New kittens, cruising and an artist-in-training

No compromise

This weekend we tackled the contents of the medicine cupboard. We’ve both been avoiding doing this as it is one of those places where such a lot of memories lurk. Being confronted by Master L Vercuil on label after label, finding his spare PEG – even finding the first positive pregnancy test. 5 March 2005 – a day of such joy.

I don’t do medicine well anyway. It pushes every wrong button I possess.
“Chuck it away. Just chuck it away. We don’t need it!” I gritted on a number of occasions, while Dirk was trying to see the expiry date before making a decision. The hated Phenobarbitone landed in the disposal bin. I saw it go with venom. It really had had no good effects on him. The Zantac that he had to get 0.003ml of, for heaven’s sake, was also chucked.

At least we dealt with one ghost.

The pain medication prescribed to him just before he died was a highly scheduled medicine and, even used correctly, had the ability to repress respiration. Used incorrectly, it would have been lethal. He really needed it, though. I was too afraid to check how much of it remained in the bottle, but unreasonable and unfounded fears remained at the back of my mind. I know that I personally only gave it to him on three occasions (not on the day he died), using the prescribed two drops. Anna had strict instructions to phone me if she thought there was a need to give it to him. So, most of it should have been left. Dirk and I measured it off into a measuring cup and found to our relief that the bottle would have been almost full. His death remains a mystery, but at least nobody was directly responsible. Closure to some extent. One less thing to haunt me at night and taint relationships and memories. I’m so sorry for even thinking it.

We kept some of the syringes. Everything concerned with his suctioning machine we found incredibly hard to get rid of. We’ve been approached by people to sell it, but I’ve not been able to. I’ve come to see it as an extension of Loren.

I couldn’t help thinking that Loren was pure joy. That day I had the positive pregnancy test was a prediction of the little boy that was to follow. The hard part was the compromise. Giving him things I knew to be bad for him in the long run. Doing things to him that I knew must have been unpleasant if not painful. All in an effort to keep him alive. Interventions cascading into more interventions.

I wish I had the knowledge I possessed at the end of his life right at the beginning. Stopping the first unnecessary interventions. Choosing wisely. Doing the therapies I now know would have benefited him more right from the start. Not listening to stupid advice coming from people who knew nothing and didn’t care enough anyway. Or who felt as helpless as I did. But life doesn’t work that way, does it? And dwelling on it is pointless.

Last night Marco was entertaining Magnus while Dirk and I were trying to unpack the groceries and getting supper ready.

At one point Magnus was laughing so hard that I was laughing with both of them. As I settled Marco with his supper, I said, “Thank you for being such a kind big brother. Magnus thinks you’re the best big brother in the whole world, just like Loren did.”

And Marco traced the edge of his plate with his finger absentmindedly, completely silent. Then he said quietly, “Yes, my Loren. I touched Loren’s nose like this.”

He’s so small, he will likely forget most things. And once again I’m not sure of how much I should remind him. There’s no handbook and even if there was, I now know nobody really knows the answers. But I want him to remember one thing. The one thing that could never hurt him. The one thing that should never be a compromise.

Love.

Open letter to an anonymous doctor

If you are the person I think you are, I want to thank you for helping somebody whom I’ve developed a great deal of respect for. If I’m not right about your identity, thanks for responding anyway.

The issue here isn’t that I deny that being a medical professional can be extremely difficult. That is why I became a librarian and not a doctor. You chose medicine, knowing that you were choosing a tough field to work in. Therefore I will acknowledge your problems without feeling the need to sympathize much. No, I haven’t really worked with the general public. Also a choice I made, given my lack of patience. But I can imagine your frustrations. My hat off to you. Of course medical professionals are humans first. And I think therein lies a big part of the problem, as you would probably fully agree. Doctors are human and make human mistakes yet many people are in a disadvantaged situation intellectually dealing with doctors. This impacts on their perception of doctors and doctors’ powers. And it places so much pressure on already overworked individuals. Expectations are so high, as you rightly say. (Some doctors don’t do much to dispel the myth that doctors are always right though. Or at the very least they act extremely defensive if they are questioned. )

Look at what you are mentioning as the ideal of care:

Of course we learn and practice communication skills, wholistic health care, non-conventional medicine, patient-centered practice and a whole endless host of other things to try and do better in some of the areas you mentioned in your posting.

What you are talking about in terms of holistic and patient-based practice is not reality. It is what doctors should aspire to. I’d love to hear what you consider holistic care. I think that, whatever our respective definitions, we would agree that the time spent with the patient and getting to know the patient would impact on how well this works. Maybe where you are, in Australia, you come closer to the ideal. Certainly not here, where a GP will spend 15 minutes per patient, if that. Admittedly, some would spend more, if they feel there’s a need, but I cannot conceive of anybody who wouldn’t be unnerved by a whole waiting room full of people waiting to be seen – thus being less effective. State hospital care is even worse in terms of time. As evidenced by Anna, our childminder, going off to the state hospital once a month at 5:00 in the morning and only getting helped at 15:00 – without getting huge questions marks concerning her health adequately addressed – there is no question of holistic care..We suspect that she is diabetic. No sign of diet being addressed. Having the same first language as your patient would help. Here that is not a given as we have 11 official languages. English not being my first language, I feel at a complete disadvantage walking into a consulting room seeing somebody from a different language group. And my English isn’t bad. (English being the chosen lingua franca in South Africa. So the person I see may be Zulu-speaking and we’re both using a language different from our own.)

Look at the words you use: endeavours desire try… Striving for something does not mean this is what happens. Or even that all doctors remotely share your concerns. I hasten to add that I’m glad that you, at least, try.

I’ll admit to having an ax to grind with doctors because of their attitude towards Loren. Lunch? Mothering? Other patients? Good grief, do you think I would be this bitter, this sad if it was that? I’m talking face to face refusal and/or inability to help my child. Not being able to ever find an appointment for him with some doctors and yet easily finding one for my typical child. First thing mentioned a DNR order. How would you feel if this was your family member? Your child even?

Actually I have started looking critically at medical care and allopathic medicine long before Loren was born. 10 years ago at least. My feelings of anger and sadness about what happened is not clouding my mind about what I’ve been seeing happening for years before.

I could spend pages upon pages on debating some of the things you wrote, but I’m not going to. I’ve already written too much. If you care to continue this conversation, you are welcome to indicate that I can e-mail you and I will.

On a lighter note, I’m relieved to learn that you’re not a thief, think you’re God’s gift to humankind or operate under the influence of an inflated ego. Good for you. And yes, sorry, I was out of line with those remarks!

Gripe, gripe. gripe gripegripe

We’ve got to move in 23 days and I’m still waiting for a quotation from the moving company. (Edited to add: received it and it isn’t nearly as expensive as I thought! Yay!) We’ve started sorting out things. The four hot spots in the house are the study, the laundry, the store room and the medicine cupboard.

Dirk tackled the study this weekend and I tried to clear the top cupboard in the spare room. We’re both not nearly done, but at least we’ve made some headway. Our stuff falls into roughly two categories:

Things we thought were lost and have now gleefully found.
Things we weren’t really looking for and are now very sorry we found.

Into the first category fall things like Loren’s ultrasound printouts, a lucky packet version of Speed MacQueen (lost for over a year and with typical toddler singlemindedness never forgotten) and my embroidery frame. The latter consists of stacks of magazines, music tapes and unlabelled video tapes, unfinished needlework projects and baby clothes that Magnus has just outgrown. Not to mention boxes full of paperwork that we have to keep according to law.

Keeping toys under control is an ongoing battle. My father made us a cupboard of three meters long that contained the toys for a while. After that too started overflowing, I bought large plastic boxes with lids and sorted the toys into them. All art materials go into one, all Lego blocks in another, dinky cars are separated from bath toys etc. While I was on maternity leave I kept this in some order. I allowed one box at a time out of the cupboard and it had to be replaced before another one could be taken out. I’m by no means a perfectionist – not like a friend of mine who counts the pieces of her child’s pegboard before it gets stored! But this seems to work as Marco can see at a glance what is there, he learns to do one thing at a time (and will hopefully not unearth a half-knitted jersey 10 years after he started it, like his mother…)

Ever since I returned to work I’ve spent a chunk of every weekend fishing crayons from the puzzle box, returning caps to pens, digging too small Lego blocks from the baby toy box and looking for pieces of a puzzle all over the house. I gripe and get angry, but by Monday I’ve cooled down enough to completely forget about it again. Occasionally I’ll drop hints and get ignored like a stop street. I’m not proposing that they do all the cleaning up after Marco all by themselves. He’s old enough to learn to look after his things. But a four-year-old is certainly not going to do it without some adult guidance.

I realize that South Africans are very lucky in that they can afford staff. In fact, this is one of the main things many South Africans living overseas seem to miss. Here even relatively poor people have somebody come in to clean and do the washing.

We are extremely fortunate to have people like Anna and Jenny work for us. They are honest and hardworking and they really care about us. They’ve been with us through the most difficult periods of our lives and they have been nothing but supportive. But as with anybody working closely together, familiarity breeds contempt eventually. Irritations include the sugar bowl that gets emptied and is left for Dirk to refill since he’s the only one of us taking sugar in his coffee. Or the outside sitting areas that seem to have become no man’s land since they are never cleaned. Dirty nappies that are not noticed, causing sore bums. Marco being dressed in Magnus’ pants, because they were his and three years down the line they are expected to still fit him. Dirt above eye level getting ignored. Milk spilt in the microwave left for me to clean up. Small things, yes, but IRRITATING THE HELL OUT OF US.

And on their side I can only guess at the many many things that I’m sure annoys them about us. Like Marco being sassy, cleaning the same surfaces day after day, being picked up late to go to the taxi. Like doing something very kind and I’m too absorbed to notice…

Maybe we do need to go our separate ways, sad though it may be.

We’ve found work for Jenny, but are still looking for Anna. She went for an interview with the CP Association last week for a job at a special needs school as a physiotherapist’s assistant. She didn’t get the job, but I suspect that she blew the interview. For the following reasons:
1. It is only a half day job, paying less than she currently earns monthly. But working it out on an hourly rate, it actually pays far better. Plus she would have had school holidays and weekends during which she could have freelanced.
2. She is supposed to work in pants, which her husband doesn’t like. (!)
3. She would have had to start next week leaving us without a child minder for two weeks on Tuesdays only. Which was no problem as far as I’m concerned. We would have made a plan.
Even though I really wanted her to get the job, I have to accept that it is, after all, her choice where she wants to work. I just don’t want to think of her battling financially, that’s all.

Blue

In a fit of lunacy, or maybe nesting, which is actually one and the same thing, ask any husband, I painted one wall of my office at work a couple of years back. Of course I didn’t want to spend money on paint and so I took the only paint I had – which is something we used to paint display boards with. The minute I started painting, however, I fell in love with the colour. And I remained firmly in love with it ever since. It is so nice, I want to eat it.

The colour is a strange bluish gray – not my thing at all ordinarily due to the fact that I prefer warm colours. Yet I perceive it as a warm colour. And teamed with chocolate brown, it looks divine.

My work here – which is slowly coming to an end – has in part been to look after very old building plans. Old by South African standards, that is. The oldest one I’m aware of is of a school built during 1865. And my favourite, which is of a building in our city, was done during the Anglo-Boer war which started in 1899. This is an artwork in itself. Beautifully drawn on linen – almost the same colour as the paint I mentioned – and meticulously watercoloured at the back to let the colour through as you hold the drawing up against the light.

I leave you with a few photographs that I’ve taken of details of the 1899 drawing. Enjoy!

P.S. I guess I’m a little sad.