cancer, child soldiers, water, homeless....but mostly water

This last weekend was crazy and went a little like this:

Fri: overnight in garner with Relay for Life
Sat: slept all afternoon, camp-out on the capital lawn with Invisible Children
Sunday: church in chapel hill to hear Scott Harrison, founder of charity:water speak, nap, the gathering, hurricanes game
monday: back to durham for work and then another lecture by scott harrison.

and so now water is on my mind. and service. and causes. but mostly water.
it seems like such a simple thing, clean water. and it seems to fix so many problems. well its a least a freakishly large step in the right direction.

Scott is a pretty captivating guy. His story is amazing and his vision for charity:water is equally so. He has really taken the water crisis in the developing world personally and has made it the vision of charity:water to get 1% of the 1.1 billion people who don't have water, clean, clear water. And then once they have tackeled the 1%, charity:water is going to take on 10%. I couldn't help but get caught up in the romance of the whole thing. I want to be a part of changing the world in such a measurable, practical way too! I bought my $20 dollar bottle of water already and have been seriously thinking about buying a case to hand out for birthdays, and other required gifts. what is better than giving the gift of water??!! I hear shannon's voice in my head right now.

I was telling Chris as we were walking back from "the gathering", that out of all the service events we went to this weekend, charity:water was the most captivating, and ironically enough, the one that I have potentially the most influence in just by sheer lack of other people to spread responsibility around with, the gathering, is the one I am least romanced by. I participate and i am at every meeting, but I very often wonder "why" exactly. And part of that is most certainly because the rewards are not as easily measured. I can't just help build a well in DTR and see within three weeks thousands of people who didn't have water, now drinking crystal clear water. The needs are a lot muddier then that not to mention the solutions. As phenomenal as"clean water" works as a metaphore, figuring out what "clean water" actually is and how to go about "digging a well" is not quite as easy nor as tangible or measureable. I am sure Hugh runs into this a lot. I do kind of wonder if it is possible to streamline it somehow in a way that targets more tangible, practical solutions. But, again, I have no idea what that looks like in a relational service.

so i think it is important to get your hands somehow in both. do something streamlined and practical. do water. and then get your hands and feet in the muck of people and the insolvable problem. water keeps you reminded and encouraged that solutions are out there... and the immeasurable labryinth of relationship building reminds you why we need clean water in the first place. well. thats what i think anyway.

and in the meantime, invisible children are still camped out in chicago, 5 days into the "rescue", and i am two days away from a 60 mile bike ride that i havn't trained for and that i don't yet have a bike to ride. hmm.

dying is not for wimps

"this whole dying thing is certainly not for wimps."
-hospice patient.

just a thursday

i arrived after she died but before the funeral home and was asked to clean the body so that the family could continue to pay final respects.
i hope i masked the mixture of horror and morbid curiosity that surged through me.
"of course, of course." i managed in an appropriately somber voice.
I walked back to the bedroom where Lillie had spent her last night surrounded by her closest friends and family laboring death. The room now was empty of all life. Everyone had left, the door shut.
I drew a deep breath, opened the door, stepped in and closed it behind me.
I have been working with the dying for almost a year and a half now, but this is only the second body I have seen.
a body looks so different from the person it once housed.
all the fluids of the body stop fighting gravity and surrender finally to the path of least resistance.
the blood settles to the bottom of veins and arteries and trickles down to the lowest place in the body like water running through an elaborate pipping system to reach the collecting pool. This leaves the skin pale and latex-like.
the bowels evacuate. Urine and stool ooze out as sphincters and muscles relax.
the mouth and eyes won't stay closed. Instead of a window to the soul, the eyes now sink back and look at nothing. The tongue,once the vessel of flavor and texture, voice and thought, is now dry and retracted to the back of the mouth.
I cursed my brother for dragging me to so many scarey movies. It was absolutely his fault I was fighting the fear that at any moment this body would gasp one final breath, or complete a quiet zombification, without warning, grab me with cold death fingers and pull me from the living to the undead. It was also his fault that I was wondering at this precise moment if the cold air was in fact the product of the air conditioning, or in fact, more believably, Lillie's lingering ghost. I reined in my imagination and drew upon a spindly thread of professionalism.
I drew a basin of warm water half wondering to myself if the temperature of the water even mattered now.
I submerged a soft wash cloth into the basin and squeezed out the water. I waited an impossibly long moment before I touched the body. "please please please don't be stiff." If rigormortis had settled in, I am not sure i could have maintained what sliver of professionalism I was managing.
I washed her face, her arms, her fingers, chest, stomach, legs, feet, and toes.
I crossed her arms over her chest and rolled the body to one side to wash the back.
what happened next scared the shit out of me.
as I rolled her on her side....
she exhaled....
a long, loud, rattly breath pushed out past phlem-filled lungs and her last breath, buried deep was expelled. I expelled my own horrified breath and waited with face cringed for a moment to see if she would breathe back in, if the heart would restart, if we all had incorrectly, prematurely assumed death.
a quiet moment and.then something worse happened...death escaped her body. it leaked out of her lungs, past her mouth and onto the bed. It was the life-choking phlem draining out of her lungs: thick, green, muck puddled up on the pillow.
I swallowed hard against my contracting stomach.
"now, now is not a good time to get sick."
a set my jaw and went back to the task at hand.
I washed her back, which was in its entirety a subtle purple from the pooled blood, like a fresh bruise, and removed the duoderm pads that bandaged the bed sores. i cleaned the wounds again, which looked so strange now that the body was no longer actively festering upon them.
I eased Lillie back down on her back cleaned off her face and changed the pillowcase. I put clean sheets on the bed, and pulled her favorite quilt up to her chest, propped her head up a little on a second pillow and tucked her in for the family to render any last words.
I left the room, left the house, and pretended that that is was just a normal thursday and that nothing out of the ordinary had just happened in that place back there a million miles ago

back to dying

i am surprised at how frequently i forget that i am in the business of dying. that every single one of my patients will die. and usually pretty quickly.

the average patient stays on hospice for 13 days before "expiring". 13 days.

it is some strange draw of straws that most of my patients i get to see for months before they decline and pass away. and it is in the inevitable descent that i remember that i should have been expecting this all along.

so, one of my most favorite patients is now "actively dying". everyone is expecting him to pass some time in the night. his recent rapid decline surprised us all. and i am not sure we, those who do this for a living, were quite ready. i certainly wasn't.

i went to see him today. i usually give the courtesy knock, open the door and find him reclined in his favorite chair, where he bellows out his standard greeting: "who are you?? what are you doing here?? which he then promptly amends: "i'm just kidding! , comehereandgivemeahug. but today he was in bed, unresponsive, and breathing once every 25-30 seconds.
i pulled him up in bed, put him in his favorite blue shirt, and counted breaths and seconds between breaths for an hour. his daughter arrived and i surrendered to her the chair beside his bed. on my way out i kissed his forehead and right against his ear said my standard departure: "okay, my friend, im off. be good, but not too good." and added "i love you, tom." as i felt the looming, approaching loss swell up in my throat. he actually opened his eyes for a moment and brought my hand to his face to kiss the back of it. i suppose that was goodbye.

im sorry that this reads a bit like a lifetime movie. i try to steer away from the mushy stuff... but then again, i forget that am in the business of dying. mush is inevitable. pun intended.