“I promise,” I said, “that I will not let them admit you; we’ll come back home today.”
My husband, who had lived with congestive heart failure for decades, was so filled with fluids that he was like a walking (sitting; he was wheelchair-bound) waterbed. This was a Monday. I am not medically competent, but I’ve been a hospice, AIDS/HIV and Compassion & Choices volunteer, and I knew enough to know he was sliding toward end-stage CHF.
In the ER I mentioned to assorted intake people that we would not agree to hospitalization. The physician who eventually arrived looked my husband in the eye and outlined the ways she could help him feel better and perhaps live longer (he was 89.) “But it will involve being in the hospital for a few days,” she said; “and I think that is not what you want.”
“That is not what I want,” said my husband, looking her in the eye.
“Fine,” said this saintly, beautiful doctor (name on request; I’ve already sent her a thank-you letter copying everyone I can think of.) “We will do what we can, and send you home today.”
So we went home. It was a long day, and my husband was too weary even to finish his martini (an indication to me that he really didn’t feel well. The nightly martini was important.) He said he didn’t want even a bowl of soup. Bed sounded good, he said, but he was beyond cooperation. I then had to summon the Wellness people in our retirement condo building to help.
“Old person. Unresponsive. Call 911” said the Wellness people, as they helped me get him into bed.
“Do not call 911,” I said.
“We understand,” they said. “We love him too. But we have to call 911.”
The paramedics arrived. Paramedics are invariably the most gorgeous hunks. Two of the six who arrived had been to our apartment months before when my husband landed on the floor – he was 6’4” (at his peak) so it took paramedics to get him from floor to bed. “I remember talking to him about all this art,” one said. “And he was a Marine,” said the other. What’s not to love about paramedics? But. “We must take him to the ER,” they said.
“You may not take him out of this apartment,” said I.
It became an interesting battle.
“We understand,” they said. “We agree with you, ma’am. But we have protocols.”
Finally I said to the guy in charge: “You call your head person at San Francisco General and tell him you have this little old lady standing here with her husband’s DNR, POLST form and DPOA and she says we may not remove him from their apartment.” Actually, I was prepared to go over that person’s head. I have friends at SF General. But to his eternal credit, the in-charge physician (may he survive and prosper) said, “Fine. Get him in bed and leave him there.”
The two of us
One of the paramedics saluted my husband as he left the bedroom.
My husband died three days later, in his own home where he wanted to be, with me scrinched into the hospital bed hugging him into the hereafter.
Had I not argued against the retirement home 911 protocols, and fought against the EMR protocols, he would have died in a cold, bright-lit hospital room with strangers poking and probing him and we the taxpayers spending thousands and thousands of dollars to make his last several days miserable.
What’s wrong with this picture? Only the caption.
The caption 99% of us would want is the one below the snapshot of my husband’s death, at home, with someone we love best hugging us into the hereafter.
Fully 60 percent of the U.S. population get the hospital caption — the one that goes with that blurry photo above — instead . (Another 20 percent get the nursing home caption.) One should not have to have a ferocious on-site advocate to let one die at home in one’s own bed. In addition to the DNR, the POLST and the DPOA there should be a JLMA form: Just Leave Me Alone, for those of us who concede that we’re actually going to die some day and work to keep our end-times as inexpensive and comfortable as possible.
Until such time, I am grateful for the forms we do have, and for the two compassionate physicians who helped my good husband die the death he preferred. May he rest in well-earned peace.
In a new year with meanness and cruelty on the news every day, there are counter forces at work. Here is my favorite Pay-It-Forward story so far for 2019. It involves my lovely friend Eva Zimmerman, who agreed to let me to share it. Eva and her husband, Noah Schreck, welcomed their first child, daughter Zahra, into the world last spring. But the exuberant joy they were having was interrupted by Noah’s diagnosis of colon cancer, requiring surgery in December.
Though incredibly hard, we’ve been protected through this, because of you all. I gave that protection and blessing back to another family just as we left. It was a moment I’ll never forget. I don’t know their name. But as I write this, I’m watching Noah sleep next to me, and I’m thinking of them, envisioning their son home safe, soon and cancer-free.”
“Welcome to the family!” chirped my new Inbox message. It was filled with so many little hearts and emojis I initially felt I must have been adopted into some friendly group sharing my religious or philosophical leanings. Its presentation, which would have been entirely fitting for such an invitation, was overwhelming in its warm-fuzziness.
There are more watchband choices out there than lipstick shades. But I persevered. On about page 43 I found a band identical to the highway-robbery-priced one, clicked off my $12.99 and hit Send. That, apparently, granted me entrance into the family.
Facebook now knows. Every company related to watchbands now knows. You will be so bombarded with watchband-related ads in between posts from your real life Facebook friends you may find yourself saying, one day, “What the heck, maybe I should order that power cord; my power cord is frayed . . .” Resist that urge. Go to Walgreen’s and buy it; they already know everything about you from all those Club Card purchases anyway.
But we should at least have world peace.
Holiday letters? I am definitely ambivalent. It is lovely catching up with old friends (many of whom, on our holiday list at least, I only hear from once a year.) I’m interested in what’s been happening in their lives over the past year. I’m somewhat less interested in what’s been happening in their children’s or grandchildren’s lives although they’re usually pretty spectacular. But too many paragraphs about the latter and my eyes tend to glaze over. I resist all political messages – whether I agree with them or not. I love the letters that include remarks about books the writer has enjoyed over the year.
One thing we absolutely know: the recent, tragic California wildfires were NOT due to “poor forest management.” Perhaps someone clued our president in on a few facts – since he did ease off the “It’s all their fault, stupid Californians” rhetoric. The facts: essentially all of the state’s publicly owned forests (including Plumas National Forest where the deadliest fire began) are controlled by the federal government. Mr. Trump recently reduced funds for cleaning up fire-prone vegetation. Meanwhile, though, who knows how many of those who simply accept Mr. Trump’s lies now have one more lie to confirm their belief that the globe isn’t warming and climate isn’t changing, and who needs to worry about the planet?
My favorite Thanksgiving thing has been – for the past 14 years – the San Francisco Interfaith Service. This year it was hosted (every year it’s a different faith community) by the Fifth Church of Christ, Scientist in the city’s Tenderloin District, primary locale of the homeless and the down-and-out. 
(The Christian Scientists have been in their historic building there since 1923, and after endless years of negotiating have recently gotten the green light from the city to build a multi-use high-rise including below-market housing on the site, keeping the façade and interior details –with the church itself staying put.)
(Another passerby said he had already called the emergency line to get help.) One can at least give thanks for helpers.
