all in a day's work

My job, and two peoples' vacations required that I go back to a part-time gig that I gave up years ago from sheer frustration with the whole end-of-life caregiving experience. There is nothing like oncology or radiology to say "profit driven" when speaking in terms of healthcare choices. Some cases, with a reasonable amount of luck and some divine intervention, will respond. Many times when the elderly are patients, they don't even know what's really going on. They just know "the doctor said."

I have read Dr. Ira Byock's book, in which he details his father's diagnosis with pancreatic cancer and his struggles as a good son and physician to keep it all straight. Or attempt to, anyway. Death is inevitable. Had I been born a few years earlier my life expectancy would still be late seventies. I look at my parents and their physical limitations and wonder at the sheer will to live involved to keep some sense or normalcy in their strange little world. She is blind and walks with assistance.....he's just plum freakin' OUT there most of the time with his OCD tantrums. I look into her eyes sometimes as they stare straight ahead and remember all of the things that she has seen. And I understand, every now and then, why it has to be that way.

Faith has taken up with mama which is a good thing in all our books. BG gets her to talking and mama just giggles like a kid while Faith is workin' up to a treat. What's really ironic is that she hid the tatoo (that said FAITH) from mama forever, covering it with a bandage for job interviews and letting it show in the bars while throwing darts or bending over a pool table. Hmm..like mother like daughter like daughter. Just kidding, Mom.

I spoke with an old acquaintance today about a conversation between a mutual friend about what he has accomplished as a seasoned veteran of law enforcement. He beamed as I repeated the words from this down and out street kid who sat on my porch the other day and told me all about HIS god and what's right in the world. It ain't about the money. Or the power. Or a bad hair day. It's about living life one day at a time, as if it's your last.

^j^