Bringing It Home

by Tilda Shalof

  I wait for a few moments. “So, I guess you were in another place before this one?”

  “I was living in a rusted-out car,” he says, and seems ready to continue. “It was a helluva lot better than a park bench. I found it parked on a dead end, in an alley … and that’s where I lived until I got pneumonia. Then I had no choice but to go into the hospital. That was in December, right before Christmas.”

  “So, you knew it was pneumonia?”

  “Yup. I’ve had it so many times before. Each time I need antibiotics. The IV ones. I tried to tell them that, but they gave me the pills instead. But … I know they don’t work for me. They just wouldn’t listen and, sure enough, I had to go back a few days later. They said that to give me IV antibiotics, they’d have to admit me. ‘Okay, admit me,’ I said, and the doctor told me – this is word for word what he said: ‘In order to get … admitted to the hospital you have to have an address.’ He thought I was trying to use the hospital for a place to stay, but I was seriously sick, man. ‘I have pneumonia,’ I said, but he said it was only a cold. ‘The tablets you gave me aren’t working. I’m getting worse.’ ‘We’ll give you different ones,’ he said and walked away. After two more visits to the ER, each time in worse shape, I got admitted on the fifth one and ended up having to stay there for seven weeks. I just got out a few days ago. I’ve had bad experiences with doctors. You get the odd one who’s down-to-earth but some think they’re God.”

  Wayne goes on to tell me about other hospitalizations and his many chronic medical problems such as high blood pressure, a long-standing abscessed vein that still hasn’t healed, and more.

  “Yes, I was an IV drug user. I admit it. But I’m clean now …”

  As Wayne tells me about his drug abuse history and multiple medical issues, I start to do something a nurse should never do. I let my attention drift away. I allow my mind to wander from what Wayne is saying. I look around the room. Old newspapers are taped over the windows to keep out the light. A pack of cigarettes is hidden under a TV guide and there’s an ashtray on top of the television. Along the window ledge is a scattering of pennies and a few respiratory inhalers.

  Wayne is still talking. I make an effort to listen, but I can’t. I want to ask him about something else. So I do another thing a nurse should never do. I interrupt him.

  “Wayne, tell me. How did it happen that you ended up like this?”

  He smiles sadly. “It’s quite a story. Do you want to hear it?”

  Of course I do, and he wants to tell me.

  “I had a good upbringing, even played hockey.”

  “No better upbringing than that,” I agree.

  “Yup. And I was a good hockey player. Then I became an expert in electronics. I got married, had three houses, all paid … up. Then I got … a sleep disorder. They told me I was getting no REM sleep. You’re supposed … to have 25 per cent REM, but I had only 3 per cent, so I was always tired.” He stops to adjust his oxygen regulator and reposition his nasal prongs to make them more comfortable in his nostrils. “I … was an electronics expert – did I mention that? I built a radio transmitter at age seven. Electronics was my hobby and became my work. My businesses were eating up the cash. I lost all … my money. My wife complained I was never home. I lost hold of my sanity. Spent two years trying to get it back. I had a breakdown. I developed a sleeping disorder. It all fell apart and I was out of work … I left everything to the wife. I became Oscar the Grouch. I developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder and would only eat food that … came in cans. I had three … kids, but it might actually be more like four or five out there somewhere. I could fix anything – TVs, VCRs, computers.… Up until then, I was making six hundred dollars a week – take home. It was around this time that the government … came out with a law that when you turned the key in the car the headlights had to come on. It was a safety thing. Yup, it was an idea adopted from Sweden. They also legislated mandatory seat belts, too.… Now we all have to use seat belts, right? I was just about to go into the Stop’n’Go coffee business. Tim Hortons wasn’t around at the time. Then they came out with this new law.… I figured out how to do it and steered all my capital into making a prototype. It was a device connected to the ignition that would automatically switch on the lights. I was working night and day on it, never sleeping.”

  Reluctantly, Wayne stops to turn up the flow on his oxygen tank. There’s only a half a tank left, so I go over to the stacked cylinders in the hallway entrance. I hoist one up and bring it over. These things are heavy for me. How does he manage to haul them over and reconnect them to the tank?

  Wayne’s jumbled story is easy to piece together, and his obvious intelligence and genuine humility touch me deeply. I am on his side, rooting for him.

  “So, you were working on your invention, day and night, and living on your own?”

  “Nope. By then I was living in a shelter, a mission for … men. I found a wonderful doctor who diagnosed me with a heart arrhythmia. She ordered some test and while they were doing it, they all left me alone … in a room … for a long time. I was sure I was going to die. That was the scariest thing in my life. Ever. I freaked out and they had to sedate me and I don’t know what happened after then. Yesterday, I had to go back in to see an eye doctor and I was worried they’d do that test again. I keep reliving it in my mind, but it didn’t happen again. And sure, enough, ol’ VON brought me home again after my appointment.”

  “So, the lights had to come on when you turned on the car?” I prompt, rushing him along – again, not recommended – but I want to know how this story turns out before he runs out of steam.

  “Oh, yeah, so my father … had been bugging me for months to invest in this thing that would turn the lights on when you start up the car. ‘Wayne, you can make one of these,’ he said. Sure, I could. I went to Radio Shack, bought some junk … and built a prototype. I took it to one of the big Japanese carmakers. As soon as they saw it, they loved it. ‘We’ll manufacture it and sell it,’ they said. I took all my money out of the coffee shop – $200,000 – and got government approvals up the ying yang … went back to them, made a hundred prototypes at a hundred dollars a piece to test out in their cars. Man, I worked twenty-four hours a day to get ’em done. You know what? They liked it so much the bastards took my design and ran with it. Never heard from them again. Now, as you know, the headlights come on whenever you turn on a car.”

  There was a Hollywood movie similar to this, I tell him. It’s about the guy who invented intermittent windshield wipers. His idea was stolen, but he went after the big automakers in Detroit. It took a big fight and a lawsuit, but he ended up getting compensation.

  “I haven’t had the time to go after them.”

  Sadly, Wayne needs more than time – he needs wherewithal, energy, and health to just stay alive. Whether or not Wayne’s story is verifiable or merely a “reality show in his own mind” doesn’t matter to me. Right now, Wayne is exhausted. He can’t do anything but breathe.

  And yet, there’s more he wants to say.

  “So I never heard back from them. All my hard work and my life savings – gone. Eventually, I picked myself up and learned computer coding, even mastered five programming languages. Then my mother died. A month later, my father remarried. He’s a piece of work, that guy. Now I have no contact with my family. I don’t fit in. I guess you could say I’m the black sheep. My grandmother hated me. She’d buy my sisters a toy, but nothing for me.” His face shows this old hurt as if it happened recently, not years ago. “I guess you could say I’m a loser. A lost cause.”

  “No, Wayne, you are a found cause. I think you’re a genius.”

  “Yeah, a genius of self-destruction.” He looks down at the ground and then over at the box of cigarettes. “Yeah, I’d say I’m smarter than the average bear …”

  He’s well into his second tank of oxygen and motions for me to bring a third from the hallway. I can’t stay to the end of the second cylinder, but he wants it nearby, close at
hand.

  He looks up at me from where he’s still crouching on the floor, learning slightly forward. “Next question, please.”

  “What do you do to occupy your time?”

  “Watch TV.”

  “Are you lonely?”

  “Yes, but I have to stay indoors … so my lungs’ll heal.”

  “What about friends?”

  “I limit my friendships … I’ve lost track of a lot of people.… So many people let me down, stole my money. A VON lady calls every day to check on me. They send a nice lady once a week to help me shower. I can’t do it by myself. I’ve got a scooter so I can get groceries.”

  “Do you cook for yourself? What do you eat?”

  He nods over at the fridge and I get up to have a look. A half a loaf of bread, a few bottles of beer, and an open can of baked beans, the jagged lid sticking out. I look around the tiny kitchenette. On the countertop is a small, dented pot, resting upside down on a threadbare rag. The site of that lone, tin pot makes me unspeakably sad.

  “They got me Meals on Wheels,” Wayne says to explain why there’s so little in his fridge. “I make each one last for two meals.”

  “Are they that expensive?”

  “No, but I am saving up for new shoes. My disability cheques cover my needs. On Tuesday mornings there’s a communal lunch in this building for two dollars. Free coffee and doughnuts from Timmie’s on Monday mornings. The government got me the scooter. There’s a drop-in centre where I go on the Internet. When I’m feeling better, I want go over there and help other homeless guys. I’ve been there and now I have a home. I want them to see it’s possible.”

  He has to choose between eating and walking? That is so wrong. I know what I’ll do. I’ll take him home with me. Feed him soup. Build him up. Let him enjoy our comfortable home. He can live in our basement, I’m sure my family won’t mind …

  Wayne sees I’m sad and tries to cheer me up. “Don’t worry about me. This is the best home I’ve ever had.” He smiles not just for my benefit but also because he’s truly content. I can see that. Even if my madcap scheme were feasible, I feel certain Wayne would turn it down. He doesn’t want to live with me and my family. He wants to live here. This is his home. He’s at home here. Home at last.

  I drive on along the remaining stretch of this treacherous highway on my way to Windsor. Got to make it there tonight, check into the hotel, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, I have an early morning visit booked. It’s dark and I’m sleepy, but thinking about Wayne’s story keeps me awake. It’s easy to see how incredibly easy it would be to end up alone and homeless. One setback in life can lead to another and another, in a rapid downward spiral; it could happen to anyone.

  As I drive along, I carry a heaviness that I can’t shake off. I keep reminding myself to concentrate on the road ahead. I flip the radio stations from CBC evening news to Adele to Mozart to Kanye. It surprises me how upset I feel. How can this be? I’m an old hardened hospital nurse, aren’t I? I should be able to handle my emotions after all these years.

  Yes, I’ve learned the tricks of the trade. How could I have worked in the ICU so long if every sad thing that came along affected me? Nurses know how to lighten the load with jokes, banter, and gossip. Another tried-and-true method is to keep busy. That’s easy because there’s always so much to do. There are some shifts when we don’t have a moment to sit for the entire twelve hours. Another thing that helps is the magical delusion that the drastic things that happen to our patients won’t happen to us or someone we love. And we read only a single, isolated page from the hundreds of chapters of the entire novel of a person’s life. That minimizes our exposure. It allows us to focus on the numbers and machines, the liver and kidneys, the cells and molecules – no pesky emotions there.

  But it’s infuriating that there are hungry people in our wealthy country. I have eaten super-sized meals, thrown out leftovers, carried home doggy bags from restaurant meals. I’ve even thrown out food if it’s stale or wilted, or if my refrigerator is too crowded, just to free up space so I can buy more food. But I try to stay focused on my anger at the world’s injustices rather than my sadness about Wayne. Anger keeps me alert, better for driving alone on this cold, dark highway.

  LA DOLCE VITA

  ALL I CAN SAY IS, when I get old and infirm, either shoot me or put me in a place like this.

  This is “La Dolce Vita,” once an elegant, rustic Italian trattoria that has been revamped and turned into an elegant, rustic retirement home. It is for long-term residents who are independent, but five beds are reserved for people who need a shorter-term stay and some nursing care. It’s exactly what Geriatric Emergency Manager Magda said was needed – “crisis placement” for elders who need a supportive transition until they’re ready to go home.

  I meet Ethel, a senior here to recover after a bad fall at home. She’ll stay until she, well, gets back on her feet. She’s part of DETOUR: Deterring Emergency Time Offering Urgent Respite. It’s a stopgap remedy, a bridge to home, and Ethel looks like she’s well on her way.

  For elders, falls are a big deal. They are so common yet so preventable; they can happen so easily, but recovery can take months. It can be a simple tumble that can initiate a whole chain reaction of decline and a lengthy hospitalization. I’ve seen it myself, but from the other end, when it’s far too late to intervene.

  We sit in Ethel’s nicely furnished room to chat. She’s wearing a bright coral blouse and white pants, makeup nicely done. She’s put aside her crocheting so she can test her blood sugar with her glucometer. Ethel has no difficulty doing that and, at the same time, recounting the story of how she landed up in this place that, as nice as it is, is not her home.

  “I had just gotten out of the shower when I slipped and fell. I didn’t have my lifeline on me. I lay there on the bathroom floor. Lost my urine three times – sooo embarrassing – my poor cat stood over me, nudging me like, Mommy get up, I want my breakfast.” Trust a cat! “I heard the sound of my bone cracking when down I went.” She sees the result of her blood sugar test and decides on the dosage of her pre-lunch insulin. “I inched my way along the floor to the phone, dozing off from time to time. Ting Ling kept meowing to wake me up. He knew something was wrong with Mommy. People don’t give animals enough credit. It took me two days to get to the phone. I called 911. I was okay but Ting Ling was real mad. He was hungry. My tailbone was cracked and I had a concussion – from a good whack on the head – and my arm was bruised. They kept me overnight in the hospital, but I couldn’t go home. So they brought me here to get my strength back.” Ethel draws up the insulin, raises her pant leg, and gives herself the shot in her thigh.

  With her lively face, busy hands – manicured in the exact same shade of coral as her blouse – I can see that Ethel, a retired accountant, a bridge and mah-jong player, is content.

  “It’s so nice here, would you like to stay?”

  “No way! I’m not ready for this place. I want to get back home. This is just a temporary fix to get me back on my feet.

  “But I do like it here. They check on me throughout the day. Once, I was on the toilet and they knocked, didn’t hear me answer and came right in. It was embarrassing, but worth it for the security of knowing they are there.” Ethel picks up her afghan-in-progress and continues. “Coincidentally, I found my husband on the floor. Five years in a row he had a heart attack. Every fall he had a fall. He died. We’d been going to Daytona Beach for twenty years, but always made sure to return to Canada for a few months to keep our health insurance. He was my second husband. My first used his hands on me, so I got rid of him. I didn’t have health care in Florida, so I had to sell the house and come back. I have a nice apartment here and I’m looking forward to getting back to it.”

  “What’s it been like to be here for the past few weeks?” I ask.

  “I love it here. It’s so clean. It even smells clean – pine and lemony. The homey Italian cooking is dee-licious. My fall changed everything. I couldn’t
take care of myself. But I can now. I’m almost ready to go home. But first, let’s go have lunch. Yippee! It’s Eggplant Parmigiana day!”

  After lunch, I drive to VON’s Chronic Pain Management Clinic to learn more about the “good life” from Nurse Stephanie Vandevenne. She’s the manager of the team that consists of a nurse practitioner, doctor, social worker, physiotherapist, and occupational therapist. They see clients with complex pain issues such as back pain, sciatica, or fibromyalgia, and often visit them at home to obtain a detailed history of their problem and how they are managing.

  As for fibromyalgia, it’s a diagnosis that isn’t given much credence in my hospital world because no precise etiology or pathology has ever been discovered. However, here it is taken very seriously.

  “The pain is real to the person suffering,” Stephanie says. “It can be whole body pain, often initiated by a trauma. Whether it’s emotional or physical, it’s pain. In many cases of fibromyalgia there is a past history of sexual abuse. When they finally come to us they have tried many things and have been pushing themselves to cope as best as they can.”

  Clients that come to this clinic usually bring a long list of medications that they are living on, just trying to cope with their pain. “We work with them to provide better management of their meds and expand their repertoire of modalities they can use to manage their pain.” She quotes the old adage we all learn in doctor or nurse school but find difficult to practise: “Pain is whatever the person says it is.” In the hospital, it has often been more like “pain is what we can see and measure, and we are the ones in control of its treatment,” but there’s definitely change afoot to partnerships with patients. Stephanie and the Pain Clinic team use videoconferencing because clients aren’t always feeling well enough to come in. In fact, the two clients she asked to come today to talk with me are going to phone it in. They both cancelled because they weren’t feeling well.

  Dixie is a construction worker who misses her job. She hasn’t been able to work for the past two years due to constant pain from a work-related injury. “I hate not working but I’m making progress. I can now bend down to put on a pair of jeans and withstand the pressure of the denim on my back – that’s a huge achievement. I go to water therapy classes in a heated pool and have cut back on my meds. I hate them. Today, the pain woke me up, like an electric shock. I did hard physical work for fifteen years and had occasional aches and pains, but nothing like this. A lot of people in chronic pain don’t help themselves but I’m not like that. I take as few narcotics as possible. The pain team taught me to trust my instinct and do what works for me. They give me a lot of support, understanding, and information. One way or another, I’m going to beat this thing.”