AILING AND WAILING

A satellite ER is closer to us, but several weeks ago when I suddenly became ill, my husband, the second smartest man on Earth, and I, headed to the emergency room at the big hospital downtown. We wanted to avoid the expense of being transported from one facility to another by ambulance as happened a few years ago.

For what that cold miserable ambulance ride cost us we could have hired a fleet of limos with a police escort and I could have ridden in comfort with some style thrown in. The ER personnel insisted upon ambulance transport then because I was under observation due to possible heart attack symptoms. Under observation, my buns!!!! I remained alone in the back of that dark, frigid, noisy ambulance while the attendant rode shotgun with the driver. I was frickin’ freezing back there trying to make do with the thin sheet they tossed over me. My weak voice, pleading for warmth couldn't be heard above the roar and no one came to my rescue during my 20-minute ride for life.

My traitor of a mind started playing tricks like trying to convince me that I had already died. "Of course it's cold in here. Corpses are always kept cold so they don't start stinking. Why would the attendant waste her time giving you any attention since you’re already dead." I became obsessed with trying to remember if that sheet they'd thrown over me had initially covered my face. If only I could remember that key fact, then I would know for sure if I were dead or alive.

I figure that being dead is akin to childbirth or something momentous that you've never personally experienced. But unlike childbirth and most other stuff, with death you don't get the chance to build on your experience. As my ambulance skidded into the entryway of the big hospital's admittance center, I realized I hadn't given up the ghost just yet, because I knew that medical personnel would never hustle like that if I was already a goner.

There was one observation from that experience a few years ago that should have made us wiser, but obviously didn't register right away during this recent trek for medical care. Second Smartest Man On Earth and I waited five hours in the standing-room-only ER to be told at midnight that the wait would be at least three more hours.

Thankfully, early on a security guard brought me a wheel chair and a throw-up pan when he sensed that I was probably going to slide off the counter I had draped myself across. But with the pain in my chest, the skull splitting headache and pressure, the nausea and the violent coughing, I wanted nothing more than to be horizontal. The cold hard floor looked so inviting except then I’d surely have more ailments from people stepping on me.

It finally occurred to us that the only way to be seen in a timely lifesaving manner at this place was to arrive by helicopter - the heliport was so busy it reminded me of O'Hare Airport on a Friday afternoon - or by ambulance. If you got there by your own transportation, there had to be blood and lots of it. We struck out on all accounts and since so many hours had passed, we made our own medical decision that since I was still alive, I probably wasn't having a heart attack or a stroke like my husband feared, so we returned home.

I’ve seen three different doctors over the past weeks. The first one said it was the flu, patted me on the back and sent me on my way. The second hit me up with antibiotics for bronchitis and the third gave me a stronger and longer round of antibiotics for a sinus and ear infection. I returned to the last doctor again last week. He took another stab at it and prescribed allergy meds and steroids and sent me for sinus and chest x-rays. He said he may need to refer me to the ENT specialist. He wants to see me again tomorrow.

Well, this is far too much whining about my ailments. I hope you and yours are managing to keep healthy during this time of high susceptibility to the winter crud.

Ambulance Photo by Uberzombie

FROM RUSSIA WITHOUT LOVE

A huge battered trunk and a picture of her in her casket at age 49 were the only tangible remains of a grandmother I never knew. Her first name was either Tenki, Tonya, Tatiana or Tatyana. Her last was Charney, but I don’t know if that was her maiden or first married name. She arrived at Ellis Island in 1911 from Russia to begin a better life, leaving behind an older man, her husband through an arranged marriage, who mistreated her.

In 1913, without a divorce, she met and married Michael, also a Russian immigrant who came to America in 1912. They settled in Madison, Illinois. Having six children over a span of fourteen years, my mother was their fourth-born. Their home was a small two-bedroom house. My grandfather worked as a carpenter for the railroad while my grandmother labored at a typically male job in a slaughter house and meatpacking company all the while they raised their children, burying their two oldest daughters when they were barely out of their teens.

As a child and now as an adult, I long to know more about her. My mother was tight-lipped and often changed the subject when I sought answers, although she did tell me that my grandmother saw a mermaid from the ship when she crossed the Atlantic en route to America. Through the years I learned that my grandmother raised goats and geese in their small backyard, played the accordion, made root beer, and sent her children to the movie theater every Saturday when she did housework. I was told that she was very artistic, but no one in the family kept any of her work. Both my mother and her younger brother were talented artists. My uncle was a cartoonist for major magazines before he became an aeronautical engineer. High intelligence and its oft-downside, mental illness, also passed down through the genes.

I like to identify with my grandmother because she was a risk-taker. My mother who never went far from her home in a tiny town, who chose to never drive a car again after her first fender-bender and who wouldn't hear of my father leaving his $90 a week factory labor job to start his own business, was about as far from being a risk-taker as one can get.

Russian was my grandmother’s first and only language, unless you count “whatchamacallit” her often used word in English. She died of a heart attack when my mother was 19 years old and three months after I was born, leaving a 16-yr old daughter and 14-year and 22-year old sons. Three years later a heart attack claimed my grandfather's life. Being their first grandchild, it was expected that I would be a boy. It seems she never got over her disappointment. Instead of calling me Peggy, she referred to me with Russian words meaning “worthless, no-count.” Apparently I didn’t matter to her, but she has always mattered to me.

I only knew her through my mother’s view. My mother insisted that the only picture she had of her mother was the one taken in her casket. After my mother’s death, among her possessions we found snapshots and studio photos taken through the years when my mother was a child. My aunt recognized a photo of my grandmother (shown above) as the one taken when she was age 19, shortly before leaving for America.

I longed to know my grandmother’s mind. I wished for a letter or something she had written, but nothing was found. That’s why Tom Barker’s poem, Tempus Fugit, is so meaningful to me when he speaks of bringing back memories, writing it all down to let someone enjoy. It’s too late when they’ve gone to the grave. Thank you, Mr. Barker, for saying it so beautifully. You have motivated me to write this blog so that my grandchildren, whom I may never know, will have a chance to know me.

TEMPUS FUGIT (Time Flies)

Tempus Fugit - Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

Tom Barker, Joondalup, Australia, 1970

Write what you feel, and let your mind steal, o'er green fields and memories of childhood.
Or sit and day dream by a gurgling stream, while birds' sing in yonder wild wood.
The corn in the breeze bends with such ease, while white clouds across the heavens go racing,
And wild roses grow in hedgerows so low while the old oak the sky is embracing.

The child on the swing and the church bells ring, all bring back memories divine,
Of seaside trips and the crab that nips at your toes as you walk alone in the brine.
The misty gray dawns and the loud morning yawns as people prepare for work,
But the morning mist clears and the warm sun appears and makes all the flowers smirk.

So don't sit and frown but write it all down, and someday let someone enjoy,
and be not distraught for it cost you naught, and don't get all uptight and coy.
There are lots of memories never put down, and people don't bother to save,
So the young that follow miss out and holler, it's too late, they have gone to the grave.


Clock photo by macinate