It’s sunny and nice out and this time I’m writing from my desk, which is better after the waiting room. Today there was no waiting room; I was in for the appointment, which went how it went.
Before that, though, putting away a casserole dish, I found my lidded ceramic 9X9 baking dish with a broken handle, two clay nubs protruding where it should have attached. The not great week continues.
I am not built for the ancillary of all of this, for the full assaults on all the senses. I’ve tried to write this as vaguely as I can in case you are not as well, but I cannot promise I have succeeded, as a warning for anyone who may become uncomfortable.
With his wound(s), my dad has a lot of drainage, often soaking his socks and after they changed the dressing today, the nurse offered them to me, two black, limp, sopping things.
I told her it was OK, that we don’t even have a washer right now, the washing machine stopped working but she was undeterred.
“We don’t waste clothes here,” she told me, and now, afterward, I thought well maybe YOU don’t but I would be fine with it in this circumstance. She wrapped them in a glove and went to hand them to me, and I said “I don’t have a way to carry them,” so she insisted on a paper bag. “I can’t wash them,” but she was already in the supply room.
I don’t want to imply she’s not a great nurse, that she’s not personable, that she’s not excellent at what she does, or that I don’t appreciate her. All of that is true.
But.
I left, then, paper bag in hand, my own reactions, feelings, aversions made utterly irrelevant.
It is in all aspects right now, I have to do it because I’m the only one to do it, even when it was the puddle of blood that sent us to the ER for his second admission a couple of weeks ago.
That is not a story I’ve told nor one I think I’m likely to tell, but it is something that happened that has sandpapered away at me.
Even now this sounds so self-centered, obviously the person who is in pain, the person dealing with all of this is my dad, but what strikes me is how immediately I have become not a person with concerns and fears and, well, issues, but a means of getting things done.
Not by my dad, he’s great, and he thanks me all the time, but by the system itself. It’s yet another aspect of society that runs on and assumes free invisible labor from women, without question, without complaint.
Down to a single pair of soiled socks.
Anyway, that’s it for me on this Wednesday. I hope you are having a great day and if it’s not great then at least may all your ceramic dishes remain intact.
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