Kayla Quote: "You are going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times. But in the end, it's always their actions you should judge them by. It's actions, not words, that matter."
Short Synopsis: This waiting for a heart is incredibly hard. They will be sending in a team of psychiatrists. She is in horrible physical pain and her emotional anguish is desperate at times. We bring her special foods to comfort her as she waits. They keep talking about a discharge plan so she can go home and wait there for a heart. At the moment she is stable and they send those patients home.
It will probably be a year before a heart is offered. The waiting list is long, long, long. They are fair and give the donated hearts to the ones who has been waiting the longest. Unfortunately, they are also the sickest. By the time you get your heart you are near death and it is your last chance at life. There are over 200 people waiting. This is not like when she was a child and was given top priority. She will have to be on the BIVAD machine to keep her heart going and the blood running richly to all of her organs and brain.
Long Story: It is 5:30 a.m. and "the Mooms" has brought a baby sparrow in through the cat door. I am awakened by its pleading cries. Mooms has deposited it at the end of the hall in front of a closed door and there is no place for it to go. It is in shock and lying there with its wings splayed out. Mooms quite often gets the young inexperienced birds, the "teenagers," the ones who have recently left their warm nests. Mooms is crouching, resting, and waiting for it to move. Even a tiny little movement will excite Mooms and she will go in for the kill. This is the end game now.
I grab the cat and toss her into the bathroom and close the door. I pick up the young bird, cup it in my hands and inspect its body. I feel its tiny heartbeat. It is still alive. I warm it for a few minutes with my hand and look at its sweet black eyes. Warming it is the top priority if it is to have any chance at life at all. I bring it outside and place it gently on top of Mike's kayak in the yard. It is sitting quietly there. This is the next phase. This part can take a long time...waiting for the shock to wear off.
I really want a cup of hot coffee so I fetch one inside. I let Mooms out of the bathroom and she rushes to the window to see where her prize has gone. She is pissed, her black pupils totally dilated. I pad back outside. I am in my pajamas still. It is peaceful, the best time of the day. Few people are up this early. I pull up a lawn chair and sit a respectful distance from the bird, sipping my hot drink.
The next few minutes will tell a lot. Will it keel over or will it fly? The wings are not broken and there are no puncture wounds in its body. It's always the same. Mooms catches her prey gently in her mouth...plays cruelly with them...the kill...she eats. Bird meat is a special treat.
In a sudden small burst, the little bird flys up and lands in the lowest branch of the nearest tree. It is very wobbly.....success!
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pip looks completely different! Violet spent a long time last night plucking out all the fluffy white downy feathers from his body. They were floating around the nest, looking like a burst pillow from a fun pillow fight. With precise detailing, she carefully preens the baby bird and takes each bit out. Well not quite. There is still white fluff on his head. The rest of him is black with brown threaded in. He looks like a porcupine. No..more like a half sized hawk!
Wow! Does this mean he will fly soon?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
6/5/11
Steph:
So great for you all! Will try to stop by. Mum is tired of all this. Gotta get good soon!
Love,
Beth
6/6/11 3:15 p.m.
Beth:
I spoke with Arnold last Saturday. Special man. We gear up to bring Kayla home. Prayers for your family.
Love,
Steph
6/6/11 3:30 p.m.
Debbie:
I came by and stopped in on your mother. I had them empty the water out of the respiratory tube. There was no place for the air to go through.
If you want company, please stop by the 7th floor, Room 148. (You can get there by the stairs.)
Kayla has a beautiful river view in a single room. We've made it in the hospital world with this room. She is going home in a few days to wait for a heart.
Stephanie
Monday, June 6, 2011 8:05:08 a.m.
Subject: Hope You Are Better!
Hello Kathy:
Well...I slept and slept and slept and now I feel great. I got up and went to Stop & Shop and bought some cooked chicken and potato salad. Mike went to see the muffin.
I hope the medicine is working. Let me know how you are doing.
I went on-line and studied all the results and it was fun. Those damn ringers! I have more fodder for my triathlon folder.
I would like to do some more sprint triathlons. Actually there is some sort of swim in Greenwich off the coast. Will look it up. I think you can choose whether you want to swim a half mile, 1.5 miles, 3 or 5 miles...I choose the 1/2 mile!
Lots of love to you!
Stephanie
- - - - - - -
Thomas's landlady, Pamela, is having a bad spell. She just had surgery where they removed some sort of tumor and her closest, dearest companion, her Dad, died April 16. He made it to his late 90s. I was lucky enough to meet him and enjoy his storytelling. He had a pet squirrel that ran up and down his arm and hid in his jacket sleeve and he relished telling me all about that as we sat around a big fire that Thomas had fully going in the fireplace. This was the old man's special cabin since 1951 and he worked endlessly over the years maintaining it. There is a rich history to this place and have I detailed this already? Not sure.
In the beginning, Rudolph came over from Switzerland and in 1951 bought this cabin on a sleepy stretch of road. (Today it is the Super 7 connector between Ridgefield and Danbury.) He and his wife made it into a restaurant. It had 6 tables and they built a bar. After a while, they built a small addition with bathrooms. Over time, this tiny room became a small gift shop and today it is a small bedroom where only a twin bed can fit. They built another building attached to the original cabin with two more apartments, one on top of the other. I believe in the late 1960s his wife died from cancer and that was the end of the restaurant. They went back to Switzerland and it was rented to many different people who came and went. It became a brothel in the 1970s because the men could drive off the now growing highway into the large parking lot, do their business and hop back into their trucks. Am not sure how long that lasted. Into the 1980s, the brown house complex saw many more renters come and go. Working class people have rented one of these apartments at one time or another. It also seems that some men from town know too much about the brothel..were they patrons? They do not admit that of course.
After a time, Pamela and her Dad live in the top apartment unit, vacating the larger original cabin space. When they come in from Switzerland several times a year, this is where they resided. Their possessions cozily fill up the two bedroom, one bathroom unit. The other two places see an ebb and flow of renters coming and going. My son moved in June 2010 and said to me with an inquiring face and referring to the whores,
"Where did they do it?"
"In the bedrooms!" I told him. "Where else?" Hey, the entire complex been christened with a rich, divergent history. At least now it is clean!
Pamela is also an incredible storyteller and I love being with her and listening to it all! But now her dear dad is gone. It would have been fitting to bury his ashes on the property somewhere since this place has part of his soul embedded in it. At 96, he was still pulling himself under the building, dragging his body across the top of bare wet musty dirt, to fix stuff.
I tell Pamela I am bringing purple morning glories to plant in her back yard. Dubbed annuals, according to the package they came from, they were supposed to grow up only once and die forever but they have proven themselves to be perennials coming back every year. I must have gotten a very good package of seeds all those years ago, seeds with their own mind. I have hundreds of tiny plants every spring...a bunch of swarming marching soldiers with little purple heads invading more territories. I give them away to all of my friends. They go anywhere and stay everywhere.
When I get to Pamela's overgrown flower bed, I pull out big ugly grape looking weeds and plant the tiny morning glories soldiers along a dilapidated trellis... they will be majestic, rising up on strong vines, searching for the sunlight.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gracious Debbie comes by to say hello and meet Kayla in her new river room. She lifts me up with her spirited talk about Shaquille O'Neal, the great basketball player with the size 15 shoe. He is returning to basketball one more time to have another try. It is all over the news. You go boy! Hmmm....I am not sure I like his style. He hangs out below the basket and wards everyone off in a stomping big man way. He is the strongest but I like the flowing players better, the ones that move all over. Still, very few can get by Shaq! A big mountain you cannot plow through. You have to go around him....only way. Get him off track and go around...
The psychiatry team has arrived, two of them, to see Kayla. I leave them in privacy and go to fetch a strawberry smoothie at Starbucks. They make a mistake and give me a coffee one instead. Later, Kayla let me know, she was not happy - "I wanted something different." Am hopeful the head shrinkers can help my poor daughter. I can't even begin to imagine what her life is like. She is the bravest person I have ever met. Every day she teaches me patience. All I can do is give her a mother's love, one of the purest things in nature.
I leave the doctors with additional hope...no more like escape from this prison.... I want to give Kayla something (smoothie) she can enjoy in her sea of pain. Oh yes! I will get supper for the two of us. She loves the caprese sandwiches and I love the nourishing simple soup. The now familiar walk up the one block to all the small bustling restaurants on the street is soothing. Observe everything. Isn't that what all writers do? Watch and record?
"The Homeless Man"
Jou Jous Eatery is close by, very chic, clean and full of the latest healthy foods for all to buy. Inside there is a middle-aged black man in raggy clothes that are not particularly clean. He is holding up a winter coat and trying to sell it. The clerk is annoyed.
The food is in neat piles - fruit salads, sandwiches wrapped up, desserts....right there in front of you for the taking...no...for buying. A long row of delicious choices on low shelving in refrigerated spaces. The man bends over to inspect and straightens up,
"I am a salesman."
He smooths the coat gently over his arm as if he is pressing it with an iron. No one is buying. He needs it out of his way so he can touch the food. He picks up a yoghurt dessert with fruit and granola and holds it up.
"$2.72," the clerk says.
Homey tries to get the price down a little.
The young clerk is curt and not sure what to do.
"I said $2.72." The fingers of one of his hands is poised on the cash register but he has not put in the price yet. He is nervous.
"Oh PLEASE HELP ME," pleads the man.
Homey turns and tries to get a dollar from me. I just stare at him. He is harmless and desperate but I am scared too. He lives in the homeless shelter just up the block at the armory. That is where they all are. They mill around every day doing nothing. Most people won't walk past that way. They choose the other side of the street.
Depending on my mood, I walk one side of the street or the other. When I walk past them, I am curious about what they will say to me or what they are saying to each other. Most of the time they are mute. Some of the time they are lecturing each other. When you look at their eyes you know. Their lives are awful but they are fed here.
Homey is polite.
"I bought two of these before." He carefully pulls out three one dollar bills and puts them on the counter.
"I'm sorry if I bothered you. Can I sit and eat at this table?" There are three of us now and we are all uncomfortable. Did his mother love him when he was born? Was she excited at his birth?
I get my food.
I pass his table and put a $5.00 bill folded in half next to his hand. Surprise!
"Thank you. Thank you mam!"
"I'm not a man!"
"I said mam."
"Oh."
He brightens, "Do you go to church?"
"Yes, I do."
"Catholic?"
I am still frightened so I cannot face him. What if he follows me? I am getting my plastic silverware and napkins a few feet away.
"No more. Protestant now."
"Where is your church?"
I turn around.
"In Connecticut. I don't live here. I am here because my daughter is very sick. She needs a new heart."
"I am sorry," he shows his lack of teeth in a big nice smile. The remaining ones have brown crusted on them at the gum line.
Wistful now...."Please say a prayer for her. I don't know if she will live."
"I will. I will." Homey is genuine.
I leave. Probably will never see him again as long as I live. He has given me a prayer. For this, I am grateful.
Short Synopsis: This waiting for a heart is incredibly hard. They will be sending in a team of psychiatrists. She is in horrible physical pain and her emotional anguish is desperate at times. We bring her special foods to comfort her as she waits. They keep talking about a discharge plan so she can go home and wait there for a heart. At the moment she is stable and they send those patients home.
It will probably be a year before a heart is offered. The waiting list is long, long, long. They are fair and give the donated hearts to the ones who has been waiting the longest. Unfortunately, they are also the sickest. By the time you get your heart you are near death and it is your last chance at life. There are over 200 people waiting. This is not like when she was a child and was given top priority. She will have to be on the BIVAD machine to keep her heart going and the blood running richly to all of her organs and brain.
Long Story: It is 5:30 a.m. and "the Mooms" has brought a baby sparrow in through the cat door. I am awakened by its pleading cries. Mooms has deposited it at the end of the hall in front of a closed door and there is no place for it to go. It is in shock and lying there with its wings splayed out. Mooms quite often gets the young inexperienced birds, the "teenagers," the ones who have recently left their warm nests. Mooms is crouching, resting, and waiting for it to move. Even a tiny little movement will excite Mooms and she will go in for the kill. This is the end game now.
I grab the cat and toss her into the bathroom and close the door. I pick up the young bird, cup it in my hands and inspect its body. I feel its tiny heartbeat. It is still alive. I warm it for a few minutes with my hand and look at its sweet black eyes. Warming it is the top priority if it is to have any chance at life at all. I bring it outside and place it gently on top of Mike's kayak in the yard. It is sitting quietly there. This is the next phase. This part can take a long time...waiting for the shock to wear off.
I really want a cup of hot coffee so I fetch one inside. I let Mooms out of the bathroom and she rushes to the window to see where her prize has gone. She is pissed, her black pupils totally dilated. I pad back outside. I am in my pajamas still. It is peaceful, the best time of the day. Few people are up this early. I pull up a lawn chair and sit a respectful distance from the bird, sipping my hot drink.
The next few minutes will tell a lot. Will it keel over or will it fly? The wings are not broken and there are no puncture wounds in its body. It's always the same. Mooms catches her prey gently in her mouth...plays cruelly with them...the kill...she eats. Bird meat is a special treat.
In a sudden small burst, the little bird flys up and lands in the lowest branch of the nearest tree. It is very wobbly.....success!
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Pip looks completely different! Violet spent a long time last night plucking out all the fluffy white downy feathers from his body. They were floating around the nest, looking like a burst pillow from a fun pillow fight. With precise detailing, she carefully preens the baby bird and takes each bit out. Well not quite. There is still white fluff on his head. The rest of him is black with brown threaded in. He looks like a porcupine. No..more like a half sized hawk!
Wow! Does this mean he will fly soon?
- - - - - - - - - - - -
6/5/11
Steph:
So great for you all! Will try to stop by. Mum is tired of all this. Gotta get good soon!
Love,
Beth
6/6/11 3:15 p.m.
Beth:
I spoke with Arnold last Saturday. Special man. We gear up to bring Kayla home. Prayers for your family.
Love,
Steph
6/6/11 3:30 p.m.
Debbie:
I came by and stopped in on your mother. I had them empty the water out of the respiratory tube. There was no place for the air to go through.
If you want company, please stop by the 7th floor, Room 148. (You can get there by the stairs.)
Kayla has a beautiful river view in a single room. We've made it in the hospital world with this room. She is going home in a few days to wait for a heart.
Stephanie
Monday, June 6, 2011 8:05:08 a.m.
Subject: Hope You Are Better!
Hello Kathy:
Well...I slept and slept and slept and now I feel great. I got up and went to Stop & Shop and bought some cooked chicken and potato salad. Mike went to see the muffin.
I hope the medicine is working. Let me know how you are doing.
I went on-line and studied all the results and it was fun. Those damn ringers! I have more fodder for my triathlon folder.
I would like to do some more sprint triathlons. Actually there is some sort of swim in Greenwich off the coast. Will look it up. I think you can choose whether you want to swim a half mile, 1.5 miles, 3 or 5 miles...I choose the 1/2 mile!
Lots of love to you!
Stephanie
- - - - - - -
Thomas's landlady, Pamela, is having a bad spell. She just had surgery where they removed some sort of tumor and her closest, dearest companion, her Dad, died April 16. He made it to his late 90s. I was lucky enough to meet him and enjoy his storytelling. He had a pet squirrel that ran up and down his arm and hid in his jacket sleeve and he relished telling me all about that as we sat around a big fire that Thomas had fully going in the fireplace. This was the old man's special cabin since 1951 and he worked endlessly over the years maintaining it. There is a rich history to this place and have I detailed this already? Not sure.
In the beginning, Rudolph came over from Switzerland and in 1951 bought this cabin on a sleepy stretch of road. (Today it is the Super 7 connector between Ridgefield and Danbury.) He and his wife made it into a restaurant. It had 6 tables and they built a bar. After a while, they built a small addition with bathrooms. Over time, this tiny room became a small gift shop and today it is a small bedroom where only a twin bed can fit. They built another building attached to the original cabin with two more apartments, one on top of the other. I believe in the late 1960s his wife died from cancer and that was the end of the restaurant. They went back to Switzerland and it was rented to many different people who came and went. It became a brothel in the 1970s because the men could drive off the now growing highway into the large parking lot, do their business and hop back into their trucks. Am not sure how long that lasted. Into the 1980s, the brown house complex saw many more renters come and go. Working class people have rented one of these apartments at one time or another. It also seems that some men from town know too much about the brothel..were they patrons? They do not admit that of course.
After a time, Pamela and her Dad live in the top apartment unit, vacating the larger original cabin space. When they come in from Switzerland several times a year, this is where they resided. Their possessions cozily fill up the two bedroom, one bathroom unit. The other two places see an ebb and flow of renters coming and going. My son moved in June 2010 and said to me with an inquiring face and referring to the whores,
"Where did they do it?"
"In the bedrooms!" I told him. "Where else?" Hey, the entire complex been christened with a rich, divergent history. At least now it is clean!
Pamela is also an incredible storyteller and I love being with her and listening to it all! But now her dear dad is gone. It would have been fitting to bury his ashes on the property somewhere since this place has part of his soul embedded in it. At 96, he was still pulling himself under the building, dragging his body across the top of bare wet musty dirt, to fix stuff.
I tell Pamela I am bringing purple morning glories to plant in her back yard. Dubbed annuals, according to the package they came from, they were supposed to grow up only once and die forever but they have proven themselves to be perennials coming back every year. I must have gotten a very good package of seeds all those years ago, seeds with their own mind. I have hundreds of tiny plants every spring...a bunch of swarming marching soldiers with little purple heads invading more territories. I give them away to all of my friends. They go anywhere and stay everywhere.
When I get to Pamela's overgrown flower bed, I pull out big ugly grape looking weeds and plant the tiny morning glories soldiers along a dilapidated trellis... they will be majestic, rising up on strong vines, searching for the sunlight.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gracious Debbie comes by to say hello and meet Kayla in her new river room. She lifts me up with her spirited talk about Shaquille O'Neal, the great basketball player with the size 15 shoe. He is returning to basketball one more time to have another try. It is all over the news. You go boy! Hmmm....I am not sure I like his style. He hangs out below the basket and wards everyone off in a stomping big man way. He is the strongest but I like the flowing players better, the ones that move all over. Still, very few can get by Shaq! A big mountain you cannot plow through. You have to go around him....only way. Get him off track and go around...
The psychiatry team has arrived, two of them, to see Kayla. I leave them in privacy and go to fetch a strawberry smoothie at Starbucks. They make a mistake and give me a coffee one instead. Later, Kayla let me know, she was not happy - "I wanted something different." Am hopeful the head shrinkers can help my poor daughter. I can't even begin to imagine what her life is like. She is the bravest person I have ever met. Every day she teaches me patience. All I can do is give her a mother's love, one of the purest things in nature.
I leave the doctors with additional hope...no more like escape from this prison.... I want to give Kayla something (smoothie) she can enjoy in her sea of pain. Oh yes! I will get supper for the two of us. She loves the caprese sandwiches and I love the nourishing simple soup. The now familiar walk up the one block to all the small bustling restaurants on the street is soothing. Observe everything. Isn't that what all writers do? Watch and record?
"The Homeless Man"
Jou Jous Eatery is close by, very chic, clean and full of the latest healthy foods for all to buy. Inside there is a middle-aged black man in raggy clothes that are not particularly clean. He is holding up a winter coat and trying to sell it. The clerk is annoyed.
The food is in neat piles - fruit salads, sandwiches wrapped up, desserts....right there in front of you for the taking...no...for buying. A long row of delicious choices on low shelving in refrigerated spaces. The man bends over to inspect and straightens up,
"I am a salesman."
He smooths the coat gently over his arm as if he is pressing it with an iron. No one is buying. He needs it out of his way so he can touch the food. He picks up a yoghurt dessert with fruit and granola and holds it up.
"$2.72," the clerk says.
Homey tries to get the price down a little.
The young clerk is curt and not sure what to do.
"I said $2.72." The fingers of one of his hands is poised on the cash register but he has not put in the price yet. He is nervous.
"Oh PLEASE HELP ME," pleads the man.
Homey turns and tries to get a dollar from me. I just stare at him. He is harmless and desperate but I am scared too. He lives in the homeless shelter just up the block at the armory. That is where they all are. They mill around every day doing nothing. Most people won't walk past that way. They choose the other side of the street.
Depending on my mood, I walk one side of the street or the other. When I walk past them, I am curious about what they will say to me or what they are saying to each other. Most of the time they are mute. Some of the time they are lecturing each other. When you look at their eyes you know. Their lives are awful but they are fed here.
Homey is polite.
"I bought two of these before." He carefully pulls out three one dollar bills and puts them on the counter.
"I'm sorry if I bothered you. Can I sit and eat at this table?" There are three of us now and we are all uncomfortable. Did his mother love him when he was born? Was she excited at his birth?
I get my food.
I pass his table and put a $5.00 bill folded in half next to his hand. Surprise!
"Thank you. Thank you mam!"
"I'm not a man!"
"I said mam."
"Oh."
He brightens, "Do you go to church?"
"Yes, I do."
"Catholic?"
I am still frightened so I cannot face him. What if he follows me? I am getting my plastic silverware and napkins a few feet away.
"No more. Protestant now."
"Where is your church?"
I turn around.
"In Connecticut. I don't live here. I am here because my daughter is very sick. She needs a new heart."
"I am sorry," he shows his lack of teeth in a big nice smile. The remaining ones have brown crusted on them at the gum line.
Wistful now...."Please say a prayer for her. I don't know if she will live."
"I will. I will." Homey is genuine.
I leave. Probably will never see him again as long as I live. He has given me a prayer. For this, I am grateful.
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