Wraiths Wrapped in Blankets

Who knows why I had to watch it? I had, after all, lived it.

Actually, I hadn’t. By in my years as a nurse, I had seen a lot of bulimics and anorectics; as well, I had worked on the eating disorder unit at University of Wisconsin Hospital.

And the documentary Thin, by Lauren Greenfield, brought it all back, from the moment I saw the first wraith wrapped in her blanket coming down the hall. Nor does Greenfield hold back—at times it’s unbearable, almost too painful. A fifteen-year old girl is confronted in group therapy, and breaks down shrieking, “I just want to be thin!” Another patient is kicked out of the institution, and has to call her mother, who spits out her rage at the staff. You can hear the desperation behind the fury, and it’s well justified: the patient later killed herself.

And it made me remember: this is nursing in which you never really know what you’re doing. Can you believe the patient when she breaks down and swears she really, really wants to get better? Should you trust your gut, which is telling you, “nah, bullshit?” And what’s better—to tell the truth, and say, “I don’t believe you?” Or do you say nothing at all?

The really dangerous nurses were the ones who thought they knew what they were doing. For them, it was simple—believe the least of what the patient says, set limits, and then follow up with consequences. On psych wards, that often meant seclusion or restraints; sadly, there were times when I thought the staff had egged the patient on.

In the film, Greenfield captures the uncertainty and the anguish of the staff, as they struggle to understand what’s going on on their ward, who the players are, and what to do about the situation.

One of the most telling moments of the film is the patient who sketches a life-size outline of what she thinks she looks like—she produces a chubby figure. The art therapist the puts the patient against the sketch are draws the patient. But that’s not enough to convince the patient—who then writes “fat,” “chubby,” and a host of other epitaphs on different parts of the sketch. At the end, she writes, “help me.”

There’s the frustration of the insurance running out—the patient is nowhere near ready, you know you’ll see her again. At least, you hope you’ll see her again—if not, she’ll be dead.

There are the relatives, who are almost more anguished than the patients. The patients, after all, are very often in denial, but mothers know perfectly well how sick their kids are. One patient reports her boyfriend saying, “I want to be with you for the rest of my life, but the way you’re going, I’m gonna bury you in five years.”

It’s possible—the mortality rate is between 10% and 20%.

To make the documentary, Greenfield spent six months living in the facility.

It’s a remarkable achievement.  

  

The Second Coming, Aborted

It was new and it was old, the trip to the hospital.

I went to see a lady I didn’t know. And what a charmer she was! She managed, despite her difficulty breathing, to entertain a stranger seemingly as effortlessly as if we were meeting in her home.

Almost….

Look, a hospital robs you of many things—usually starting with your dignity.

Which may be why I called her by the honorific “Mrs.” Everybody else, I’m sure, was calling her by her first name. But we chatted, she and I, and though she had no idea who I was, she carried on gamely.

Brought back memories. I spent a decade as a nurse, in a hospital that was virtually identical to the one I visited yesterday.

What struck me the most?

Oddly, the handrails on the walls. But there were familiar sights everywhere—the glassed-in nurses’ station, the waddling nursing assistants, the covered dinner trays.

I remembered the feeling of being in a hospital, and of being a nurse. Oddly, I have no particular memories of those days?

Why?

It may be the curious effect of depression on memory. Some people hypothesize that depression and especially anxiety hinder the ability to retain memory. I can recall bits of that past, but not much. I know that a lot happened, much of which should have been, and was, memorable. But it’s not there.

Wait—a patient. Manic as hell, and completely out of control. Admitted pregnant, by another patient, who was even worse. It was a nightmare—virtually no drugs could be given to her, because she was pregnant. And so she shredded the unit into chaos, and there was nothing anyone could do.

The doctors, of course, came and went. But it was eight hours of sheer hell for the nurses. The patients got the worst of it—24 hours. Well, no, 22 hours—the patient was sleeping only 2 hours a night, and that intermittently.

So the nurses were howling. One—what were we going to do about that unborn child? Sorry, but it was the clearest possible choice for an abortion. The gene pool was a disaster. And the parenting skills / home environment were even worse.

The problem, of course, was consent. We were documenting that the patient was running naked down the halls screaming that Jesus was humping her. Could we then turn around and attest that she had knowingly consented to an abortion?

It went on for weeks. There was pre-hell—the hours before your shift when you counted the minutes before you had to go in there. There was the hell itself. And post-hell, which generally meant several strong drinks and bed.

News alert to doctors—fetuses grow.

So there she was in her second trimester. Still untreated, still crazy. We knew, those of us aware of the past, what Bedlam must have been. Except that instead of one untreated crazy, Bedlam had a ward-full.

Somebody screamed loud enough, or perhaps long enough. Social services looked for some family member who could give consent.

Nobody—the patient had exhausted her family.

Eventually, the hospital went to court. Which meant, of course, a delay of some weeks.

The hearing was postponed….

The patient was now of the belief that she was carrying Jesus’ child, which would be the Second Coming. This excited ribald commentary in the staff; I wept.

And I was the nurse to prep her for the abortion that eventually the judge ordered. Oh, and to give her the medicines that would finally, finally sedate her.

“When Thorazine first came out, it was in a container about the size of a gallon of water. Had a little pump on it, and you were supposed to put precisely 100 or 150mg of the stuff in a glass of orange juice. Well, I did for a while. Then, I just started to take a look at the patient. If he was really crazy, I’d just pump away like hell!”

The words of an older nurse. And one I respected. So of course I topped up the pregnant patient’s drink, as it were, and put her on the gurney. We went down to surgery together. I signed off, another nurse took over.

You’ll have guessed what happened.

The abortion was performed, and the child was…

…born alive.

Which meant, of course, that a code had to be called, and every effort made to save the life of this poor child.

I left nursing soon after that.

Oh—and is that the reason I remember so little? 

Should Men Be Allowed?

I know, I know….

That’s a provocative question. Also ironic, for two obvious reasons: I’m a man, my spouse is a man. Hardly the likely person to be asking the question.

Well, I did, right there in my black armchair, as I was cheating at electronic Sudoku. Yes, you can cheat—my version of iPad Sudoku allows you three wrong answers and will still declare you a winner. So, hey, why not? And I give you this tip—added value, as we used to say in Wal-Mart!—to help you along. Your guess should always be for the little box that helps you the LEAST! If putting the 8 in the lower-right hand box would give the next three answers—don’t. Put it in the lower left box—which gets you nothing. Most of the time you’ll be right. If you’re wrong, well, you have two more guesses AND those three other answers.

See?

By cheating, I manage to play expert Sudoku (I say this with pride) and win most of the time.

Today…I lost. 

OK, it doesn’t make me a bad person, as Jeanne used to say. And then I wondered—maybe it does. Not losing, but cheating. Jack wouldn’t have approved.

It was that old rigid morality I wrote about in Iguanas. That fire and brimstone, sulfurous hellfire, miserable sinner stuff. Didn’t believe in it, but he was still shot full of it….

I wondered about it because I was pondering an email Cousin Ruthie sent me—and when she writes, you read! (She correctly diagnosed Santorum—“a lizard!”—and is bang-on about Romney—“a snake in the grass!”) She had read a post about Lexapro 20mg po qd. And then remembered her nursing days. (She held out three years, I managed a decade….)

Well, both of us remember some of the same stuff—the endless notes we had to do to cover our asses, writing out medication charts at 3AM, those funny Latin abbreviations: qd, qid, tid, PO, SQ. She also remembers the guy who tried to grab her boobs every time she walked in the room….

She asks—anyone try that on me?

Errr…no.

And she mentions Clarence Thomas, and how her parents were shocked when she assured them that of course he had come on to Anita Hill, and then told them about her nursing days.

Well, her father and mine were cousins. But they both had that morality thing. And then I remembered the female colleague of Jack’s who approached my mother on the day of Jack's memorial service.

“I want you to know, John Newhouse was the only male reporter that EVERY woman felt comfortable with alone in the news room at night….”

Franny was shocked.

I’m shocked. 

And Clarence Thomas? Well, I believe Anita for one reason.

I don’t believe any woman could invent the story of a pubic hair on a Coke can.

Frankly, the whole thing is drenched with testosterone. And only an androgen-flooded mind could conceive of it.

So that got me thinking about the four guns James Holmes purchased to kill the 12 / injure the 71 in Aurora, Colorado yesterday.*

They were purchased legally, and the vendors correctly performed the necessary background check!

Well, GREAT!

How relieved the families of the 12 / 71 victims must feel! What solace to know that your loved one had been slaughtered / maimed with legal weapons! One imagines them at the graveyard, peering down six feet at the coffin. Mother bursts into sobs, Father holds her, and whispers, “But at least the guns were legal!”

She fishes for the handkerchief, dries her eyes, squares her shoulders, and looks brightly into the future!

And here’s where I asked the question—should men be allowed? 

Nor was it the case that I asked the question because James Holmes is a man. (Although name me, Dear Readers, one massacre committed by a woman….)

Yeah, he’s a guy. He’s also emerging—I write this in case you’ve just come out of 24-hour seclusion—as one of the most dangerous of the schizophrenics.

Bright, tightly wound, wildly violent. 

OK—circle around. Is the US the only place that produces this type of schizophrenic?

Don’t think so.

We may be, however, the one place in the world that reveres guns to such an extent that we allow them on our streets.

That delicate last sentence may be a disservice to the 12 / 71 of Aurora. 

How’s this?

A man’s gun is his dick. And nothing, nothing, NOTHING will take that away from him!

Breathe, Marc….

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*These numbers correspond to the original figures and may have been updated since.