I said to my other social worker friend… who totally just
gets it… All of it:
“I had an interesting run-in with a social worker…remind me
to tell you.”
“Run-in sounds bad. Social worker sounds worse.”
Social workers tend to loathe the profession we’re in. Because we all went into it with good intentions… Maybe some of us were the psychologist of our friend cohort and figured this was the easy way to get credentialed without having to become an actual psychologist and by just doing what we were naturally good at. Then, you graduate and realize the job is hard, thankless, and no one knows what you actually do or are trained for- so we just end up doing everything without the pay or credibility. When I walked the stage with my Master’s Degree, I beamed that I was able to get through that program while working and baby-making and as I stood for pictures, I am fairly certain my absent father texted me something along the lines of “So, now you’re gunna what? Hand out food stamps?” Yeah, that.
I’m the anti-therapy therapist. It just doesn't work on me, but I serve
it up like a Sunday sauce. There is this knowing… this professional hat tip
amid social workers, but there’s also this weird competition and I’ve either
become best friends with a social worker, or loathed them.
Being a social worker, or any mental health care worker also creates an expectation for health. It’s not like in the sober community where if you’re also “in recovery” you get more clout… It’s the opposite, somehow… I personally have felt more connected to people who have been through trauma or who suffer from mental illness. When a therapist can proudly exclaim that they’ve never considered hurting themselves or wishing for death, I just don’t think they’re going to get it. And don’t get me wrong: I don’t think you need to go through the exact pain someone else is experiencing in order to be empathic or effective with treatment, I just think it helps you to be less judgey if you can actually even imagine certain kinds of pain… cause you felt something like it... Maybe it also prevents you from doling out stupid advice. Yes, yes- this can cause issues with projection and comparing and transference, whatever. Among other professionals, however, it feels frowned upon if you’re doing anything for your mental health beyond taking hard-earned PTO for yoga retreats. Maybe it is the idea that you can’t focus on healing others while your oxygen mask is dangling from the ceiling of a plummeting plane? :shrug:
When I sought help before, I’d spill it all out. I wasn’t
sure where to start, but I knew it would take more than an hour and I felt that
the therapist couldn’t get where I am now unless they knew where I was then.
They needed to know about day one, dad, mom, everything… And sure, they’d give
reassuring nods and sum up my mountains in mirroring statements that made me mad.
Or the pathologists who would take everything I’d say and remark that I seemed
“angry” or “sad…” Uh, ya think?
My favorites were among the ones who ended up using my
sessions to vent about their own issues. I was always a good sport about it. The one who basically told me that her husband died the month prior, so she
understood depression maybe even better than I did as her means for empathy-was the cake topper. I saw a
million psychiatrists, but they’d over-prescribe and rob me of my passion and
ability to feel and create and that was really detrimental to me. Smushing out
the highs and lows of an artist does little to cure the systemic issues… it
just makes them indifferent to it…Maybe less likely to formulate the dreaded “plan”
to act on said sorrow. One psychiatrist actually told me what I was prescribed before him was numbing out the
basic human responses to naturally occurring emotional overload and I was exhausted and not mentally ill at all. He may have been on to
something…
I’d managed to kick whatever was brewing from the emotional
neglect and abuse from my dad and take the insane blows of life for a while…
and some of the blows have been crippling and maybe more in 10-20-30-40 years
that someone would have been able to withstand for a lifetime. This year,
though… This year has tested me in ways I didn’t think it could. I guess anyone
could tell you a failure story of how 2020 took a life of someone they
knew/loved and/or a failed business and they lost a leg or a lung to COVID… but
the tests of faith this year… I’m just not sure I can take much more.
Apart from not being able to sing as much and having to sell
my act to new venues and bar owners has been exhausting. Working the COVID unit
for all of those months was hard. Watching my friends lose their loved ones…
watching beautiful celebrities die… hard stuff. Watching my kids suffer from
missing their friends, experiences, cancelled trips and milestone events… hard.
Watching them try to expand beyond their shells in restrictive bedrooms where
they watch screens all day and legit TWITCH over dinner while barely surviving in
hiding from this virus has been really hard.
Planning a Bar Mitzvah, having my dad choose not to attend…
Hard. Hearing from other family members that he continues to bad mouth me for
lies he has concocted to justify his abandonment...again… Hard.
Cliff’s car accident. Hard.
Months later, our “middle child” dog, Benny managed to run out into the street when a door was left
unlatched. I heard a car screech and heard Silas screaming her name. I ran out
to see him holding Misty (our older dog that he managed to catch) and was
staring as she dragged her body from under the car into my arms. A rush to the
animal hospital gave us a $1k bill and some false hope that she had simply torn
her ACL and she’d be fine. Her waste was literally falling out of her for a
week and a half. She regained use of her leg quickly but was clearly declining.
Another trip to the vet would reveal that she had lost all sensation in her legs
and tail, and no longer had control of her bowels. She was retaining urine
(although I’m fairly certain there was not much left after carefully lining our
entire home with it) and another expensive trip to a neurologist could confirm
what the vet was already certain of… I, of course, was at a gig while my oldest
son screamed through the phone and begged for her life… “Please, another week?” I bottled up the emotions as I tried to
explain why she needed to be put down and out of her pain. Silas described the
moments Cody finally accepted her fate and they put their head to hers and
hummed as they put her into a deep sleep and then the second medication to help
her ascend. They stayed and pet her for a while and said their goodbyes. Silas
opted to spend another $932789237893287912 to get her ashes. I had to continue
to sing a few more sets and mingle while processing all of that. That was hard.
Our beloved Aunt Amy who we cried next to when her only
brother died… (About a month before Cody was born, he hung himself: another
blog for another day), then had to fight alongside her husband who battled
cancer. We watched his slow decline and held our breath with her as he
ascended. She texted the other day that she has stomach cancer. I’m not even
sure I’ve processed this yet. I have been staring at the text and making sure I
say the right things to her son and to her to show love, support, availability
for whatever… but I don’t feel prepared to really look at that and what it
means. Tough.
The bestie and I have been fighting. Lack of creativity, jobs, time… His health coming into question. Tests have been generally positive, but with age comes the fear… Anesthetizing with booze and then trying to make sense of bad behavior, poor communication and just change. Change everywhere and with everything. Being introspective and self-preserving and battling life with constant fear has had a crippling effect on friendships. Meh.
But then, it happened. The absolute thing to push me over
the edge. The “straw” if you will…
Preface: I have a handful of former-transplant patients that have fashioned their way into family. Each carefully crafted organ that was earned from tenuous medical battles bonded me to the bravest men and women who I cried with, prayed with, fought for… fought with. Each has a story about the way I helped them and I have a similar story of the patchwork they’ve quilted into my every fiber that’s grown me. Sounds cliché but some people experience a fight for life, a triumph, defeat, death, mourning… maybe once, maybe twice. The countless times I have worked alongside these brave men and women has completely changed me. Martin’s story is tattooed on my arm. The moments we shared are indescribable. We went through it all. When he died, he took a piece of me with him. I feel closer to him to have his ashes and get to chat with his wife and remember him.
Countless others have held my heart… many who are still alive and who are so important to me…
Megan,
Sonja,
Laz,
Derrel (still waiting, praying…he's in the middle of the two angels)
Chris….
I’d donate my own organs to save them again and again…
Last week, I was chatting with an old patient who had been in and out of the hospital a lot these days with chronic lung infections, rejections, aspergillus fumigatus (oh, my)…
They had been working him up for a second transplant.
They were trying to determine if the fungus caused from being a Cystic Fibrosis patient would possibly attack the new lungs. It became pretty clear that he had it and he was not going to be a candidate for a new transplant.
He didn’t tell me that part. We chatted back and forth and I asked if I should come visit. He didn’t answer… I asked my social worker friend to check on him. She printed a letter I wrote to him and taped it by his head for “when he woke up...”
Hey Matt! 10/8/20
I am so
sorry that you’re having a rough time over there. It stinks not being in
transplant on these days in particular, so I can be in proximity and not in
this peacock-infested town…but thankfully, I have some great friends I made
over there to throw some love at you and bring you my letter. If I recall, MICU
is pretty boring. You’re not missing much out here except debates and other
horrible politics. This is the most wonderful time of the year, apparently, but
Halloween seems covidsciously cancelled, so I say you pull through this and we
plan for next year as a total do-over with you totally healthy, rockin’ new
lungs, good people in power and positivity everywhere. Sounds super
fairy-winged and froofroo, yeah… Well…
I’m looking
forward to “The Matt Show.” You are certainly are gathering some great material
for the episodes. I keep envisioning your auto-biography in comic-book style. I
don’t think anyone has done that before.
Honestly,
I’m quite verbose… usually. You know this. My friend said to write you a note
and she would drop it by… She refused to give you the wet-willy I initially
requested. “Infection-control” and “not appropriate” and all that jazz… How
could I have known I’d be so tongue-tied at the prospect of writing words on a
page?
I’ll say this… you’re a rock star. You’ve done this before. You’ll do it again. Even when you’re bored and it seems hopeless, it’s not. There’s a terrible shortage of cool people in this world, so it’s up to you to save us all. No pressure. You were a born-superhero. You always idolized the comic-varieties, but, you… you are the superest of superheroes.
So…Stick it out.
Not that, ew.
Stick it out and keep fighting. I’ll be better at staying in touch if you will. Answer the texts, and let me know when you switch floors, next time, because you’re making me nervous. Quit it. I’m old. Old people don’t react to stress well. I’ve eaten your weight in stress-chocolate and it’s only 9am.
Love & Light on Ya, Matty-Face,
She found out why he became so quiet. He was intubated. He
knew that was it for him once they did that. A few nurses remarked that he
begged the doctor not to.
He ‘fell off the census’ the next morning. I frantically begged my friend to find him. She stopped what she was doing to go to the unit where he was. His bed was made. The new staff had to ‘look him up’ to even determine where he went. He wasn’t even there long enough for them to know that he was the funniest guy with the greenest eyes and he loved comic books and Ghost Busters and the first day we met, we became kind of attached in a weird way.
I looked him up on Facebook the day we met and he made mention of meeting a ‘social worker.’ We had a strong connection. I followed him through pre-transplant workup until I left. He sent me a personal email to express his sadness that I wouldn’t be there anymore. We had a thing. Not that. Deeper… Connected. He sent this the night before my birthday...
He came to a show and asked me to hang out with him a million times. I knew I’d break his poor little heart, so I managed to drum up some professional boundaries. We chatted every time he would get sick. I visited him after he got his transplant. We were Facebook friends, so I periodically stalked him and I’d get a 'like' on a duo-band photo or a 'love' on a hot picture I’d post now and then.
When she confirmed that he had died, something inside of me rose up through my bowels and I cried like I haven’t cried in a long time. I couldn’t get the words out to tell my colleagues that I had to go and why. I was broken. So broken. I frantically reached out to his friends on messenger. They already knew. They were planning to cremate him and put his ashes in the Ghost Trap for when they performed in their Ecto-Force cos play thingy. His face kept playing through my mind and I felt desperate. I had a post-it note on my desk for weeks with his room number and a plan to go see him. I didn’t go. I was sickened with guilt and grief. I left and ran to a friend’s house to pace and drink and figure out how to breathe. I cried more. I think my grief overwhelmed her own grief.
Big house. Lot of grief.
We got called to a gig. A fill-in at a place we had been historically rejected at for not being a disco band with tracks... oh, and I may have been barefoot once. It was a 5-hour gig for half pay, but possibly a chance at being a steady thing. I sucked up my grief and attempted to be great.
When we done, we got back in the car and my entire body’s water content came pouring out of my face. I had been holding my breath for 6 hours at this point and it just unleashed. I won’t be cliché and say a dam broke, but damn… it broke. We counted our tips and realized we had done really well. Like, really well and had made up for the shit solo pay that night. I took the hundred because I like the bigger bills to tuck away for emergencies. I’m less inclined to spend bigger bills. I took it as a sign that we had done better than I thought and maybe someone was looking out for us. The next morning, we got up for another gig. I was emotionally hungover. My face was puffy and I was headed for another day of repressed mourning. The night before, I did my usual Ebay search for crap I’d never buy and certainly didn’t need. I typed in “gun” because that’s what a non-gun owner does like how a non-beer drinker orders "just a beer" from a bar. I saw things like “9mm” and remembered that term from movies…
Turns out, you can’t buy a gun on Ebay. I realized in that moment: that I had a plan. It was the second line in questioning in a therapists’ suicide assessment. I was officially baker-actable. I don’t believe in in-patient psych units because I’ve seen their inefficacy and I’m IN THE BIZ, and I was, for sure, going to get sent to one now. And I know them all. And they know me… and here it is… Death by gun or by absolute embarrassment.
I didn't buy a gun. I went to the gig.
In the car, I organized my gig bag to get my mind off of how unbelievably sad I felt. I counted up my tips from the night before and looked a little closer at my hundred dollar bill… I guess in the puffiness of hysterics, I didn’t realize… It wasn’t real.
I kind of sluffed it off. “Of course.” I realized in that moment… we weren’t going to be the steady act at that place. I wasn’t great. I wasn’t about to start counting all the bad stuff and think it was just the “third” in the series of unfortunate events… Ya know, "all bad things come in threes?" This was my life now. I sent a picture of the fake bill to the agent who I had boasted to about doing so well to the night before… She was hurt for me and posted it on Facebook. The community weighed in on how shitty it was to throw something like that into a musician’s tip bucket during these destitute times. That false sense of hope and excitement, and that maybe bills would be paid and maybe we could get something to eat at a gig or save for the holiday needs of three miserable kids… and in that moment, it was someone’s cruel joke. I kind of went numb. We played the show and no one knew the sadness, the desperate pleas for something, anything to tell me why I shouldn’t give up. The agent texted me asking for my PayPal account. I hadn’t thought much of it because I was on stage, and when she texts (and she has her own unique ring tone), you answer. She said a friend of hers wanted to send a gift to make up for the embarrassment we endured.
By the end of the set, my phone alerted me that her “friend” was a social worker who “tipped” us...
... $500.
This was my ‘interesting
run-in with a social worker…’ I immediately sent this angel a message through
Facebook. She knew about transplant. She was educated and into energy and
witchery, like me. She told me about books I should read and helped to educate
our mutual friend/agent about the real pains healthcare workers experience with loss
of patients and how pharmaceuticals and psych wards are not going to treat what
I’m experiencing. She gave me (us) more that day than $500. It was hope. It was
“the sign” I needed.
I reached out to Matt’s friends again to ask for a service
or something… I asked if I could help. I wanted a piece of him, a comic, a
piece of paper he wrote on, something... I needed closure. I found his roommate
“Nick” who told me the play by play of his illness, what I knew, what I didn’t
know, the DNR talk from the doctors, the organ failure and then what he was told about the final moments before
he passed… the go fund me…
Oh…
And he told me that Matt had a lot of things at the hospital. He told me they lived an hour and a half a way and he tried to get everything home and the hospital couldn’t find it. Wasted trip. I called around and after an hour, I was able to locate where his things were and confirm that I could get it for "the proxy" and meet Nick half way to hand it over (his car is still stuck in the garage). I put on my lab coat and huffed it through the walls of where I left my heart a million times. I found my way to the unit where he took his final breaths. I wanted to look for his bed, but I didn’t want to tip off how personal this was to me. I found the nicest receptionist ever who walked me to a large storage room of IV poles where his three large, heavy bags were. I checked them out and carried them back to the car. They were heavy. I was sweating. I felt like I was carrying him. I held back the emotions as I flexed my arm muscles to put it all into my car. I looked through one bag and saw some of his writing. My heart was beating really fast. I drove home and felt like he was sitting next to me.
I folded his Teenage Ninja Turtle pajamas and sifted through his note books with his drawings and ideas about the Matt Show and the Ecto-force. I read his daily sugar log under the tab he called “Diabeetus.” I asked if I could have his glasses. Nick said “of course.”
I told Nick funny stories about Matt and how all the women adored him and texted him the screen shot of the email he wrote me after I left transplant.
Nick
was impressed by the letter and maybe it helped confirm that I wasn’t some
weirdo trying to swipe his stuff. I just wanted to do some sort of final act to
help him, somehow.
“We had a really special connection.”
Matt’s
stuff has been living in my office until today. It hit me yesterday when I saw
it there: I’ve enjoyed having a piece of him there with me…
Today,
I meet Nick “half-way” to hand over Matt’s stuff. It was nice to drive with it
in the car this morning. I felt sad, heavy. I saw this incredible sky and I felt
like it was him saying ‘Hey…quit it’
When I got to work, I was still chatting with a friend on
the phone as I approached the point where we would have to say goodbye. I saw
it: The red cardinal.
Of course it was raining and my lens was foggy and the picture was so bad… but I said to her “It’s him! Isn’t that what happens!? When you lose someone and they come to see you? A red cardinal?!” and she said “Yes! And sometimes they’re bright blue!” And then, in that EXACT moment, she said “OMG, Sami… I just saw a blue one. OMG… OMG, there are TWO!!!”
Matt…
You were the cutiest patooty. I guess we knew from the moment that we met, that we would have some sort of impact on one another. I was afraid that I’d break your heart, but, MAN did you break mine. I found a little ghostbusters doodle you drew and I’ll tattoo it on the memorial arm so I can keep you with me. I’m so proud of you. You were the biggest rock star. I'm so glad you never "grew up..." although I really wish I could have seen you grow old.
Make sure you haunt the heck out of that Ecto-containment Muon Trap.
And...It’s cool if you wanna keep visiting me and
reminding me why I need to stay here and finish what I started…. I guess we’ll
always have that special connection.
~Sam
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