Ruby Made My Day February 17th, 2023

                       

 Ruby Made My Day

Friday February 17th, 2023

  . 

         I knew I needed to walk again at the hospital. My recent directive was to walk every day!!

Because it was Treacherously Icy out, I chose to walk at Hennepin HealthCare in the long corridors of

 care  I know so well. We are all waking up from the Pandemic and I am glad to be back after 3 years.

    

      I go through the sliding doors, past all the stickers one receives frozen to the sidewalk.  I ease 

inside and there sits Ruby in her wheelchair, large purple quilted piece on the one leg she has now. 

I need go no farther. Easing myself into the empty wheelchair next to her, knowing its girth will hold 

me. I chat away.  I'm real good at chit chat. It's easy to talk to her. 

She tells me she. doesn't need to go into the  hospital. We breathe that collective sigh of relief because

 we know How Good That Feels!! 

    I ask her if I can draw her and she says Yes. I regret my drawing pad is So Small because Ruby 

deserves to be drawn really big and bold on a large piece of paper. But I make do. 

My lap becomes my studio once again as I set my watercolors on my big thigh. Yup! Got it all right

 here! I draw her as beautifully and carefully as I can. Mooshing  the colors,  but my feeling for her 

comes through. I am critical of how it goes..but then It's Done, I give her the

 portrait in a silver envelope and I say.

"Thank You Ruby for Making my day!!!!" 

.   

February 13th 2019 Shaving Off Your Beard: Gift for Your 79th birthday 2/13/19

 

Shaving off your beard

Gift for your 79th birthday

           This morning I put away the dishes from the drainer the way you always made order for the day. Last night, though weary I hung up the laundry and did another batch. Laundry was your chore that you did with regularity. I never had to worry about clean dry clothes. You took care of it all. 

     But now out of regular time and normal rhythms like laundry chores you recover in ICU in Cardio Renal at the familiar hospital in the familiar room with the familiar tubes, beeps and sounds. I come to be with you enduring the endless hours as time flips over, no longer doing its job.

      I begin to see the Arc of Recovery as you move off the bed and walk with the physical therapist to do exercises. You eat all of your meals and I feed you. Slowly the mystery of healing takes place.

        The card I made you will find its place at home among the many other cards from other years. I drift sitting next to you remembering the mystical martini party I had for you 4 years ago. I purchased special beautiful blue glass martini glasses and hand made invitations. The only thing was I didn't know how to make martinis! We had so much fun!

         Hospital time is like a Salvador Dali painting where the clocks droop and drip. After a while time becomes irrelevant, but there in the secret places within the body you heal, aided by care, medicine, and the Divine Hand that guides.

      One of my biggest inner chores has been to avoid Catastrophic Thinking and to bind the difficult moments with Trust. My small bouquet of Trust blossomed into a bigger bouquet and  on Valentines day today this is what I bring you with its fragrant elusive scent.

      The day winds on. There is a succession of visits from nurses, doctors and other providers. Often they get caught in our Vortex of Stories. After a while they reluctantly extricate themselves to attend to other patients. It's not easy, but we have fun!

         Toward 5:00 you gaze up at the clock and tell me you want me to shave your beard off. You were born at 5:50 in a truck just south of Buffalo, New York in the town of Angola. You want to be shaved by 5:50 and start over. I rev up the electric shaver I brought from home and start moving across your face. You've got a tough white beard and it takes many passes. I stop many times to blow out and clean the bristles. I shave off this current hospital visit and your many struggles this past month to make it to appointments. I shave off your time on oxygen at home and the effort to do your chores. I shave off the years, other visits to ER too numerous to count and that last visit to Cardio Renal in 2018. I blow those moments into the waste basket and continue. Under your chin it is really tough going, but I persist! Shaving tracks through your beard reminds me of the last lawn mowing we did on Labor Day. I did most of the mowing and you directed me, just as you point out the rough patches now.

     Then we stop and you show me how to take apart the razor. We clean the separate parts. This is the most mundane and most romantic thing we do together on your birthday today. Cleaning out your electric razor together. You show me how to eject the three razor parts and ask for a brush! Why of course I have a brush! I carry my paint brush kit with me everywhere! My brush reaches way down into the gears where we brush out every detail. Detail. That's what you are good at. Details. I float around drawing and musing and philosophizing as you pull me into What Is. So there we are in this moment cleaning the razor. Everything pops right back in and I continue shaving you, smoothing out the rough patches.

       I shave away the years until we are out at our collective country hippie farm. Your tall 7 foot frame is out there scything as you cut a new path in the heat. Wearing shorts, a cloth wrapped round your head you lean into cutting a new path through the tall grasses. Coconut oil glistens on your long frame, keeping the bugs away. Leaning and scything you make your way in the heat of the day.

    The years drop away. Suddenly I am back in the hospital room looking at you. it is 5:40pm now. The shaving is finished in time so you can begin again.

Station 21 and Hennepin HealthCare Ambulance

 

February 12, 2023

Riding Shotgun with Jeff the Ambulance Driver

           Station 21 makes a hard right on 36th Avenue followed by a

Hennepin HealthCare ambulance as I make my way to see my student.

This feels like a very odd birthday reminder from Josh in the upper heavens.

He would have turned 83 tomorrow February 13, 2023.

Once again there are no birthday cards to get him,

or a funny 7 foot paper length of him to cut out and laugh over playfully!

No candles to blow out on the birthday cake I make.

or mystical martini invitations to put into the mail just in time.

Those blue glass martini glasses hold only dust and memories now.

I took some out for wine when my friend Bob came over for supper 

they still shimmer.

 I watch the EMT's jump out of the cab followed by the ambulance crew.

 I remember the feeling  of relief as they crowded into our living room.

having endured the minutes passing like hours

 as Josh's breathing labored with pain that did not cease.

 The big men came in asking medical questions 

we told the whole story... again.

I'd stop and offer them my thanks to them for all the times I called 911

when they came to our home

and for that time they saved Josh's life 

when he had cardiac arrest in front of the house in the ambulance.

But there is no time for that, there never is. 

 My tears of remembrance are my offering of thanks 

as I watch them entering the known and unknown house,

remembering how it felt to receive their care and help

even as my beloved was whisked away

 lights flashing and sirens blaring to a mysterious medical destination. 

**********

Drifting in the upper realms your pain has ceased.

You are a vapor now as I summon you from the celestial realms

from time to time and

I am so grateful you are far beyond it all now.

Returning to the Hospital after 3 years.

 

The Inner Labyrinth of Time and Memory

Returning to the Hospital after 3 years

Last Post October 2020 during the Pandemic

So here I am in a waiting room on the first floor

No one else is waiting, 

but I've been waiting...

waiting fortime to pass 

all these long 3 years

so that I could return.

My last blog entry is October 2020.

It was two weeks ago I came back for an

interview for the hospital Facebook page.

I felt a deep longing well up within me

and now I am back.

No one waits for me at Hennepin Healthcare these days

I don't have a badge to get in the side door and scoot up the elevator

to Cardio Renal where all 7 feet of my late husband Josh lays stretched

out on the bed with its extender.

Josh is long gone now.

I do not have to rush to see him 

to intercede for his

abruptness with staff 

or double check his oxygen levels.

My brother is not hovering by the locked psych door waiting

for me to come in and play Scrabble with him. We would play as he sat

there in his regulation rust brown outfit the patients wear.

Now I simply go to the coffee shop and draw those I meet

empathizing with their stories of struggle that mirror my own.

We who "have been through the Storm!!"

We who wondered when the hardships and craziness would end.

and how we marveled at our Resilience and holding onto it 

with desperation and hope, 

then tucking it in our back pocket for use 

the next time everything fell apart.

I walk and muse along the long familiar corridors 

without fear of falling on ice.

As I walk 

I remember what was...

And move ahead into what is...

Honoring Dr Shirlee Xie Hospitalist Stories from the The Field Hennepin HealthCare Heroes

 

Dr Shirlee Xie's Words

Dr Shirlee Xie Hospitalist

 

For Rosie Greeter in the Lobby of Hennepin HealthCare Clinic May 7, 2020