforts to wander his kingdom, to position himself, were constantly curtailed by the second floor staff.

The text he wrote for himself, neither read nor understood by those reading him.

It was a good day for Jean.  

She asked me to change the station from Fox News to Meet the Press.  When I explained that Meet the Press was not on for another twenty minutes, she replied I don’t want to listen to Fox News for another twenty minutes.

A good day, indeed.

Jean & I watched the Texans beat the Buffalo Bills & I found myself entirely too engrossed in the game.  I do not need another passion, another obsession. 

At least not until I learn to knit.

Early other morning, I found eleven pennies loosely piled at the base of the tier holding the sugar, Sweet-n-Low, lemon & powdered coffee creamer in the cafeteria downstairs.

Abandoned or forgotten, lying in wait to be retrieved or rescued & stuffed in a pocket or coin purse.

I thought to myself Self, someone might come back for them.  Someone might need them. Someone might need exactly eleven pennies.

“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.”

So I lined them up, six pennies on one row, five pennies in a row above the six.  In clear view in front of the condiment tier.

Subsequent trips to the cafeteria find the pennies still lined up.  I find another penny underneath the tier and add it to the row of five.

Twelve pennies from heaven, waiting to be claimed & put to use.

I decide to add a penny to the rows each time I return to the cafeteria for ice.  To see how many pennies were needed for someone to confiscate them.

Thirteen.

I think about a friend who saved every “found” penny she picked up in a jar.  Sometimes she wore a found penny in her shoe for good luck.

And I think about a morning long ago, watching a woman in my neighborhood grocery store parking lot pick up a penny & exclaim with delight Heads !

I smiled & remarked Find a penny pick it up / All day long you’ll have good luck.

She thought for a moment, walked over, handed it to me & said --

For good luck.

In my benefactor’s honor, I decide to leave a penny on the cafeteria condiment table.  Not to see how long it takes for someone to pick it up, or how many pennies it takes to tempt my fellow life pilgrims.

But to spread good karma.

“Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven.”

Pentimento, Jean & Jaki Jean

From Glicinas by Claude Monet

Friday, November 2, 2012

Day 24 of life in the hospital with Jean.  Her nurse for the first shift is Elizabeth (Erica went home early because of a family emergency) and her PCA is Linda.  I know these things because every morning I dutifully write the information on a white board facing Jean’s bed.  I revise the personnel information when the shift changes at 7 pm. 

I have spent obsessive time & effort & used massive quantities of Greased Lightning Super Cleanser & Degreaser to remove every faded, albeit enduring, remnant of every previous date & shift change & cheerful smiley face from the white board.

No white board pentimenti for Jaki Jean.

This afternoon, as I walked down the hall toward the elevators on one of the  myriad treks I take daily in search of ice, a thin, elderly gentleman in socks & an open gown wanders from room to room in search of his assigned slot on the floor.

Elizabeth the RN scolds him, trying to redirect him to his room.  It is not easy persuading him.  The world of a hospital wing is a small town.  I am a squatter, firmly embedded in my mother’s room.  Patients & fellow squatters recognize family & friends visiting a resident.  I cannot recall with any certainty if the wandering thin gentleman in socks & an open gown has visitors.

He does, from time to time, drape himself in a blanket or sheet, and in a standing position, spread his arms to create the illusion of wings.

It occurs to me that he was not looking for his room earlier.  He was looking for a place to spread his wings & fly away.

Jean asked me this afternoon:  Is it AM or PM?

There is a clock on the wall facing her bed, but clocks do not indicate morning or afternoon or tea time or Evensong or the night.

So I retrieve the sandwich sized Ziploc bag that stores my low odor dry erase markers & take out a red marker & write PM in large letters on a mini-white board resting on the room’s board.

On one of our adjacent wings, there is a screamer.  Not a patient crying for help or for a nurse, but a human being whose communication is limited to a capella arias of distress, anger, pain, loneliness, frustration, confusion, dismay, despair.

For a short time, we had a screamer on our wing.  A small, frail & shrunken elderly woman whose only visitor was not squatter or hallway banter friendly.  A sign on the patient’s door read:  No visitors per son’s request.

Every time I passed her closed door, strains of lonely, desperate arias no one appreciated or understood seeped through the barrier.  I wondered whether she would stop screaming if her son allowed her visitors.

As the afternoon closes into Evensong, I think to myself.  Self, it has been a good day.

Jean’s appetite was excellent, her speech therapy went excellently well, she only pulled her oxygen tube out a few times.  Her doctors are pleased with her progress, everyone who encounters her remarks on how well she looks.  

Jean & I discussed using nursery rhymes to stimulate & strengthen her speech.   I say Jack Sprat had no fat, he wife had no – Jean responds lean.  And so between them both, they licked the platter clean.

Together, we agree that it is a good plan & I make a note to retrieve some volumes of nursery rhymes from home.

A good day, Self.

I almost forget that earlier she told me she needed help getting to the other room & was confused by my response that we only had one room & a bathroom here on the second floor of the long term acute care hospital. 

Or that earlier she heard Stephanie, the respiratory tech, tell her she would return with medicine when Stephanie told her that it was time to remove the mask used in Jean’s breathing treatment. 

Is it AM or PM?

The gentleman in socks stands in the threshold of his doorway, without wings, & calls out to everyone of any gender who passes by & everyone he imagines passing by:  Please.  Please, mam.  Please.

As I pass on my return route to Jean’s room, I avert my eyes & think about thresholds & their significance in literature & drama & art.  Thresholds, representing the possibility of transgression or transformation.

Or in the case of my elderly gentleman in socks, stasis.  A lack of movement.  No possibility, no opportunity.

No pentimento.  No glory.

Evensong has passed.