Serena:
“Why d’you want to call our post that?
Nobody fed you. You weren’t eating.”
PK:
“Of course not. Eating food when you know it won’t stay down and nourish you is
wasteful. The feeding of the Very Sick Human is easy. You just don’t.”
Serena:
“Well. What a time we have had this week. After eight days of grumbling about
being sick our human suddenly progressed into being Very Sick.”
PK:
“On Monday, the fifteenth of March, the first poison spraying of the railroad
occurred. As usual, people were given no warning, so on Monday I hauled the
laptop out to that parking lot on the edge of town to go online. I wondered why
the laptop seemed so much heavier and the road so much longer on the way back.
At one point I sat down on a log beside the road to rest and suddenly felt
faint; had to lie down on the gravel beside the log so that I wouldn’t fall off
it. Fortunately there wasn’t much traffic and no one seemed to notice. The
faintness eventually passed. I got up and went home.
On
Tuesday, the sixteenth, early in the morning I felt that surge of otherwise
unprovoked anger that has always been the prodrome of my celiac reactions. I
used to worry that it was a serious emotional problem; I learned that, since
the anger fades away as soon as I recognize what it is, it’s a valuable
warning, (1) that I’m about to have a celiac reaction, and (2) that all our
emotional feelings need to be considered as physical reactions to body
processes rather than any kind of guide to how we ought to live!
I
walked out again. Now I could see the poisoned plants beside the railroad. Very
foolishly, I used the Internet while waiting to meet someone who I knew is irresponsible and likely not to
keep appointments. The person didn’t keep that one. About halfway home a
neighbor offered me a lift, so I got home without fainting.
But
the celiac reaction lasted all the rest of the week. Basically the celiac
reaction consists of acute damage to the interior lining of the digestive
tract. Little temporary bleeding ulcers can pop up inside the mouth and
anywhere further down. Damage to the bowels can cause a very specific pattern
of irregularity that may or may not be complete or follow the same time
schedule every time. Usually the reaction lasts only two or three days, but
with heavier exposure the spastic colon can fail to resume its job for several
days. However long it takes for the cause of the reaction to be expelled from
the body, I have less strength and energy than I normally have.
That’s
why I say that, when it’s possible for celiacs to avoid the cause of our
reactions, which is normally wheat gluten, the celiac trait is not a disease but a super-power. Most celiacs grew up
pushing ourselves to work through that chronic fatigue, so when we don’t have
the chronic fatigue, we’ve overtrained and have tremendous strength and energy.
But
when the cause is glyphosate, which we can’t avoid, the superpower turns into a
disease again. And I feel very, very bad about the way our government allows
other people to make me sick without even having to pay me damages, just
because those people are too lazy to pull up their own weeds.
In
the U.S. the top-selling glyphosate product, Roundup spray, was pulled off the
market for individual gardeners. That’s a big step in the right direction but
other products, some of which combine glyphosate with other chemicals that may
make their effects on humans even worse, are still available to the
irresponsible gardener. Meanwhile big corporations like the railroad company,
which buy their poisons in bulk, are still free to torture people.”
Serena:
“And kill kittens.” (Image not shown, out of kindness: stillborn, defective kitten that turned up in the yard while PK was sick.)
PK:
“And songbirds. And honeybees. Don’t get me started. Anyway on Monday, the
twenty-second, bowel activity seemed to be resuming. I thought I’d soon be
well. I made plans to meet someone in town on Wednesday. Then on Wednesday I
woke up in pain that kept me awake for hours. When I looked at the clock it was
exactly 3:00 a.m. The pain was coming from the whole “core” of my body, the
abdominal area. During a celiac reaction I usually bloat up enough that only
the ‘fat pants’ fit, but suddenly the swelling had increased by two or three
times. Even at the back of my waist, the soft tissue was rigid and tender. I
was breathing in a strange pattern where my bloated abdomen expanded when I
breathed out. The diaphragm muscle
was having to work hard to keep that bloating from expanding up into my lungs.
All the muscles in that part of my body were cramping; when I moved in a way
that bent or twisted the core, the pain became enough to block any other
movement I’d been trying to make.
Serena:
“Were you delirious, like I was last fall?”
PK:
“Not delirious, actually. I could see and recognize and remember things.
However, my thoughts were—distracted.
In the time it would normally take to edit a chapter of my book manuscript I’d
be occupied with the new mental challenge this new disability presented, like
‘What is the least painful way to move six inches up or down in bed?’
At
first I hoped the bloating and pain would subside when I’d been to the
bathroom. Surprisingly, although standing up was difficult and painful,
once I was standing up I could walk—but not make any use of the bathroom. I was
very weak and felt faint after exertions like walking across the bedroom to get
another pillow out of the closet. But nothing was moving in those bloated
tissues. Glyphosate can cause paralysis. My colon was paralyzed.
I
began to worry that some part of my damaged digestive tract had ruptured. My
father lived with an intestinal hernia for years. It ruptured in the week
before he died. Blood poisoning, in addition to bloating, set in. My natural sister,
who didn’t check on either of our parents as often as I would have done, went
to his flat and found him too feverish to talk. So she rushed him to the
nearest hospital. Without asking questions about his background or history, the
hospital staff rushed to give Dad a total anesthetic, clean up the mess in his
abdomen, and stitch up the hernia. Irish people can have very different
reactions to several things than English people have. One of those reactions is
that upon coming out of a full anesthetic, people of Irish descent may have a
fatal stroke. This is why we might say “The operation was a great success, but
the patient died.” Dad’s operation seemed to be a great success, but he died.
He wasn’t even seventy-five years old.
It
occurred to me that if something had ruptured, it might be a good idea to start
the surgery with a local anesthetic while I was able to explain these things.
I
called our local EMT service, the Scott County Life Saving Crew, a fine
organization that belongs on everybody’s charity list. They sent out a nurse
and EMT to determine whether I needed immediate surgery. Since my pulse, blood
pressure, and temperature were normal for a healthy person and I wasn’t
vomiting, they said it was up to me whether I wanted to go to the hospital.
I
could think of some possible benefit from going to the hospital. A hospital
might be able to determine whether this glyphosate reaction was being
complicated by salmonella (which it now seems to have been). If so, an antibiotic might clean it
right out. I’ve never liked the idea of possibly aggravating damage to the
colon by adding even a simple saline solution, but this bloating and blockage
were horrible enough to make me willing to reconsider having an enema, in a
hospital setting where damage to the colon could be repaired.
I
could also think of the expenses. Hospitals tend to like to keep people in beds
“for observation” for several hours before anything is done about a condition
that is not life-threatening. This allows doctors to treat life-threatening
conditions first, allows nurses to observe symptoms the patient may not have
mentioned, and allows the hospital to start billing with a thousand dollars a
day for that hospital bed. I could think of ways to pay for an antibiotic or an
enema but not for a day in a hospital bed.
I
decided to suffer through this episode in my own bed, where at least I had
books to read and would not be exposed to other people’s germs.
But
after I’d gone inside, surrounding myself with paperback books and a plastic
jug I could use for a bedpan, I did begin vomiting. Several times during the
next three days, whether my stomach contained water or nothing at all, it
heaved. A bowel movement brought only partial relief. I made five or six tries
to get up and feed the cats before I was finally able, right after vomiting, to
drag myself to the porch. Then I felt faint and lay down.”
Serena:
“You seemed glad to see me, but you didn’t even try to touch or kiss me or hold
out a hand for me to sniff. I thought about sitting on you and purring, but you
didn’t seem to want that.”
PK: “No! I suppose you might have curled up
on my arm or shoulder, the way Heather used to do, but even my chest was sore
from that laborious double-breathing process. I thought your sitting on me
would hurt more than help.”
Serena:
“Okay, right, keep your fur on, as we say. I
know where I’m not wanted. I didn’t even let Silver ask. But we were concerned about you.”
PK:
“I had heard Sommersburr calling you. It was Friday. I had not had the energy
to feed you dinner on Wednesday after the nurse left, nor breakfast nor dinner
on Thursday. I thought, ‘He’s inviting you to his house, and people who like
cats enough to adopt an old ugly tomcat like Sommersburr will probably want to
keep you two. Will I ever see you again?’ I looked out the window and didn’t
see you and thought, ‘Now by the time I get to the kibble bin, they’ll be too
far away even to hear me.’”
Silver:
“No such! Sommersburr was inviting us
to his house, but we told him to go home. We knew you weren’t dead. We wanted
to see you.”
PK:
“Seeing you right at the door brought tears to my eyes. Most cats do not have a
noticeable capacity for love of any other creature but themselves. Social cats
do, which is what makes you special, but although there’s no doubt that Serena
loves you, Silver, I have wondered
whether she even likes me.”
Serena:
“Well I’m not the soppy sentimental type. Never was. And you’ve done some
things I really did not like. But I suppose the bottom line is, given a choice
between dinner with a stranger or sitting hungrily outside the door watching
for you, I choose you.”
PK:
“I love you, too, Serena. As soon as I was able to stand up I fed you and
Silver. And Sommersburr, but he didn’t eat.”
Silver:
“He is a cat who loves, like us. He knew we needed every kibble we could snap
up!”
PK:
“Then I went back to bed and stayed there. A routine chore like giving you two
your breakfast had suddenly become a full day’s work, even though the cramps
and bloating did seem to be subsiding. I kept sipping water. My mouth stayed so dry I could hardly speak but, eventually, most of the water stayed down. I read paperback books and
thought about things. I dozed a lot, after the first few horrible hours; every
time I woke up from a dream I’d been dreaming about the writing I wasn’t doing.
On Friday night I made three or four tries to go out and dump the bedpan and
give you your dinner. Eventually I did get the bedpan dumped but did not get
back to the kibble bin.
It's lasted a full week and it's not over yet. I've felt that I've been making some very small amount of progress every day. Bowel movements did eventually appear; they had the look of salmonella. This afternoon, the thirty-first of March, when I finally got my Internet back, I sat up for four hours, the longest time I've lasted all week. One of the more convenient genes I inherited is for resistance to bacteria like salmonella, so I expect to make a full recovery without having to pay for professional help.
One
reason why older people seldom talk to counsellors is that young counsellors
don’t understand what the change of life is all about. For young people, mental
health means wanting to stay alive at any cost. For older people, mental health
means accepting that we can’t always
stay alive, in any meaningful way, and accepting that our lives are going to
end. Young people always think we’re talking about suicidal depression. No such. We may appreciate the good things
of this life more than the young do—I remember noticing, several times, the
pretty new flowers and green leaves of spring, from my bedroom window, and
wondering whether I’ll be here to enjoy them next year. For me, if I can have
another fifty years to live on my own, with or without any new mates or young
that might come along, I’d still take every one of those years. But I don’t
want even one year of pain or being dependent on other people.
That’s
what my blog buddy and mentor and best friend for life, Grandma Bonnie Peters,
was thinking when she did the Last Road Trip while she was weakened by liver
cancer. She might have preferred to have the stroke after spending more time
with those relatives, rather than before, but the goal was to have that stroke
before she got to the really horrible stage of liver cancer.
People
didn’t want to let her go. I can certainly relate to that. It was GBP’s nature,
as a nurse and a mentor for people living with health problems, that made
people feel dependent on her, and she hated to be depended on. She always told
people, no matter how much they liked a friend, never to depend on a friend for
anything. She loved George Peters but, when he felt the need to be in an
assisted living project, she refused to stay there more than a few hours at a
time. She didn’t want to raise ‘mother’s girls.’ Of her two daughters she chose to spend her declining years with
the one who was less responsible and less emotionally involved with her. She
liked the independence of having time to clean up her own mess, even after
she’d seen how that could mean lying on the floor for thirty-some hours instead
of being rushed right off to the hospital. As a friend she would push people away, even hurt and disappoint them, if
she thought they were getting too close. I think she wanted people to be able
to accept that she was gone, when she was gone.
Nevertheless
a lot of them weren’t, and I get that, now, too. ‘How could you have let her go
on that trip?’ Well, for one thing,
as her husband knew, when GBP wanted to do a thing, you could offer
alternatives; she’d ignore them. You could sit on her; she’d bite, and
eventually you’d have to get up and she’d go right back to Plan A. If you did
not fully agree with her plan, your best chance was to go along with her and
try for damage control.
Do I
miss GBP? Often. Lots of women love to play “mommy,” and I suppose we should
let them feed their prolactin cycles, though I wish more of them would just
adopt babies and stop oozing their prolactin into adult conversations. And I
have some older friends—I suppose it’s the way they feel they need to define a
relationship with someone younger—who’ve said “I could be your mentor.” And
frankly, if there’s anything GBP and Suzette
Haden Elgin and Bonnie Prudden failed
to teach me, as mentors, I am probably hopeless and never going to learn it;
not that I mind watching other people for pointers. I’ve not felt a need for
mentoring or mothering since GBP’s died. I’ve been profoundly blessed; I’ve
been the student who becomes the teacher’s peer and friend. She would ask me
for tips as easily as I would ask her, but mostly, when I spent time with her,
we strategized. Reminisced, too, and
cooked, and walked. I miss that.
None
of The Nephews has been dependent on me for anything but auntly love. They’re
old enough to get by without that, by now. I suppose it’s possible that some
people may miss the friendships they’ve had with me, too—but adults have to
live with that kind of loss.
I
worry about people bothering their heads about me being Very Sick “all
alo-o-one.” If I become sick enough to feel that I need to be in a hospital, I
suppose I could force myself to go to one, but when I’m sick I prefer to be all alone. Having someone
else watch does nothing whatsoever to improve the experience of vomiting.
Nobody else really had to know that I’m the sort of patient who, however long
it takes and however much of a challenge it feels, will sponge-dry and
disinfect the spot where a little vomit splashed on the bed, before I lie down
again. That was Thursday’s big achievement. I vomited, I splattered, I
bloodywell cleaned the spot and lay down in a sanitary bed. Nobody needed to
watch that. Nobody needed to “help.” Maybe I needed to know that, even with my
new disability, I could still be myself.
Maybe another time, if not this time, I’ll get sicker and die, “all alo-o-one.” If so, the most important thing
for other people to know is that I preferred to be all alone, in my favorite place,
with some of my favorite living people (even if they happen to be cats—real
good will matters more than species does).
Anyone
who feels inclined to fret about my being sick, ill, injured, “all
alo-o-one”…well, first of all, I’m not really, even when all of The Nephews are
with their own parents or at their own schools or generally living their own
lives. It’d be nice if one of them turned out to be a congenial housemate for
me, but Gate City has turned a lot of people off the idea of living with me, and
no young person should have to try to start a career in Gate City because they think I’m “all
alo-o-one.” Emotionally? I have the cats. For security? I have the neighbors;
we’ve seen that even the Bad Neighbor would feel it a blot on his honor if he
didn’t summon help for someone who was ill. I think, if like our poor friend
Oogesti I’d collapsed beside the road, I’d rather just die than be picked up
and ministered to by the Bad Neighbor; still, the Bad Neighbor did stay beside Oogesti until the
ambulance came. For emergency medical help? I have the Life Saving Crew. I now
have two cell phones.
But
please—for Heaven’s sake, for your sake, for my sake, for all of our
sakes!—don’t fret about the possibility that I might manage to have the dignity
to die alone, in my own home, without calling for help. It’s generally agreed
that a good death is a quick death in which the person doesn’t have time to call for help.
Fret,
instead, about the fact that the only reason why I’ve been sick, or am likely
to die, is that in these United States the law still allows people to poison
the air their neighbors have to breathe—to poison me—to make me sick. Me today, you tomorrow. Meditate on that fact, and
let it make you angry. Fighting mad.
Glyphosate
Awareness.
Carry
it on.”
Serena:
“For us cats, too.”
Silver:
“And the songbirds, the butterflies, and the honeybees.”
