Easter 2020

It’s hard to wish anyone a Happy Easter this year but I hope you are able to find small moments of joy.  Teddy took this photograph of me on Good Friday while we walked around the containment pond.  On route we chatted to some new neighbors across the fence, we met a fisherman who caught a foot long bass fish out of the pond!  Whoo Hoo!  We high fived from 10 foot distance – I have only ever seen heron sized minnow snack.  Then we moved aside while a community minded neighbor mowed the walking path with her son so we could walk more easily through the long grass.

I think you can see from the look on my face above that I am struggling to keep being vibrant although the little Zen cairn made my heart happy.  Just like all the vapid celebrities, I have no makeup on and a baseball cap to hide my hair…  As we sat down last night to watch yet more Netflix or Prime, I commented to Teddy that this is probably my worst Easter ever.  Immediately I felt guilty for comparing my luxurious life to anyone else’s this year.  How awful to be in a refugee camp or to be any of our first responders.  As I mused, I remembered my real worst Easter which was in 1970.

We lived in prefabricated metal public housing that was unbearably cold in a Scottish winter.  In the autumn of the previous year, I started getting chest infections consecutively.  My health and lungs had been compromised from babyhood in part from my mum having tuberculosis during her pregnancy with me.   In our community there was no choice of family doctor and ours had many complaints about his incompetence.  My mum pleaded with him to refer me to a pediatrician but he blankly stated that she was neurotic and continued to prescribe antibiotics.  By midwinter my Nana and mum had created a little bed for me in the nook of the fireplace of the living room which was the warmest place in the house.  I woke up every morning with dried mucus covering my whole face like a veil of illness.  My breathing was terrible and I missed months of schooling.

In desperation my uncles gave my mum £40 (a fortune for us) to visit a pediatrician privately.  He also worked for the National Health Service, as do most private surgeons, and I was in hospital the next day.  By this time 6 months had passed and it was almost Easter.  There was no room in the children’s ward so I and 3 other little girls were placed at the end of a Victorian long ward full of ladies with cancer.  I was terrified by the older ladies barely holding onto life and the strangeness of the situation.  The two little girls opposite me were sisters and had been flown in from one of the outer Western Islands.  Was it a twofer or were they both genuinely needing their tonsils out?  It would have been very expensive back then to fly in from Barra.  They were relentlessly cheerful and kind to me in their soft accents from speaking Gaelic.

My mum tried to visit every night after her very long work day and I think I sobbed every visit.  When I was wheeled to surgery, alone, I asked the surgeons if I was going to die.  They removed my adenoids and tonsils – a complaint was made about our family doctor who we still had to see because of no options available.  In those days they made you eat scratchy toast to heal up your throat – ow!  All the food was awful and worst of all – it was EASTER!  Family and neighbors rallied around with an array of chocolate eggs that I could not eat.  All except a little egg box full of Cadbury’s Cream Eggs with a sixpence underneath each from my aunt Cathie and uncle Donal.  I was able to suck the cream out of the eggs even though I couldn’t eat the chocolate.

Eventually I went back to school although I had some home tuition.  I had no voice for weeks and I struggled to catch up.  But I did, and life moved on.  It was so stressful for my poor mum that she had a major mental breakdown after this and never worked again.  I am so grateful for the all the kindness given to us at that time.  One of the greatest sacrifices was from my mum’s colleague’s son who donated his extensive collection of rare American comics to this sick little girl.  Richie Rich and his friends made me so happy.  I still love the gift of a magazine – it feels like a treat.  The taste of artificial cherry that disguised childhood penicillin makes me feel sick, as does the smell of a hot toddy.

Kerry’s egg shaped cyst behind her lungs

In retrospect, I realized that my peculiar egg shaped cyst behind my lungs may have made me sicker than I would normally have been.  It looks like a portent of doom, doesn’t it, but the cyst has shrunk back to the size of a raisin.  There is always light at the end of darkness.  Hollywood endings are rare but we will overcome our current sickness and learn how to make our lives safer.  I had the Catholic Last Rites when I was less than a year old but so far, so good.  Keep faith in humanity.

I send springtime wishes to all of you, whatever your faith or lack of.  Be well.

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Community Mental Health

My previous field of work was community mental health care and when we were downtown I spotted this prescription sticker stuck onto a bench in the park near the ‘before I die’ chalkboard. I instantly recognized the drug which is an anti-psychotic medication commonly used to treat illnesses like schizophrenia. When I was working it was a new wonder drug and very expensive. I expect it is generic now but still a useful medication.

Then I noticed the David’s surname which was Spanish and that the prescription was printed in Spanish. Mental illness affects people irrespective of income, ethnicity and circumstances but I suspect from his mother’s address they were first or second generation immigrants on a low wage. The script was issued from a hospital near the downtown area so it suggested that perhaps they could only afford to go to ER or it was an emergency situation.

David is not even 20 and my experience tells me that it is more likely the onset of schizophrenia rather than bipolar. It commonly presents in young men between the ages of 17 and 25. It can be sooner or later and slightly different for women. So why did he put the sticker on the bench? In retrospect I should have ripped it off because all his personal details were on it and made him a potential victim.

Was it a cry for help or a passive aggressive statement? More importantly, did he take the drugs? I wondered if his mother was sobbing, wondering what happened to her beautiful son and what to do next. The homeless people in Houston are often mentally ill and many self medicate with alcohol and drugs. I get angry and frustrated that there is so little community mental health care for parents or their adult children. When I volunteered at a local psychiatric hospital I was shocked by how many patients were brought in by policemen, sometimes at gunpoint. There has to be a middle ground.

Osyth commented in my last post that she was touched by the comment, ‘be happy’ (on the before I die chalkboard). Maybe David wrote that, in the hope that his illness would stabilize and he would be happy. I hope that he was still able to stay in his family home and not have to sleep in the parks, no matter how pretty they are.

Mummy, dearest…

Mum on right with faithful friend

Many years ago, my mum had a triple by-pass following a heart attack the year before. She had no idea why she would be at risk for a heart attack despite being a smoker and drinker with a mental illness… No matter what I said, she was unhappy about her diagnosis of a three blocked arteries and the prospect of a triple bypass. She was 57, slim and gorgeous. It took a full year of persuasion but finally she agreed to have the operation. During the by-pass, her lung was nicked unknowingly causing a pneumothorax some hours later. This is when the lungs suddenly deflate causing your body to react adversely. In her case, she almost died, was put into a medical coma and remained in Intensive Care for a further 10 days flitting between life and death.

The first funny episode was when the youngish surgeon told me the circumstances and I immediately said, “She wants all her organs donated”. He was horrified, telling me that she wasn’t dead yet but things were looking grim. No matter the circumstances, I remain pragmatic. After a few awful days, my mum regained consciousness somewhat but was still heavily medicated. She was the worst patient in IC, hands down. They had to put the blood pressure monitor on her foot because she kept ripping it off her finger. When she became reasonably coherent, she said very loudly that the man in the bed across the unit from her was brain dead. His family was horrified, desperately asking the staff if this was true. My mum had no idea whether this was true or not but had just watched too many medical documentaries. She had no idea that she was on the same lifesaving machinery as him – she couldn’t see the ventilator.

Then she told me that she had been evacuated from the unit. At first I wasn’t sure if this was real because we were in the middle of the first Gulf War and some hospitals were being evacuated because of bomb threats. Then she said that they bumped her all the way down the stairs in her bed…she was on the 10th floor. Before she could talk, she had my aunt and me driven to distraction with instructions that were incomprehensible. For some reason we were still afraid of her negative reaction even though she was near death… She just wanted her hair combed; once a model, always a model. In the midst of all this angst, a very nice nun had been visiting various patients in the unit. She noticed me coming every day and asked if she could pray over my mum. I was conflicted – she was wearing a white habit and I was pretty sure my mum would think she was in heaven. 🙂

Eventually, she recovered enough to be released and I could never figure out if this was a good thing or not. She was the worst patient in the world and it was my fault. She was convinced that smoking had nothing to do with her heart or lungs and she should sue the hospital for malpractice. Sigh. I almost wished the organs had been donated… I stayed with her for a few weeks but eventually had to pass the care over to one of her friends as I was about to commit matricide. She lived for a further 12 years or so with relatively good health and I was a good daughter – most of the time.