January 10, 1999 - January 16, 1999
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Sunday morning, January 10 The first picture was taken Sunday morning. It shows Don "connecting with" one of his favorite pasteries from the Bolinas Bakery. In the background is nurses' station 3, near Don's room.
Sunday afternoon, January 10 |
 1. Connecting with Bolinas Bakery  2. Don in the Sun |
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Friday, January 15 This evening, Don expressed his frustration with being hospitalized. He spoke to Sara and me about what it felt like to be thought of as a sick person. "I feel like I don't have a life," he said. "One group of people makes all the medical decisions, some other people are dealing with the money, and I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing any work. I don't feel like I'm making any positive contribution to people around me." Sara reassured him that he still had a very powerful effect on all of us, that his love made a very great positive contribution. I said, "I feel like I have a light in my life, pulling me forward. You put that there. You put a light like that in the hearts of all your friends." We seemed to reassure him a little, but he was still weary of the lack of control. The net frame around his bed, which we have dubbed The Contraption, seems symbolic to him. "This place is overly concerned with belts," he said. "I haven't tried to get out of bed by myself since the first week I was here, and they still think they need to zip me in every night." He was upset when a nurse described him to a new shift nurse as "impulsive." He said he thought he was very cooperative. "Once I know the program, once I say I'm committed to it, that goes in a special place," he said. "It isn't just short-term memory. I'm not going to forget it." The fact that he trusts the staff and wants them to trust him seems to be a matter of personal dignity and integrity for him. |
 Don in the Contraption |
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Saturday, January 16, 1999 The pictures for this day show how far Don has come. In the first picture, he is standing. Though the lighting is poor, you can make out that he's supporting himself with his arm on his wheelchair. He got into this standing position by himself, just before walking down the hall to the physical therapy gym. (The Contraption is in the background.) In the second photo, Don and his Saturday occupational therapist Chris are walking across the physical therapy gym. I read him some of the poems that his crisis has evoked from me: "Christmas with the Dead," "Three Hags and the Moon," and "Life as Subversive Act." He said "Christmas" raised some of the same issues he was dealing with, especially "fighting for your body, for your mind to be unchanged." He really liked the moon imagery in the last stanza of "Three Hags," and recognized the charicatures of Jnani and Annie right away. Then, I read him "Glass," which I said was a work in progress. "You revise almost as much as I do," he said. We worked on it a little, and he made three excellent suggestions, which I have incorporated into the piece. Jnani and Mahalakshmi came by in the evening while I was giving Don a massage. He soon fell asleep. Jnani, Maha and I went out into the lobby to talk about his coming home. I volunteered to be one of the people to drive him to his outpatient appointments. Jnani said she thought Don would be discharged to home-based care on February 4. That's great news! Jnani told us a story about a "friend" of hers. The woman was in some kind of emotional turmoil, and Jnani had become, in some way, her caretaker. Although it was not clear from the telling, I think Jnani had medical power of attorney over this woman. She told us she had to make some hard decisions, including having the woman committed to a mental care facility for her own good. "We were never friends after that," Jnani said, "but I still think it was the right thing to do. I think it saved her life. I would do it again if I had to." Jnani's telling of this story seemed to come out of nowhere. We weren't talking about her duties as Don's medical power of attorney, or about Don's mental capacity to make his own decisions. But I read a special warning into the story: if Don and, perhaps by extension, if I don't obey her authority, she will have Don committed. She would claim she had no choice, and she would say it was for his own good. I don't know if she meant this as a threat, but because of the timing and its clumsy insertion into our conversation, I took it as such. It was a set-piece, a warning shot across the bow. I resolved to get some legal advice on the matter. There is no way in hell I am going to let her get away with doing something like that to Don. Afterwards I went back to Don's room to get my jacket and leave. When I got to his room, a rather disturbing scene was taking place. The man in the other bed was having convulsive tremors due to a fever. He was in pain and frightened, and he kept calling out. The nursing staff was doing its best to calm and comfort him and bring his temperature down, but his pitiful, terrified cries filled the room with fear. Don was cringing in his bed. He motioned me over and I got in with him. For a while, we just held each other, rather like Hansel and Grettle. After a while, the commotion on the other side of the curtain subsided, and he said it was all right for me to go. "I hate to leave you in this place," I said. "It's all right," he said, "I'll be all right now." |
 1. Don Standing by His Bed  2. Don in Occupational Therapy |
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