As expected, the weekend mass murder in California has brought out the usual suspects on the pencil-penis right. I'm not even going to go into the kinds of things that are being said by the sociopathic Elliot Rodger wannabes out there in the "pickup subculture" who think that their very existence entitles them to sex provided by beautiful women that they can then spit on later for being sluts, evil, or whatever bile they choose to spill to cover up their deep self-loathing.

I'm here this evening to look at the so-called "mainstream" of wingnut thought on this question; the NRA acolytes who seem to honestly believe that without their guns they have no penises. First we have the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's useless Big Apple rag, which yesterday showed everything that's wrong with the subculture that fueled the shooter's rage:



It's all here -- a photo of a pretty blond girl -- exactly the kind of girl that Rodger hated for rejecting him -- her finger half in her mouth, a hint of cleavage showing, a look that could be interpreted by sad sack losers as "come hither" -- and the subheadline "Childhood snub set me off, madman seethed." I'm sorry, Rupert, but you can call him a madman all you want; this cover shows what you REALLY think, and it's vile...disgusting. How do you sleep at night?

Meanwhile. the male Sarah Palin, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher, seeking another moment in the sun, penned an "open letter to the parents of" those killed. An excerpt:

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now.> But:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

Richard Martinez, whose son (Christopher) was among the murdered, choked back tears at a news conference, blaming politicians the next day: “The talk about gun rights. What about Chris’ right to live?” Martinez said – and much more.

There are no critical words for a grieving father. He can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like – it’s okay by me. You can’t take a step in his shoes – at least I can’t.

But the words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming “the proliferation of guns”, lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left.

Is Wurtzelbacher saying that everyone who has opined in the aftermath of this that "The bitches had it coming" is mentally ill? Or just those who BECAUSE THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GUNS go out and kill women?



While looking for the video above, I came across a number of Alex Jones-style tinfoil hat videos insisting that Richard Martinez is a tool of the anti-gun left, that the shooting was an Obama false flag operation designed to take away the guns of good patriotic 'muricans who just want to know that they could take out the black man in the White House iff'n they had a mind to. No surprise there either, but it makes me wonder -- what WILL it take to change enough minds so that we demand action; that we INSIST on it? We had twenty dead six-to-eight-year-olds dead because of guns and still we did not cry out.

So I'm going to say something that will no doubt piss a lot of people off:

We need to see more grief.

Yes, there are those who will continue to insist that Newtown and Santa Barbara were false flag operations. Those people are beyond hope. But what about the people who sort of marginally care but hey, Dancing with the Stars is on tonight and we need dog food and the car needs an oil change? How do we get them to realize what a bunch of men with penis size anxiety are doing to our country?

We need to see more grief.

Yes, it makes us uncomfortable. That is why people have needed to try to paint Michael Martinez as something other than a grieving parent. After all, we don't see much raw, live grief. We saw the Newtown parents clutching photos of their dead children, telling Barbara Walters or Ann Curry or some other faux-carer of the media what their child was like. We saw their jaws quiver and their eyes fill with tears -- all very tasteful, all very sanitary, all very seemly.

What we didn't see is the times when the cameras were turned off, and they went into the bedrooms of their lost children and collapsed onto the floor screaming. We didn't see them break down in the supermarket for no particular reason after they've been fine all day. We didn't see them close the door on a room that is now a shrine, or pack up toys and clothing that will never be worn again....Christmas presents that will never be opened. We didn't see them wake up in the morning even now, and for one brief moment pretending it was all a bad dream before realizing it's real. We don't see what grief looks like.

Grief is supposed to be something linear. You're supposed to cry for a week, or two, or even a couple of months -- and then buck up and move on; "get over it", because there's work to do and people to not make uncomfortable. The problem is, that's not how it works. For every time you see someone collapse in screams upon hearing the terrible news that their child or spouse or sibling has died, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who leave the accident scene, or the hospital, or the nursing home, in a state of shock and numbness. We look fine on the outside for a while, just like those poised Newtown parents. But after a while the numbness wears off and the waves start. And they can last a very long time. But since we have not adhered to some external timetable, we do our grieving behind closed doors, alone. I guarantee you, the Newtown parents do it. The families of the women George Sodini killed in 2009 do it. Trayvon Martin's parents do it. The families of the others killed by Elliot Rodger will do it too. Because that is just how it works. After all, we mustn't make other people uncomfortable. It would be unseemly.

Well I say bullshit to that. Death is part of life. Loss of loved ones happens. It is horrible and it sucks royally, but it happens. People get sick. They die. People also get murdered by punk kids with a false sense of entitlement who think beautiful women owe them sex because of some delusion of grandeur they have. Those of us who arguably had time to prepare, to try to wrap our minds around something that is unfathomable until it actually happens, well, we will continue to have to grieve behind closed doors because we make people uncomfortable. But a parent whose son got killed while at work, or whose daughter was in a sorority house, or whose son was coming back to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea; a husband whose pregnant wife was gunned down while she was teaching aerobics at a gym -- we owe it to them and to the memory of their horrific losses to witness their grief; to hear the screams of the nightmare that will never end; to witness their legs give out from under them.

Photographs of pristine, healthy, adorable children didn't do it. Lovely, dignified, stoic parents trying to be brave for the cameras didn't do it. Perhaps seeing what pure, raw grief looks like MIGHT get through. And we have to allow them to show us no matter how long it takes for the numbness to wear off. Because no, Samuel Wurtzelbacher DOESN'T know what Richard Martinez is going through, because he gets to tuck his kids in at night. Wurtzelbacher lacks the empathy to even TRY to imagine. So perhaps people need to start showing him.

Labels: grief, gun nuts, misogyny, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

I heard this gorgeous song on Pandora today and have been pretty much a mess the rest of the day. Antoine Dufour, Song for Stephen:



I am probably going to spin off further posts about this new life I'm trying to live into a different blog. It may be public, it may be by invitation. I'll let you all know if I decide to make it by invitation only and you'll be able to request and invitation. But I think that further episodes of the Deeply Personal don't really belong here.

I've gone back to work this week. I think it's good for me, it gets me back to something that passes for normal, it eliminates that irrational raw gnawing fear that they'll forget I work there, and it gets me back into the land of the living. My colleagues have been wonderful. This bunch that balks at gift cards for our administrative assistants raised $420 for the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge, FOCAS, and the Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network. I've been pretty much OK this week until I heard the song posted above. Sure, I get a bit weepy, especially when I get home after work, but all things considered I've been OK. But tonight I was driving home and a massive wave of grief just washed over me just as I was getting on 287 north and it was as if the words I WILL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN were written in fire on a two-by-four that was delivered soundly to the bakc of my skull.

It's a grief tinged with rage, because in a moment of madness last night I decided to listen to some of the recordings I made of medical appointments we went to. In a way, having these recordings make Mr. B. seem not quite so gone because his voice is still there. But it also underscores that concept of "NEVER". Where the rage comes in is just how often the word "hydration" appears, no matter who is talking -- Dr. Chess Club talked about hydration. Dr. Endearingly Nerdy Brain Doctor talked about hydration. The radiotherapy nurse talked about hydration. The oncologist talked about hydration. Hydration hydration hydration, and Mr. B. simply would not do it. In his last few conscious days, he developed a hankering for tomato juice, and went through two 64-ounce bottles in three days; probably 4-5 bottles during that last week. I argued with him that this was not hydration, but he insisted that he was allowed to have juice, and after thirty years, I knew that the more I dug in my heels the more tomato juice he would drink. It is a thing you guys seem to always do and it makes us nuts. So tonight the crying jags are not just about the grief that's really starting to hit now, but they also have an element of YOU DUMBASS...IF YOU HAD JUST HAD SOME GODDAMN WATER YOU'D STILL BE HERE.

I hate this.

Labels: dumbassery, grief, moyamoya, nothing is certain except death and taxes, personal musings

And it wasn't even the bladder cancer.

Mr. Brilliant suffered a very small stroke two weeks ago today. He even said it was small. "I seem to have suffered a small stroke," he said in words that were barely intelligible. It didn't seem all that small, given that he could hardly speak and his left arm was twitching. "I don't seem able to control my left arm." He seemed confused and loopy, but also able to think clearly. "I think your thoughts are OK, you're just having trouble pronouncing words, is that right?" I asked. "Yes," he said.

I called the ambulance to take him to the hospital. He started having seizures before we even left the house. Unfortunately, the EMTs have to take you to the nearest hospital, which is how he ended up at Valley Hospital instead of Hackensack University Medical Center. In the emergency room, they cleaned him up, did the same bedside neuro test that he had passed with flying colors just weeks earlier, only this time he was able to pass none of it. "M...o...y..a...m...o...y...a", he tried to explain. He was given Ativan and Keppra to try and stop the seizures and admitted to the neurology ICU.

Where they proceeded to let him seize for thirty-six hours, titrating the meds and telling me they had to do that to find the right dose.

By Monday night I was hysterical. I called Dr. Chess Club's office and he called back within 15 minutes, horrified that they had let him seize for so long. He explained to me about status epilepticus, which is a state of constant seizure, and told me to call the covering neurologist and say that he MUST be intubated and sedated to knock down the seizures before anyone turns in for the night. I will not relate anything else about my dealings with Valley Hospital right now, but Dr. Chess Club also felt that he would be more comfortable if Mr. B. was transported and under his care, at which point I began feeling more relief already.

It took all day on Tuesday the 24th to get a bed at Big Prestigious Hospital and the transport, but by late night, he had been moved, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The plan was to keep him sedated for a few days to let his brain rest, then take him off sedation and make sure he's not still having seizures. The expectation was that he would gradually wake up, and then they could gradually withdraw the anti-seizure drugs.

On Friday the 27th the sedation was withdrawn. At 1:10 PM on Sunday the 29th, I was sitting in his room by the window, using the sill as a desk for my laptop. Suddenly I saw a yellow balloon bobbing right outside my window. Then it started wafting up, up, and away. There was no reason for a yellow balloon to be there outside a 2nd floor window of a hospital sitting on an overpass over the FDR Drive. But there it was. On September 30 he opened his eyes. There was no way to tell if he was actually in there. It seemed to me that he was, but now I am not sure. I went home for two medical appointments of my own, then back in to camp out in a chair in his room all night, because I wanted to be there as he started to emerge from the sedation. On October 1, no one was really sure of how conscious he was. Dr. Chess Club came in and said that he was not convinced the Versed had worn off. He said we are not there yet in terms of having to deal with decisions, and he was still hopeful we wouldn't get there.

By Wednesday, October 2, it was becoming clear that he was not coming out of it. They withdrew one of the seizure meds, and at my request, we had a meeting in the afternoon to discuss Mr. B's advance directive. The short-term plan was to try to withdraw the anti-seizure meds and see if he would go into seizure. They suggested I take a day off an not come in, since for 8 days straight I had left the house at 5 AM to get there by 6:30 and beat the traffic, worked an 8 hour day by the windowsill including teleconferences, and then driven home at rush hour -- and I was exhausted. I think they were not all that hopeful by that point and did not want me to see him go back into seizure, which he did, on Thursday night, after all the depakote had been flushed from his system.

On Friday, October 4, he broke into seizures on BOTH sides while the ICU team was examining him, and this time THEY requested the family meeting. By now I knew full well what was coming.

They offered me 4 options for long-term plan going forward:

1. Continue the same plan of medicating for seizures and support for breathing and nutrition, with resuscitation.

2. DNR but continue the same plan for medication, breathing and nutrition.

3. DNR with no escalation of care - no tests, no MRIs, no infusions.

4. DNR and withdrawal of care - use morphine drip and continue medicating for seizures.

Options 1 and 2 required tracheostomy and feeding tube in the stomach.

Option 3 could result in blood clots, pneumonia, other infections.

So there was really no option other than #4. No way did Mr. B. want a trach and direct feeding tube...and there was no sign that he would ever be able to stop seizing no matter how long we let his brain rest on Versed, which they put him back on when he started seizing.

So Saturday we went in. I have never felt so utterly awful in my life. I knew in my head that Mr. B. the person -- the guy who joked about wanting to be stuffed and propped in the corner after death as a constant reminder of our marriage, the guy who liked the Grateful Dead and Miles Davis and kung-fu and comic book movies -- was already gone; perhaps gone with that yellow balloon on Sunday. But it's one thing to know that what lies in the bed is by now just a shell holding him back from whatever is next for him. It's quite another to know that when the ventilator is removed from your spouse, he will die; to go into the room after it is removed and watch him, swollen with edema, still with hiccups from chemotherapy, nearly bald, with a healing EDAS scar, covered in bruises from needle sticks and IVs, open his eyes briefly in a reflex action. It was barely 20 minutes after they removed the ventilator that he stopped breathing. It is so upsetting just to type that again, because I can never un-see what I saw and what I had to experience. I don't wish that on anyone, and I hope none of you ever have to make that decision or stand by while it happens.

After he was gone, one of the ICU doctors told me that the results of his MRI from the day before showed multiple strokes all over his brain, as if his entire head -- all those little weak moyamoya vessels -- were exploding at once. There really was no other choice I could have made that would have been anything other than torment.

Mr. B. had always said he was not afraid of death, but he was terribly afraid of dying. At some point I will regard it as a blessing, that he got the end he wanted -- unconscious and painless and gentle, instead of the horror that is slow painful death from bladder cancer. But we were together for thirty years, lived together for twenty-nine, and had celebrated our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary just the evening before his stroke. I cannot bring myself to believe that he's gone. I go upstairs and there are all his clothes and his CDs and the size-13 sneakers that we always called Bozo shoes. There's the chair he sat in while he smoked, and his guitar and bass and his tech books. And when I think that never again will someone come downstairs and say, "Good morning, sweetie"; never again will I need to call home to tell someone I'm on my way home from work; that I will never, ever see him again, I feel like I don't know how I will go on. And yet I will go on, and make a life, because I have to. Because life is just too short not to. I just wish his wasn't as short as it was.

Note: Thanks to everyone on the medical teams at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute and New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell that treated Mr. B. over the last six months and who tried mightily to restore him to health. These are some of the brightest, most caring, dedicated people I have ever met:

• Dr. Jonathan Rosenberg
• Dr. Bernard Bochner
• Dr. Han Xiao
• Dr. Preeti Parhar
• Dr. Igor Gavrilovic
• Dr. Babak Navi
• Dr. Jared Knopman
• Dr. Daniel Lahm
• Dr. Fowaz Al-Mufti
• Dr. Baxter Allen
• Dr. Benjamin Rapoport
• The chemotherapy nurses at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, NJ
• The nurses and all the staff in the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit at NYP/Weill-Cornell

Labels: grief, moyamoya, nothing is certain except death and taxes, personal musings

Miss Jenny: 1997 (?) - July 3, 2013

I felt the minute I saw her photo on Petfinder that she was our kitty. I'm not sure why, because in the photo she looked terrified. Maybe it was her markings, which reminded me so much of our "cow kitty" Oliver, who had just left us a week earlier. So we went to the Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge to look at her. For a few minutes we were distracted by a large, very friendly male cat, but our remaining cat, Wendy, was also fifteen as Ollie had been, and we felt he would be more than she could handle.

The shelter had given her the name "Jenni-purr", a saccharine moniker the significance of which was obvious, as she lay in her cage, on a fluffy blanket, kneading and purring so loudly it was like a subway train. Everything about her said "Sweetness." The shelter volunteer told us that she'd been a stray, found in a park and fed by a local resident until he'd been able to trap her and her kittens and bring them to the shelter. The kittens had all found homes, and Jenny had only about three months earlier been up to being in the "general population" after they'd worked on her fear for ten months. We knew she would be a challenge, so we decided to go home and think about it.

We couldn't stop thinking about the scared kitty on her fluffy blanket. On Christmas Eve, we decided "That kitty needs us," and we went to go adopt her. Usually they don't like to do same day take-home adoptions on Chritmas Eve. But we had no children and no big plans so they let her go home with us.

We decided to let Jenny take up residence in the downstairs bathroom, so she would have a small space in which she could adjust. She spent a few days crouched behind the toilet, then moved into her litterbox, which is where one often finds terrified cats at shelters. After a week of this, we couldn't take anymore and decided to let her find her own way. She then proceeded to our home office and moved under a reclining chair for the next three months.

Over those months, she would see people coming in and working at the computer. I would get down on the floor, life the fabric panel on the bottom of the recliner, and just talk to her. Occasionally I'd put a treat under there, which she would never eat until I left. We knew she was eating the meals we gave her, and we knew she was using the litterbox. But she never emerged while we were in the room.

Around the same time we brought Jenny home, having decided to keep a variation of her shelter name because it was a sweet, gentle name for a sweet, gentle cat, Wendy began to go downhill. Her kidneys were failing. But SHE started spending time in the office where Jenny lived under the chair. It was as if she was giving her approval of this new cat. On January 2, 2001, we lost Wendy too. I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been for Jenny, in this strange house with this sick old cat who was then suddenly not there anymore.

Little by little, she came out of her shell. First she adopted the tall cat condo by the window, where she'd sit, her back to us, looking out the window. After a while, we could even pet her as long as she couldn't see our hands. Then she become more comfortable having us near her, but she'd turn around and face away from us when she wanted petting. We called this "the petting position." Then after another while, we could pet her in the cat condo even while she faced us, but only there, while she was high off the ground. (Those of you who watch My Cat from Hell on Animal Planet know that difficult cats do better if they have high places to which to climb. It's probably related to some cats in the wild bringing their kills up into trees to keep them from other cats.)

After still another while, she came out and appropriated the living room sofa, then the storage bench in front of the windowsill. But it was about six years of her living with us before she really allowed herself to be part of the family. In retrospect, if we had put a TV in the living room so we were with her more of the time, this would have happened much sooner.

Jenny and Maggie never got along very well. Maggie is needy, vocal, and stupid, and Jenny was sweet but independent, quiet, and scarily smart. We often had to break up cat fights, though now that we know that Jenny had a tumor in her brain, I wonder how much of her picking a fight over the last few years was the tumor. Right now Maggie is mostly just confused. I hope her stupidity allows her to forget in a few days that Jenny ever existed. I don't want to lose her too.

Jenny was the "good-est" cat I've ever had. She always seemed grateful to us for giving her a nice home, with lots of fluffy blankets and quilts and poufy things for her to use for her many naps. Jenny was a soft, gentle kitty who deserved to have soft, gentle places to lie on. And as she came out of her shell, the brick wall that always seemed to be behind her eyes fell, and she would look at us with an expression that could only be described as gratitude, and even love. Jenny knew what she had and always appreciated it. And we appreciated that she was so good. She never scratched the furniture, only her posts. She never shredded toilet paper or climbed where she wasn't supposed to go. We never had to shoo her off kitchen counters or tables. She just knew what good cats do and don't do and was just a good cat. The only time we ever had to intervene was when she picked fights with Maggie, and who could really blame her? Maggie is a dear, but she can try your patience sometimes. And yes, I know that some day I will kick myself for writing this today when I have to write about her.

You always know, when you bring an animal home, that someday you will have to do what we did yesterday. With Jenny it was worse, because for all that she became trusting, she never sat on our laps, nor were we able to pick her up at all, let alone put her in a carrier. For years she wasn't visited by a vet at all, but she was so hardy she didn't need it. Eventually we found a mobile veterinary facility that does house calls, and we figured that when the time came, we would just have Pets Aloud come out. But of course it never works that way.

Jenny had been getting thin a few months ago. She was diagnosed hyperthyroid and put on the same medication Maggie takes. But she continued to lose weight. Her blood work was normal; her thyroid normalized and her kidney function seemed fine. But a few days ago, she started to go downhill precipitously. By Tuesday night she was refusing food and by yesterday morning, her walking was very slow. Her hindquarters seemed weak. She would walk ten steps and then sit. She would sit in a corner staring at the wall. She'd collapse onto the floor. She was clearly miserable. I drove the 46 miles to drop Mr. B. off for chemotherapy, then came home and took her to the Big Veterinary Hospital on an emergency basis. This is a cat that would have fought like a banshee at being put in a carrier, but yesterday I brought it in to where she was, opened the door, and she walked right in. It was as if she was saying, "I'm ready to go" or "I'm sick...take me to the doctor." Her bloodwork was still normal. An echocardiogram showed evidence of slight heart disease, but not enough to account for her condition. An ultrasound of the belly revealed no masses or blockages. Nothing accounted for her condition, until she had a neurological exam, where they concluded that she had some kind of mass in her brain. It didn't seem to be a stroke because so many parts of her functioning were affected.

We had always promised that when her time came, Jenny would be able to leave this world at home. But these things never work out the way you want them to. The house call vet couldn't come out till Friday, and of course we were headed into the July 4 holiday. So even though we're not crazy about the Big Veterinary Hospital (and I don't even want to THINK about the final bill, having given them a deposit of $1500 towards what could have been $3000-$5000 worth of diagnostics, 2-4 days hospitalization, and monitoring), we decided to just do this there. I must say, however, that they do this about as well as it can be done. They have a special room with nothing clinical in it. We put her poufy quilt on the floor, the vet brought her in, and she went to each of us in turn with a head-butt before laying down on her own.

It is such a blessing and a mercy that when our pets no longer have any quality of life, we can be with them in a quiet room, perhaps with some soft music, say goodbye and watch as they go gently to sleep with the first injection, and quietly leave this life with the second. It is quiet and gentle (like she was) and dignified. And for all that it is heartbreaking, it allows us to keep our promise to our pets that we will never, ever let anything hurt them. Pet owners know that as painful as it is, we will be able to help our "furry children" leave without pain, without enduring months or years of diminishing quality of life; something we can't do for our human children, spouses, parents. I remain optimistic about Mr. B.'s chances for recovery, but it was important for him to "be able to do for her what no one will be able to do for me," should that optimism prove unfounded. And as soon as the raw wound heals a bit, that will be a comfort to us both -- that Jenny was not in pain and had her people and her poufy quilt around her as she set out on her next journey.

Goodbye, little Jenny-Lee girl. Thank you for being good. Thank you for being our kitty. Thank you for opening yourself up to trust us. Now go see what your next adventure will be.

Labels: cat blogging, grief, personal musings