It's a Small World After All, The Global Pandemic

Unsung

by Betty Wadland

             

04/20/2020

Outside my mother's assisted living here in Charlevoix are signs that say, “Heroes Work Here” I noticed them set up like the old Burma Shave signs along the busy highway as I turned into the parking lot.

All of the doors are locked now at American House. An Alexa Ring door alert's blue-lighted iris circles the clear lens of the camera watching the entry. A warning sign cataloging the restrictions is fixed to the door. Pressing the doorbell, a merry chime sounds.  The wait is indeterminate. “Keeper of the gate” is a duty added to the already busy staff.  The heavy door clunking open always startles me.  A hand sanitizer container stands silent century while my temperature is checked and paper work attesting to the lack of any symptoms is filled out and signed. 

Once inside, I am reminded of an empty church or funeral home without mourners or the smell of flowers for the quiet yet pregnant silence.

Today, Leslie is my admitter.  She is the activities director of which there are none.  Most are cancelled.   The dining area is closed while residents are served meals in their rooms and eat alone. Leslie and I exchange pleasantries, we are both “fine.”  Only our eyes are visible above our masks.   Mentioning the hero signs out front, she glumly replies, “I don’t feel like a hero.”  Leslie went her way and I went mine, to room number 4.  It’s shower day for my 95 year old, wheel chair bound mother.  I’m a nurse who happens to be a family member.  That’s my lucky ticket into an environment where people have not been allowed visitors in weeks.  

At 10:30 there’s a knock on my mom’s door and it’s Leslie.  “Janet, time for exercise.”

Residents move to chairs outside their doors and safe distances from each other.  Leslie starts into the arm exercises with weights in a drill sergeant voice.  She’s at the end of the long hall with a microphone and speaker.   The short session ends with leg marching and singing, "Oh, When the Saints Go Marching In."  I come close to crying with the irony of it all. 

Heroine implies heroics, brave action in a time of need.   However, unsung reminds me of the question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”  Unsung, unrewarded, unrecognized.   This pandemic has an army of souls who risk their lives, some because they have chosen but more because they must.  It is the job that feeds their families and pays the bills. It is a profession or career chosen while never imagining the danger.

Yesterday, a Raven dropped down like a black parachute to the ground beside the bird feeder visible from my kitchen window.  This was the first time I had seen a raven so close.  A black beauty, sleek and gleaming in the morning sun strutted, pecked and tilted her head in silent queries before taking off in graceful flight, body tilting through the close stand of pine.  In the reverie of the moment, I thought of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem and the Raven’s reply, “Nevermore.”

Nevermore will the world be the same.  Our unsung heroines, such as Leslie, are reluctant heroes caught in something new and bewildering but requiring brave action or brave forbearance or brave imagining.    Nevermore will I sneeze or hear a cough and not think of my own mortality.

Tomorrow, I will thank Leslie. And all the unsung heroes that walk and breathe and work among us; the transit workers, health care professionals, clerks at pharmacies, hardware stores and groceries, police and emergency responders.     

How will it end?  When will it end?  How will we all be different or the same?  When Leslie said, I don’t feel like a hero, her eyes were weary as if they could see a long difficult road ahead.

Incidental Tonsillectomy

I once read that people sometimes choose careers based  upon fear as often as what is pleasant and enjoyable.  One may choose a vocation because of  some childhood trauma in order to feel mastery over what was once overwhelmingly frighting.   This is profoundly true for me.

In 1954 when I was six years old more children had their tonsils out than kept them.  A couple of bouts of tonsillitis was all it took.  My twin sister, feverish with  infected tonsils on one too many occasions was judged by the old bespectacled town doctor to be a prime candidate.  Turning his gaze toward me, I slipped to the other side of my mother's knee out of reach.  "Let's have a look at your throat." The wooden tongue blade came in flavors, with hard candy on one end.  It aways tasted more  of wood.  Mother was informed of the health of my tonsils but why not take both girls out?


INCIDENTAL 
Definition:  happening in connection with something more important.
Synonym:  casual, chance, fortuitous
Antonym: fundamental


FUNDAMENTAL
Definition:  serving as a generating source.
Synonym: prime, important, uncomplicated
Antonym:  incidental


Miss Sarah Langley ran the small city hospital.  Everyone did as she said, doctors, nurses, cooks, patients.  She was the general on the battle field of health.  Mother brought us to the hospital, early one morning that spring.  Sarah met everyone in her starched white uniform and stern expression.  The little girls knew her directions were to be followed.  Mother's anxiety seeped into the pores of the little girls, now dressed it little hospital gowns clinging to either side.  Cheeriness was plastered on every one's face like a mask.  "You are going to see the brand new babies in the nursery on your way, then no more tonsils."  "Who wants to be first?"  No one wanted to be first.  Always generous, my sister volunteered me.  Wrapped in a blanket, I was taken away, too frightened even to protest.  The newborn infants viewed through glass all bundled like burritos were very unimpressive in their red faced wailing or closed lidded stillness.  A few steps away, the double doors of the single operating room swung open.   Brilliant light and glass cabinets full of unfamiliar metal objects in every direction came into view.  A strange bed occupied the center under the lights.  The old doctor stood to the side with a gown covering his clothes.  I had no idea what was going to happen to me in that room.  Placed on the bed and lying down, I was probably like the small animal that becomes very still, knowing the futility of resistance to the inevitable when in the jaws of a predator.  A rubbery cloth was placed over my eyes, I saw no more.
Smell was the next sense to be assaulted with the overpoweringly noxiousness of ether.  The powerful essence filled my mouth and nose with its irritating vapors.  I held my breath, then a gasp, more fumes more choking.  I began to feel like I was falling down deep and away from everyone.  A male monotone voice repeated loudly "sassafras, sassafras, sassafras."  Circles of light spun in a pin wheel of color faster and faster unti I was swollowed into...NOTHING.

I woke up to my mother tickling my feet.   I could barely swallow my throat was on fire.  A nurse came to my bedside and asked if I wanted a glass of milk.  Cold, creamy, wet and soothing it was gulped down to the nurses admonishments.  "Drink it slow, or you will throw up."  Later, I threw up, "I told you so,"  was her unsympathetic and cold reply.

I wish dearly that I could say that that was the worst of it but, alas, fundamental is uncomplicated. Incidental invites the opposite.  A few days after returning home, the scars started to bleed.  I was gagging and throwing up blood clots.  Mother woke father and drove my to the hospital in the darkness.  Nurses and doctors hovered around and shown flashlights and peered at the blood clots.  After an ominous murmuring huddle, I was told that I would have to return to operating room and "go to sleep" so the doctor could stop the bleeding.  This time, I cried.  Big silent tears rolled down my face as I entered the now familiar bright space of terror.  The rubbery mask, the noxious smell, the sounds and swirling lights returned.  This time, however, I heard Miss Langley's loud voice shout, "That's the wrong stuff," then NOTHING.

It has been nearly sixty years since my very first introduction to anesthesia.  It did become my career.  The initial days of my training struck me with almost as much fear as my initial exposure as a child.  I learned rather quickly that a precious life was being placed in my care.   I  watch over this "sleeping" life, while skilled hands enter the body, mend bones, remove the unhealthy tissue or bring forth new life.  I will take away pain and deliver this life, old, young and in between, safely to the other side of nothingness.  That has been by life's work.