To my mother - may she rest in peace

My mother died on Tuesday November 2, 2010 at the age of 54. She had a somewhat mysterious cancer they believe started in her small intestine or appendix. No treatment they tried made any difference and it spread throughout her entire abdomen, unstoppable.

Mom made the decision to die just over two weeks before her death. She stopped eating and drinking, and for awhile, until her month got just too dry, even stopped the ice chips. She refused IV feeding receiving only the fluids deemed necessary to keep her PICC line open. Eventually as a family we made a decision to stop those too. For the last 4 days of mom's life she was not with us, even a little bit. She could not speak and did not show any recognition of anything but pain.

Tuesday, I came to the hospital on the 15th day of the 10 days they gave her to live. Within 30 minutes of my arrival she stopped breathing and finished her transition from the living to the dead, a 70 pound shell of the woman she once was. Dad and I were with her and my sister came later that hour (let me tell you it's awkward sitting in a room with a dead body...) We had dinner, then I went to yoga with a friend, and the grocery store. As soon as I got home from the grocery store I started sneezing, the cold which had been holding off til I was free from the hospital hit with a vengeance. I slept for at least 11 hours. Solid sleep with no ear open for the phone to ring.

Wednesday was a day of funeral home arrangements, church arrangements, nose blowing, and decongestant popping. Fortunately, my slightly obsessive mother had planned her entire funeral (and prepaid), written her obituary and done countless other things which made this process easier. My sister looked horrible, but dad and I got things done which basically consisted of signing some forms, agreeing to pay the INSANELY high cost of getting her obituary printed, and picking the flowers. Then a friend and I ran random errands and I moaned about my sinus. Then slept for 12 hours (Oh how I love sleep).

Thursday was a day of "rest" meaning I got up at noon and went to starbucks and then didn't do anything til yoga at 4. Then I hung out at home til I hung out with my best friend in the evening. It was wonderful.

Friday was, well, a day. A long, long, long day. Friday mom's ashes were interred in the morning. I, as the oldest daughter, got the honour(?) of placing her ashes in the hole in the memorial wall thing. Though we have a VERY small family, both my mom's brother and my dad's brother came, as well as my mom's cousin and my great aunt and uncle (I have no aunts and no cousins). The afternoon was the memorial service which was...packed. I am fairly sure I'll get six colds and two flus all at the same time from the number of hands I shook. Thankfully my friends eventually rescued me from the line I was suck in and we hid out in the church sanctuary. I was getting emotional simply because of all the raw emotion in the room. It's hard to explain. It was very difficult for me to meet all these people who were connected to my mom in some way and who knew, in many cases, a very different side of her.

Friday night, to distract myself from everything and get back into my routine, I went to volunteering and fed dinner to 200. (Or well, greeted 200 people at the door). I hadn't been in a month, and it often feels like coming home. I love it. Oh, and Saturday was inconsequential.

Which brings me to today. This is the first Sunday in probably a year where I haven't had to go to my parents house or a hospital. I love it. I absolutely love it. However, I didn't love the totally aimless feeling it left me with. Thankfully some libraries here are open Sundays and I went for a nice walk to get books. I also have wonderful friends and was able to get out for dinner with them.

I'm not quite sure what it is about being alone which scares me so much, and I really don't even think I'm scared of being alone, I'm quite happy/content right now, it's more the idea of not having anything to do/no where to be. I have another week off work (I was off the last two weeks as well), and there's a big push and pull going on in my brain about filling it or not filling it with social activities. Part of me craves time alone and part of me is so scared of having nothing to do and not getting out of the house. I now have something every day but Saturday, and it's only Sunday night... And of course I'll probably do yoga every day too. And maybe, just maybe, I'll take some time to write some of this out.

realities of life

I haven't posted about death in quite a while. Since switching jobs, I haven't had nearly as many encounters with death, although I will say that every time I work at the shelter, one of the first things I find out is if anyone has died. So, it surprised me yesterday, when my father told me about a client from two jobs ago who died this week, a attender of the church I attended in my first couple years of university, and more recently, someone I locked up in the drunk tank at the shelter.

Anora was a broken woman, rarely have a met someone with SO much anger and pain inside, and yet, she tried to fight, as best she could. A woman, who grew up surrounded by drugs, abuse, alcohol, gangs, neglect and suffering, full of instability, it all came with her to her adult life. Trauma doesn't disappear when you turn eighteen.

Anora was found dead in a pool of her own vomit. She didn't make it through that nights drinking and drugs. We'll never know if she intended to die that night or just went a little overboard and her tired body couldn't handle anymore.

Very honestly, and this really surprised me, I hope she wanted to die. Not because I think her life was so horrible there was no help for her, but because I hope that she was ready to go. I hope this wasn't an accident and there was still some fight left in her, I hope she didn't intend to wake up the next morning full of possibilities, I hope this was on her terms, and her time. Or perhaps, she simply gave up caring, which is the most likely scenario given what I know of her.

And so today, I mourn the lose of Anora, and I pray that people will continue to make an effort for others like her, so that not every tragic story has to end in more tragedy.

laughable

When I interviewed for my job at the work placement team (yay for new job) I really did NOT think I had done well.  I knew I had gotten some of the questions bang on, some of them half on, and only completely made up one answer (oh how I wished I'd actually done some research).  There was one question though, a very serious questions that I grinned and started laughing at...I thought it was definitely worth sharing, although I do realize that it is kind of morbid, and it shows me just how calloused my job has made me.  

So, the interviewer asked me to desribe a time when I'd intervened with someone who was suicidal.  Now, she wanted a professional answer of course, so I could use anything to do with my sister and her multiple issues (which reminds me of another post I want to make) but in my head I was thinking that I've dealt with enough suicidal people to think of something!  And that's when I started laughing, see this is what came to mind.  

A while back, I wrote about a man who tried to strangle himself in the drunk tank.  In this case, he was extremely drunk and high on an unknown substance(s).  Talking, as it often does in cases of intoxication, did me no good and right infront of me he took he shirt, wrapped it around his neck and began to pull tighter, and tighter and tighter.  I ran for a coworker and by the time we got back he was unconcious.  We opened the door and untied the knot.  When he realized he wasn't dead, he went nuts and it took six police officers to carry him out and take him to the hospital to get checked.  

But that's just one story, if it was just that, maybe I wouldn't have laughed.  When the police who apprehended him came back the officer looked at me and said "weren't you here last week when we took someone out who tried to kill themselves" and I had to ask "which one/which time".  Because it happens SO often.  I mean, people are really creative.  I've dealt with more then one hanging, more the one strangulation, attempted wrist/throat slashing, and of course, the good old bang head into wall until you pass out.  One of those ones fought the cops for a good long time begging them to just let him kill himself.  This was all I could think about.  All the lives I've potential saved with "suicide intervention", and I laughed, because I knew this was not at all what they were asking for, but it was all I could think of.  

Finally, I smiled, and said something like "I spend a lot of time with intoxicated people and their situations can be kind of exreme, let me tell you about a time I dealt with someone sober..." I based my answer on a client experience, but in truth, I just walked through the steps of a suicide intervention and ended with a likely outcome.  One of the reason I want this job, is so that I can have those experiences.  Right now, if someone's suicidal, once their sober, we pawn them off on the crisis team, we don't have the time to deal with them, I'm too busy watching out for the one in the cell beside them ripping his mat into ropes or watchign 71 other people in the shelter making sure they don't kill each other after a percieved sock theft.  

Suicide is not a laughing matter... just one of the reasons I got a new job.  

just an all around sad story

This is a story about death.  This is a story about everyday life.  This is a story about the poor and the middle class.  This is a story about people struggling to get by.  This is the story of inequality, unfairness and injustice.  This is truth.  

Everyday in our society people work towards earning money to acquire things.  The nature of the earning and things varies, but in Canada at least, it's neccessary.  Even those who have no official earnings, the kind declared to the government, are generally working to gain income, small though it might be.  While many people think of the homeless as being beggars, theives and panhandlers, there is an entire underground trade system, a black market, which trades not just in weapons and drugs (as many people believe) but in the items of everyday life.  

The poorest area of my city is void of the big box stores one finds in the suburbs.  Most of the stores are tiny corners stores, almost all which are run by imigrant families.  In order for these stores to exist they have to charge more for their items and put in long hard hours just to eek out a living.  Unfortunately, some of these stores turn to less honest ways of gaining money preying on those even less fortunate then them.  

One store in particular, was famous for this, they were known on the street as being willing to buy just about anything from a person in exchange for money, mouthwash or hairspray (to drink).  When we gave out brand new winter jackets this Christmas we found out quickly the owner was buying them from the homeless and reselling them for a higher price... once we started cutting the tags off this petered out, but it continues to happen with a variety of other things.  Because it's not a pawn shop, the police don't run the same checks for stolen property and it's less regulated... and besides, it all happens under the table anyway.  

For whatever reason, the owner of this particular store couldn't handle life anymore, and so, he hung himself, in the back of his store, in the middle of the work day.  My clients were there when his wife found him, my clients cut him down, my clients comforted his wife, my clients called for help, and my clients were there when there was nothing left that could be done.  And it hit them hard.  Staff from one of the other organizations in the area came and did CPR while they waited for the ambulance.  They got a whole debrief session.  The clients who cut the rope, got nothing.  

One of my clients hasn't been the same since then.  Sober for almost three months he's started drinking again, and is now using injectable drugs.  He's in horrible shape.  He talks about the wife of the owner, how she just cried, and cried, and cried.  He was planning to draw her a picture, I don't know if he ever did though... why are there no services for him?  Why is it that staff are more important then clients.  And for the clients, this wasn't just some stranger, this man was a part of their community, someone they knew and interacted with on a daily basis.  Do people assume that these clients have seen so much that it just doesn't effect them anymore?  Because that's just not true... Why is it that we forget about the clients in the midst of a crisis?  

I've had a few conversations with the clients about this.  But my time and resources are so limited.  It's hard to have a deep conversation about death in the middle of a shelter full of people while the phones ring, the intoxicated scream and people are constantly interupting.  I've mentioned it to my boss... but still... just a sad story all around.  

Frozen to Death

This is my last post about death for a while.  I promise.  Well, my last post about death until someone else dies I guess...  Death is pretty common in my line of work. 

I don't even know how to write about this one.  It wasn't a client I knew particularly well, but something about her death just struck me.  She was found a block away from a shelter, frozen.  She had no shoes, no jacket, no purse.  

Frozen. 

None of us knows what happened exactly.  She could have been turning a trick and jumped or been thrown from a vehicle.  She could have been drinking, passed out and robbed.  Perhaps she was jumped for her jacket and was beaten.  There's something about the idea of her being left out in the cold that gets me though, a block away from shelter, a block away from help.  

The media never got wind of her death, or if they did, they didn't care.  There's no sensation about a homeless woman dying.  No media blitz, no excitement and reformed policies.  Maybe it's better that way though.  I'm glad there's no spectacle, but still... 

Frozen.  

and now she's gone

I write about death in my blog a lot.  In my line of work, death is a common thing.  I've written about people dying and I've written about people killing, this is the first time I write about someone murdered.  Somehow it's different this way, it's different knowing her life was taken from her with a knife, I'm not sure how, but it is.  

She was just your average woman.  Sure, she drank a bit too much, and perhaps partied a bit too hard, but there was nothing about her that made her any different then you or I, and yet now, she's gone.  

She was only in her 30s.  Sure she didn't have a job, and perhaps she wasn't what you'd call and "upstanding citizen", but really, she didn't rock the boat too hard.  

She was just trying to live her life.  In a crappy rooming house.  In a crappy area of town.  She was trying build relationship, and find love when that loving man stabbed her in the back... literally.  Another statistic, another murder, another investigation, another life, ended.  

And then, she was gone.  

in memory of stupidity

Another one of my clients died. This is by far not an unusual thing, but the circumstances were just so stupid. In many ways, this is a follow up to my last post, about taking responsibility for ones actions, because sometimes, when you don't take responsibility, and you do stupid things, you.wind.up.DEAD. I'm feeling rather snarky and sarcastic about the entire thing to be honest. I feel kind of guilty about it to, but the truth is, I'm MAD.

Some friends went to visit some friends. Naturally, visiting friends meant substance use, in this case, sniffing (huffing) solvents. Now one thing about solvents, they're flammable. Now you and I know this, and if we didn't, we would likely notice all the warnings on the bottle. Of course, when you buy it in little pop bottles from an old man who sells it out of a shopping cart, there are no warning labels. In any case, there they sat, sniffing away, until one of them decided it would be a good idea to light a cigarette, and boom, there went their lives. In the end, only two people died, the others escaped relatively unharmed before the trailer they were in burned to the ground. stupid. stupid, stupid, stupid. People do stupid things when they're intoxicated.

This was a good man, a kind man, a generous man. Someone who always had a smile for me and was polite, even when intoxicated. This was a man who always seemed pretty content, like he'd made his peace (and for that I'm thankful). This was a man who did not need to die.

the body in the shelter

At about five to six we turn on the lights and wake everyone in the shelter up. It's early, but we open again at seven after a cleaning. If people don't wake up, we have to go around and wake them up. Saturday morning, someone didn't wake up.

A colleague of mine, my capitalist catholic friend (who shall from now on in my blog be referred to as "ccf"), called down to me in the drunk tank "there's a dead body up here". Needless to say, I didn't believe him. Ccf has a tendency to tease me, calling me the little sister he never had. Eventually though, he got me upstairs.

The body in the shelter was very dead. The man had likely died hours earlier. The body was in rigor mortise, and his skin was cold. I checked his breathing one more time, as my supervisor was on the phone with the police/ambulance. The ambulance came, but thankfully, they did not try to resuscitate him. Then the police. Then they had to wake up a medical examiner, then arrange transport. All the while our clients are stuck outside.

I've never found a body before, never been so close, never checked for life that wasn't there. I had nightmares that morning.

What shocked us all, was when we opened his client file. This was a man who had been sleeping at our shelter every night for quite some time, and we had NOTHING on him. No next of kin, no medical conditions, no identifying things at all. And as we talked, amongst ourselves, and with members of other shifts, we came to realize that no one knew him. We had all had contact with him, but none of us really knew him at all. The clients didn't seem to know him either.

Talking to the police, and my coworkers, we are all glad he had the death he did, surrounded by people in the place he spent his nights. He died before the cold of winter, he died peacefully in his sleep, he died without painful intervention, without prolonged illness.

He was only 57. Being homeless ages you like nothing else.

he'll die alone

I'm not sure why I'm writing about death again, except perhaps that it's because I'm surrounded by it. Living on the streets is not easy on the body, nor is the sometimes constant substance use.

Many of the clients I work with, although not all of them, have very little family they are still in contact with (in contrast, some of them have family with them constantly, sleeping on the mat beside them). When this happens, many of them list the shelter as both their home address and their next of kin. The problem is, though we mean a lot to a person, we're not the greatest next of kin, and we for the most part, don't go sit at death beds.

One of my clients is in the hospital on life support. I noticed he was going down hill and referred him to the day staff to see if they could get him in to see a doctor. It seems however that an ambulance found him passed out somewhere and he wound up in the hospital anyway. Now the hospital is looking for his next of kin, to come be with him as he dies, and no one can be found. All we have is a possible apartment building where is brother, whose name we don't know, might live, maybe.

I assume, that most of us, despite our insecurities believe that people would care if we died. There would be someone there, at our bedsides, and we'd leave behind many people to grieve. This man leaves behind no one. Whether there is a funeral will depend on whether there is money, and whether anyone cares enough to organize one. He wasn't one of our more "popular" homeless (and yes, there is definitely such a thing). In the end, life comes down to so little. One moment he'll be alive, the next dead, and that's that. Will he leave a legacy? Who can know, who can know.

trainee, trainee

This, is a testosterone model. Why is it in my blog you ask? Well, because I've decided I love it. Sounds strange? Let me explain. I worked evenings tonight, and I was the only girl on shift; there was a woman doing Main Stay, but that's in the other building so we never saw her. Six guys, and me. I thought it might be awkward, but it was wonderful! There was almost NO gossiping! Everything was so much more laid back and there was none of that catty infighting that happens on day shift.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of talk about an incident that happened last night in IPDA. When the staff was doing checks, they found a non responsive individual. They had to do CPR while waiting for the ambulance, and the man is in critical condition; it's almost for sure that he is going to die. The man is a regular, and so the staff were hit pretty hard. It's going to be hard working here I think. There seems to be a lot of these critical incidents.

Tonight was my first evening doing shelter. As usual, it's full of it's usual paper work, not as much as IPDA though, thank goodness. I have to speak to each person individually on the intercom (once I know all their names it will be easier). Then I put them in the computer to make sure they're not barred and there are no concerns. They may need searching, in which case if they're male, I have to get a male staff to do that. We're just looking for inhalants or non potable alcohol (hair spray, mouthwash etc...). Then they have to sign a form for Employment and Income Assistance (EIA) which is I guess where we get part of our funding from.

Because we're a small shelter, we almost have to encourage people not to use our services. We completely max out at 60 people, which is really not a lot of "beds" (mats) in the grand scheme of things. We look at the record of the last time a person was in our shelter and if they haven't been in a while we need to ask where they've been staying. If they have anywhere else to say we really need to encourage them to stay there. I drew the line tonight though when a man, who was intoxicated, said his girlfriend kicked him out. My trainer was encouraging him to go back there and I wouldn't agree with that. Without knowing the story, my gut instinct is to protect his girlfriend. If I had kicked my boyfriend out, I sure wouldn't want him coming back and saying "the shelter told me you had to let me in". I shared that with the testosterone team and they let him in.

I got to do first aid tonight, which for whatever reason, I love doing. The guy had this really gross elbow scrape/cut thing going on. It looked like it might be getting infected, so I covered it with polysporin and then bandaged the whole thing up. This guy must have been totally intoxicated though because while I was waiting for one of the other staff to cut some tape for me he set his arm down on top of my hand, I could feel his bone digging into my finger tips and thought for sure it must hurt. I asked him though, and he just looked a me, same with when I put the polysporin on. I got compliments on my bandaging from one of the staff, yay.

It's interesting, because another one of the staff asked me tonight if I'd ever thought about going into nursing. Interesting, because I have, a lot. But, at this point in my life, it just doesn't make sense to start school all over again. It doesn't. And if I keep doing a job like this I'll wind up doing a lot of first aid stuff anyway and hopefully that will satisfy that medical itch. We'll see. If I could do it all over again I'd go into psych nursing in a second. But, I really do like what I do, and I don't intend to quit anytime soon!