!D for disability
---
agk's phlog
9 August 2021 @ 0301
---
written on Pinebook Pro in the garage
sore after a long motorcycle ride
---
> In case studies, I manufacture a composite patient
> and invent a name. They cannot be identified.
I used to work on a stroke unit. Right or left side
matters on stroke. It's easy to dislocate someone's arm
on the affected side during transfer if the muscles are
slack. Most patients are aspiration risks. Listen for
diminished lung sounds and a-fib. Look for ankle edema.
Five years before I met her, Artemis did a huge bong
rip while listening to Five Finger Death Punch. She
stood to let down the blinds. Her hand wouldn't work.
Her same-side leg gave out. She lay on the trailer
carpet and yelled help for an hour. An ambulance came.
That was her stroke.
Since the stroke, her mood slid all over the place:
deliriously joyous and loving, heartrendingly beautiful,
pitiful with despair.
Years before, she left her backwoods county to be a
Vegas phone ho and stripper. She grinded on Snoop Dogg,
partied with light-skinned black men and rocked out to
metal music. Now in her fifties, she thinks she might
be turning gay.
Discharge neared. We couldn't get an ambulance to take
her to the long-term care facility. All we could fix
was a three-hour cab ride---for a hemiplegic who can't
sit up, a diabetic who might have a crisis on the road,
a woman who can't control her bladder or bowels, who
wants to love and be loved, who feels pathetic and
useless.
"Quit," I commanded when she cried and pitied everyone
who wipes her ass and moves her body. "Tell me the
nicest thing you done for somebody."
She thought and said: "Everybody treated my friend
Joan awful because of how fat she was. A man wouldn't
let her ride a ride at the fair. I came at him like a
pitt-bull til he let her on."
"That set me thinking. I talked to a sweet boy I knew.
He worked at McDonalds and was mildly retarded. That
isn't the right word. I told him to ask her on a date.
He did. They fell in love. He saved up and bought her a
diamond ring. They married eighteen years ago."
"Still married," she said when I asked. "Completely in
love."
"Since the stroke you can't move half your body," I
said. "You can't control your bowels. You used to be
so dang stubborn and independent because of what those
guys did to you when you were a little girl. Why
depend on people when they do stuff like that?"
"The stroke forced you to depend on people, trust
them to take care of you and not hurt you. You got
bedsores when caregivers neglected you. Everybody
needs people. It gets harder to pretend you don't
once you're disabled."
"You're going to long-term care. You'll lose the
apartment and your dog. You'll have your good heart.
People either can't stand you or completely love
you. When you get to long-term care, don't dare lay
in bed and feel sorry for yourself. People need you
there. Love them with that amazing heart you got.
When they die, grieve quick and love again."
"Can I hug you?" she asked.
I leaned down and hugged her, washed my hands, and
walked down the hall to Phoebe's room. I made Phoebe
chuckle, wiped feces out of her vagina, spread her
labia, swabbed it with antiseptic, inserted the
catheter, and drained her urine. Her scalp drooped
where the piece of her skull had been removed. Her body
was covered with stick-and-poke tattoos. "Feel better?"
I asked. Phoebe grinned.
