Bitter Winds

Sweeping December 10 2009


Frigid New York wind,

Gusting so it’s hard to walk against it --

Violently chilling blasts,

Freezing facial skin, making teeth ache, stopping breath.

I give up, snare a cab, step in, give the address,

And find I’m I choking up --

Can’t breathe, sitting in the back seat.

I wonder, do people moan and wheeze and die

While drivers, unknowing behind scratched plexiglass,

Blare through the turning, fitful traffic as the lights turn orange?

Is the storm an exorcism, sweeping you away from me,

Blowing memories, like ashes, off the city avenues?

Once indoors, I listen to the whistling through the frosted windows,

The way we used to do at night

As we lay cuddled up together in the loft so long ago.

I’ll get in bed now, sweater buttoned up,

Pretending to be in your arms, in love --

Having found safe harbor in your heart.



Reflection

Today, near 13th St., I talked with an old friend of yours. She had gone by your building, and talked to the doorman, the same one who’d been there the whole time you lived in your loft. She asked if he knew you had died, and he said he did. I had stopped by and told him in September. He’s a kind, gentle man, the one you knew would help you button the collar of a shirt or help you get your earrings secured when, one-handed and living alone, you had needed help with these seemingly simple tasks.

Your friend had seen you through difficult times in your life. She had been your massage therapist when, in severe pain and corseted in a metal back brace, you had had to take involuntary early retirement -- permanent sick leave. You recorded on a cassette at that time “They are all gone – my hospital, my patients, my students. My life has ended.” You then proceeded to talk about how you were looking forward to meeting this young massage therapist, this strong young woman who, in some way, must have reminded you of yourself as a strong, active young woman in charge of her life.

At that moment of “retirement,” you felt broken in body and spirit. You also felt misunderstood. No one has ever explained to me what happened physically, other than that your “back went bad.” Thinking of your later life back x-rays, with the spectactular place in your lower back where the spine looped out to the side and then turned back in on itself – spondylolisthesis – I would guess this is when that collapse occurred.

Up till then, you’d been the influential doctor, at the top of your form, and an athlete who ran many miles daily. Once you’d incurred that injury, that collapse, you were unable to stand for long and afraid to walk, for fear of falling. You were using the corset and a cane to steady yourself. Your job as a hospital physician was physically demanding, with long hours, weekends on call, and decisions every morning by phone, promptly at 7:15 am, as to whether or not patients could be saved as their fluids and electrolytes were rebalanced. You awoke every day at 6:55, hurried to shower, and had emerged, dried yourself, and started to dress when the call from the hospital would arrive. Your one-time intern, Judith, told me that if any patient on any service in the hospital had blood tests in which the mineral electrolytes – sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium—had reached a certain level of imbalance, you and your colleagues Marian and Parker were called to devise a life-saving IV infusion. You were the “good guys” wearing white hats, who rode in to save the day from disaster.

When you started to experience the excruciating back pain, you took sick leave for several weeks, hoping that it would improve. It barely did.

After you tried to return to work, your colleagues were angry to have had to take weekend rotations in your place, and demanded that you pay them back by working every weekend all weekend, in addition to working all week, for the foreseeable future. Your boss called you in and asked you point blank if you’d become addicted to drugs because you disappeared every hour or so. You had to show him the metal corset, and explain that you could not stay upright more than 45 to 50 minutes, and had to go lie down.

Finally, the conflict was resolved by your involuntary “retirement.” You were furious. When the hospital gave a “retirement party” for you, you stood up and said in your speech that this was no retirement. You were being forced out because you were sick and in pain. Between the pain, the dramatic change in your physical status, and the involuntary loss of your lifelong dream to be a doctor, you were in despair.

Marge said that this was when you left the strictly medical paradigm and began seeing alternative health care providers, desperately seeking relief – you, the physician who had imposed superhuman standards on yourself and your work and on everyone around you, tolerating no flinching and no glances sideways at other potential treatment approaches.

Having come into your life at the height of your back pain, Marge also went on to support you through the treatment for your cancer, starting in 1992. The treatment was one of the most severe experimental chemotherapy protocols ever used – breast oncologists still use hushed tones when mentioning it.  Your hospital was known for its extreme explorations of how close people could come to dying from treatment and still survive, and of whether such extreme treatments led to any better outcomes (they didn’t.) There were several times during its course that you thought you were dying, and actually wanted to die and get it all over with. You were angry and disappointed that you were all alone when you went through this. You had to oversee everything and plan for everything, on your own, while you were also desperately ill from the treatment. For instance, you had had to arrange for and hire by yourself the aides you needed.

You came close to dying several times from sudden infections, and had to be ready to go to the hospital on a moment’s notice. Your immune system essentially didn’t exist because of the treatment, so even a minor infection could kill you in a few hours if you didn’t get IV antibiotics on time. You couldn’t eat anything for days on end, except lamb, the only thing that seemed edible. Every day the aide would cook a lamb chop and sit, kindly conversing with you, as you tried to eat it.

One night, you woke up alone – the aide’s night off -- to discover that the palms of your hands and soles of your feet had peeled off, leaving bleeding, raw, painful lesions. Somehow, amid the terrible pain, you managed to wrap bandages around all four extremities yourself.

You became so weak, they had to transfer you to a wheelchair if you left the bed. You couldn’t walk or stand. You, with your brilliant mind, felt too sick to read, to talk, to think. The aides turned on their favorite television soap operas, and you watched with them, unable to tolerate any other kind of activity. The aides told you later that you had seemed closer to death than anyone else they had ever worked with.

Somehow you survived the treatment, and once again regained much of your impressive spirit. The chemotherapy was followed by an intense, lengthy series of radiation treatments – these were ultimately the cause of much suffering and finally your death, 13 years later, from radiation- induced pulmonary fibrosis.

It’s no wonder that talking with Marge today put me into a sad mood. She was one of your main supporters during a very painful, despairing period. This was the period that came to an end with our meeting in 1999.

This decade, from 1985 to 1995, with the back injury followed by cancer and the dreadful chemotherapy protocol led you to a sense of resignation about living and dying. You said firmly that when the cancer came back, you would not do any more chemotherapy, and you didn’t.

You wrote about this new perception of life and death after you had survived the treatments, with your cancer apparently in remission.



Ellen:


Surcease [revised]

At last death is my friend.

Not that living is inimical,

But rather that surcease

Seems more important,

Has enough weight and measures

Devoted to it

That neither would I battle the end,

Nor would I seek it,

But be infinitely grateful

For the long rest it might bring.



Ellen Scheiner, 1996