The Thantorium & Santa Monica
You think it won’t happen to you because you are too smart for that. Your life, your terms. You think? “Just put me on the iceberg when I can’t clean my own ass” you say, tossing back a Manhattan, thinking that’s a pretty funny joke that we are like Eskimos. <Are we sure they even […]
Rehab Workers are on the Front Lines, Too
Like everyone else on the front lines during these bizarre times, we all go through daily scares and tensions, but it’s a bit of a different ballgame when you’re dealing with mental illness. Most of our patients are clinically paranoid, delusional, depressed, suicidal, hostile, etc. as it is, but COVID-19 has been heightening these for […]
Endless Stories We Tell
The summer closes as Covid cases skyrocket. Interviews with exhausted healthcare workers again dominate our media. But now, vying for the attention of our capricious conscience is Afghanistan. Like the virus we tried to convince ourselves we conquered, this country we deemed our enemy will not be vanquished. The images of the desperate flooding the […]
The Question of a Funeral
Kristen dies suddenly on a Sunday night. We hear about it on Monday when her younger sister Jeannie comes in for dialysis, but Kristen doesn’t. Kristen was eight-years-old and shared a genetic defect with Jeannie. Both girls require dialysis and need kidney transplants. Transplants are costly, even with insurance, so their parents held a fundraising […]
One More Scoop: Increased Demands on Nursing During a Pandemic
Nursing is defined by providing care for the sick, further defined by Florence Nightingale as utilizing our environment to provide care for the sick to aid in their recovery. Even back in 1856, Nightingale saw the connections between environment and health, health and community, community and environment: “The health of the unity […]
Blessings and Burdens: Living a Life Entwined with Death
The negotiations and renegotiations had begun. Ultimately, I landed on a single ask, “as long as they are healthy…” Though what I really meant, but could not say was, “as long as they are alive… as long as we are alive.” In reality, I wanted more than that, I wanted a birth […]
leaving, take & motherling: fragments from a failed care plan
leaving then this is a treatise on leaving how it is inside but needs to get beyond i’m reading a novel on leavings to escape what is the rest of the world: 700,000 souls departing & those who don’t believe the validity of this disease i’m […]
Battle Fatigue on the Frontlines of COVID
I grew up in a town with a population of 900. We knew everyone; they us. I grew up knowing who died, who became a parent, who divorced, whose barn burned and the date we’d all meet to rebuild. I lived on a lonely country road ten miles from my high school whose last stretch […]
The Lunch Lady
Mom never fucked quiet. Every few nights I’d wake up the same way, with the framed velvet art poster bouncing over my bed. Men’s moans varied, but Mom’s stayed the same-short and panty, then long and yowling. I would have rearranged my room if it weren’t so cramped and the window drafts cold year-round. She […]
COVID and Locusts and Protests and Love–A Community Nursing Perspective
My last patient had screened negative for all COVID symptoms in the waiting room, and his temperature was 97F, like everyones. We could set ourselves on fire and the touchless thermometers would still read 97.2, 96.4. Before entering the exam room, I looked at the stack of PPE, which we counted each morning. I […]
