My Six Handy Helpers on Holiday

1. Keep My Ear Plugs Handy

Always carry a few tiny packs of little foam ear-plugs, the mold to the ear ones.  Now that’s what I call an earplug. They’re like having a few million extra Thai Baht.

2. When Possible, Take Advantage of My Very Own Bidet.

Oh, not the fancy ones that you install in a bathroom that look like a second fancy toilet.  The ones that are really, just a long kitchen sink squeeze faucet, usually white, hanging in a little holder on the wall next to the toilet.   Nice, fresh cool water, just where you like it!

3. On a Long Trip, Don’t Be Afraid to Use My Electronics

Ipad, Iphone or Laptop.  Write easily with a full keyboard, upload photos as I go along.  A three week trip without a laptop is one thing, three months is another.  Turn off the phone when not in use, save the battery and the data plan.  Use In-Country SIM cards.   If  I don’t know how to use something in my room, ask.  If it looks like a radio, it might be a radio – and a whole lot more!

4.  Always Have My Sleep Sack with Me.

Silk, the color of a beautiful gray-green ocean day.  Like a little sleeping bag, only silk.  Use is as a cover on top of a bed, or getting into it inside the sheets, too.  As a shawl in a pinch. 

5.  Thai Massage?

            Take it.  And another and another and another….

6. Biggest Rule of All.

Pack like Jack Reacher.  I’m not there yet.  Not at all.  I’m working on it.  You wouldn’t know it to look at my stuff.

  

You Can't be Too Safe...

For some reason, I enjoy starting my trips out of town on the local bus to the ferry to the airport.  So this afternoon, I did just that.  Just as I was seeing the #10 bus arrive (my bus), I realized (by reading the sign on the pole) that it wasn't MY bus.  Because... a while back, the local transit district had a facelift.  Oh, yes, I skimmed the story in the paper.  But I wasn't taking the bus then, so the details eluded me.  Hence, my not knowing the #10 doesn't go to the ferry anymore!  But, ah, the #11 does, and it was just another 1/2 hour wait.  Just long enough to walk into the Kentucky Fried Chicken right behind me for 3 chicken strips.  Cooked fresh, just for me.

So _____ called, popped over to say goodbye, brought her one-hitter and also hit me up for one of those chicken strips.  Of course.  Sure, I'll share my chicken, she shared her one-hitter.  After all, I'm on my way to the airport, going on a long trip.  Who knows when I'll see that bit of herb again?  'made for a relaxed and entertaining trip.

When the ferry floated up to the Ferry Building, we were in for a treat.  While waiting for the ferry, I read an article about the new lights on the new edition of the Bay Bridge.  Wow!  Amazing - a real light show.

I get to the airport, here I am standing in line, of course, another line, to the ticket counter.  'surrounded by travelers with huge boxes and assorted packages of belongings and gifts I am pretty sure they are 'taking home' to their families.  I'm on China Airlines, pretty easy generalization.  I watch this 79-year old looking man, maybe 5'6", 180#, pushing one of those airport luggage carts to the counter piled with high three giant suitcases.  Then he leaves the cart at the counter, lithely sprints back to where he left something, and comes walking back to the counter - with his walker!

Since the last time I traveled out of country, a new step in the anti-terrorist plot has taken hold.  Now they swipe our hands 'for chemicals'.  I asked, "what chemicals", and the young TSA woman told me, almost in a whisper, 'for explosives'.  REALLY???  I could feel my good mood slipping away.  But no, there was more.

Then they had to test my knee brace for chemicals and have me patted down.  I swear, REAALLY???  The nice lady behind me said, "Well, I guess you can't be too safe."  So lest I lose my excitement, I found the bar, had a double shot of JD, some fruit, a few crackers and cheese and I was on my merry way.

Window Seat

‘Sitting in the window seat, one seat between the Big Guy on the aisle and myself.  ’thinking, wow, maybe I’ll have a little space on this long flight halfway around the world. 

Instead I have a new friend.  Her name is Chasti, she’s a Filipina RN, working in the States, going ‘home’ for a month to visit her family.  We sat together and shared a bit of our lives with each other from the west coast of California to Taipei in the East.  Her husband is a Firefighter/Emergency Services guy, works alongside her.  They have a one year old son, who lives with her birth family when she and hubby are off working on the Carnival Cruise ship based out of Florida.  No, she wasn’t on the boat that broke down a few weeks ago.  Her husband went home a few weeks ago, and she’s following.  She told me her contracts are a written up differently with their dates on and off.

I asked her about her work on the Cruise Ship.  She told me there are three RNs who rotate around the clock, 2 always on, 1 off.  Two MDs on the ship.  I asked her the types of calls they get.  I wondered.  People with chronic conditions that flare up? 

In rare circumstances.  ‘Most of the patients she sees are fools.  Vacationers who look at all that food (that they already paid for), thinking now, “it’s free”.  Gluttony kicks in, they eat more than they can handle, get sick and “Help, help, I need help!” 

Or the couple at the bar, when the lady slips down the oak to flirt with some other guy.  Then HER GUY, drunk with madness, starts a fight! 

I suppose it should come as no surprise.  A few years in Isla Holbox, a tiny island off the tip of the Yucatan, I came across a little medical clinic.  Of course I went to check it out.  The Doctor there told me just about the same story.  Drunk tourists who fall down the stairs, break their leg.  Get in fights and fall down.  People, what are you doing out there??

Sharing is Caring - or an Invitation to a Fight

We’re on a full-to-the-brim 36-bed male unit for the severely Mentally Ill.  Three score of 22-57 year olds and the NA/AA (Narcotics Anonymous/Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting is in session.  Most of the ‘groups’ that take place here are staff-initiated.  This group is different.  One of our borderline, paranoid schizophrenic patients, JZ, initiated this meeting.  He’s totally delusional most of the time.  But he has his good days.  The stories he tells - we wonder, really??   Stories about 'the Haight', places we recognize.  We laugh a lot with him.

JZ asked to get NA started, even explained to us how to get the books and materials necessary for a real meeting.  He wanted to make sure ‘we can we have coffee & donuts, okay?’  We encouraged him to get other interested patients to sign up, and so he did.  It’s not anonymous, but that’s the way it is here.  Nothing is anonymous.  About a third of the guys on the unit put their name to paper.    

I’ve been to a few of these meetings now; I must say I’m learning more about these guys now than I did in years of ‘working’ with them.  They speak from their hearts, and sometimes I just want to cry.  Steven, who told of starting to drink when his “wife left me and took my kids, I was so damned lonely”.  Or Kelly, who spoke of when he was “two or three years old, my dad, he’d beat my mom all the time; I couldn’t do anything about it.  He’d come home and beat her and then one time he stabbed her over and over and over again and he went to prison.  He got out and came back and started beating her again.  I was just a kid, I couldn’t do anything”.   In my opinion, a lot of these guys are the remnants of a sick and apathetic society that didn't take care of them when they were so very, very small and innocent.

It’s 1030, military time, at the 24-hour locked state mental hospital where I work as a Registered Nurse.  My job is to pass medications, assess for physical illnesses, complete reams of paperwork, and at all times, assess for antecedent behavior that could erupt in violence.  It's dangerous here.  Danger strikes patients, staff and police officers alike.  People die here.  Not always from illness.  People are assaulted EVERY DAY here by severely mentally ill patients.  Patients, people that you don’t want living next door to you, or in the grocery store with your family.  Psychiatric treatment here is a difficult task.  Staffing cuts have left few professionals to provide barely minimal treatment to help some of the guys get out of here.  Some of them will never get out.

Saturday on the unit.  Weekends are the sweetest time, no appointments off unit, no escorts to clinics, no management folks visiting the units.  Everyone loves a weekend.  Most of the patients want to lay around and rest in their bedrooms; four patients to a room.  A few of them get up to watch TV or play chess or dominoes, listen to some music.  They come out for meals and ‘med-time’ - sometimes that’s the extent of their presence.  Many patients here are diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; they really do feel safer in their rooms, away from other people.  No surprise there.

At one of these meetings, JZ, our ‘facilitator’, is sitting quietly, intently listening to one of the participants read from the NA book.  He notices Jorge walk in and sit down across from him.  JZ opens up the NA/AA binder and gently passes over the Spanish speaking materials to Jorge, whose native language is Spanish.  WOW.  That was nice.  

We observe and attempt to interact with these guys - many of them forlorn, talking to themselves, yelling at noone, pacing nowhere, shadow-boxing with the air, or staring out the windows at the end of the hall.  Most of them are estranged from family, living off the kindness of strangers.  We ‘strangers’ slowly become their main contact with the outside world.  

We’re cursed and threatened, and sometimes, hit.  We’re also loved and respected once in a while.  The ‘kindnesses’ we show our patients is just part of our job.  The kindness seen as JZ handed those pamphlets to his peer, that’s what touches me.  A year ago, he couldn’t have done that.  He was so ill, violent, so full of voices and hatred, kindess was merely lurking somewhere deep in his heart.   The miracle drugs he takes every day, the caring and professional help given to him, have brought his own sleeping kindness to the surface.  Not all the time.  Some of the time.  That’s progress.

Outside the doors of the unit, out where I live, where you live, we encourage giving, sharing and caring.  Here we we see it in the NA/AA meetings.   Most often though, on the unit, it’s a no-no.  Patients aren’t allowed to share tangible items with others.  Too much of a setup for people.  The basic rule is, ‘if someone tries to share something with you, don’t do it’.  Don’t share food or ball-caps, or pants or shirts or headphones.  Sooner or later, as we’ve seen time after time, someone will be accused of stealing whatever it is, or ‘not paying for it’, or ‘didn’t give it back yesterday’, or ‘broke it’, or ‘gave it to someone else’. And the fighing begins.

Here, as in much of society, the weak and helpless are easily taken advantage of by the strong and mean.  Our borderline, anti-social guys easily intimidate the weaker ones.  Please, no sharing allowed.   Sometimes I want to look the other way at some of their sharing.  It seems so darn sincere, a fine act of kindness.  I also know that if I do, it will come back to bite me and everyone involved. 

All of life here is a work in progress.  The patients who are eventually released from this place are the ones who learn to be quiet and polite, store their belongings in their locker, keep to themselves, stay away from fights, take their meds and stop sharing.   All of us on the unit, patients who live here, and staff who come and go every shift, look for ways to keep out of harm’s way.  We keep in mind, most of the time, that help and kindness really are just around the corner.

The guys learn to be kind to themselves.  They learn some sort of kindness to others.  They learn how to get what they want without fighting.  And then we say good-bye to them.

Remember the Roller Coaster?

.
When I was a little girl, oh, about 7, 9 years old, my parents were both 'practicing' alcoholics. Many evenings would end with a frying pan flying through the air. From my mom's hand to my dad's head. Then, for some reason, Daddy would grab me, take me out to the car and drive down to the Boardwalk. We'd go to the roller coaster and ride it over and over and over again. When the Boardwalk closed up for the night, we'd go home and all would be quiet until the very next time.

I know Daddy suffered years and years of PTSD, depression, various physical ailments all as a result of his years as a POW, captured on Wake Island, early in WWII. Years of fear and loathing, afraid to be alone working through it, years of hard work and many successes. Can you imagine? As a POW, after his group had completed loading train cars full of lumber, they ran out of lumber. So their captors then forced these POWs to dig holes in the ground and throw the dirt up onto the train. Then they had to push the train several hundred yards and unload the dirt. To build a dirt mountain. 300 feet high. To keep 'em busy. And that's just one short story of his years in Chinese and Japanese camps.

Now he's 93 years old, has outlived most of his peers, his POW buddies, his friends, including my mom and his brothers. He's fairly healthy, doesn't really want to complain much about his body full of aches and pains. His mind is certainly deteriorating. He's alienated the few friends he had close to home because of his paranoid dementia and false accusations. Even though his peers and friends know it's a confused mind, they can't forgive him.

So he's more or less alone in his town of 45 years. Too confused to live alone there any longer. A few years of angst has brought us to this point, and now he's moving here to be close to family who will look in on him every day, grandkids and great grandkids who will get to spend some time with Grandpa Russ.

It feels like we're on the roller coaster all over again. Crawling up the hill, Daddy's argumentative and resistant, (fearful, I'm sure) then we coast down and around the corner and he's excited to move, looking forward and shedding tears of joy to be with his family. My gut is screaming about doing all this, how to do it, when to do it, how to do it.

We've got his apartment, beautiful place with lots of amenities, across the street and near the Napa River. He can walk down the street and throw a line in. Independent Senior Living. Meals, special events, happy hour every night, new friends, transportation, cable TV all included. He WILL enjoy it, once he settles in. I can't wait.

But right now, my life is not my own and I don't like it. It's my control thing. And his. Two steps forward, one step back.

I really do feel as if I'm back on that train again, taking a deep breath, speeding around that corner, hands reaching up to the sky, mouth wide open, screaming and screeching to a hard stop.