Follow the Senior Hummingbird

For someone who never truly enjoyed driving and spent many years living as a nomad without a car, I still had strong relationships with each of my cars. Upon the recent death of my last car, I remember other cars I loved.

It took me a long time to even be able to drive a used Ford Ranger pick-up truck that my husband and I bought for a camping trip to Alaska in 1969. It was a stick shift and I had previously only driven an automatic. It had a low camper shell over the bed of the truck, which my husband cleverly converted into a cozy place to sleep and efficiently store our stuff. Even though you couldn’t stand up in it, it made a great home for our 7 weeks from California up to and along the Alcan (Alaska/Canada) Highway, using the guidebook, “The Milepost.” We had intended to sell the truck after we got home, but couldn’t part with it.

My husband, son, and I spent many happy years camping in that truck.  One of my favorite pictures is of us on our way up to Friday Harbor, Washington, where my husband did research at the Labs there in the summer.  Our strong black truck with the white camper shell and the bright red canoe tied upside down on the top stands  waiting expectantly for the upcoming camping adventures.

It was the truck that I chose to keep when my husband and I divorced. It seemed a more practical choice for my move to New Orleans, and it turned out to be even more useful than I expected. I went back to school to get a Master’s of Social Work degree while I was in Louisiana. I lived and did my field practice in New Orleans, but had to be at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (a few hours away) for classes two consecutive days a week. Hmmm! Where could I stay cheaply overnight?
I solved the problem with my trusty truck. Already outfitted for sleeping and storage, I discovered a motel on the campus that was open all night, allowing access to the restrooms. For some reason, a large number of police cars were usually parked in that motel parking lot, which gave me at least the illusion of safety. I swam in the gym pool after classes, which also gave me a chance for a good shower. And I studied in the campus library until it closed. Then, I curled up comfortably in my sleeping bag in the truck. I ended every stay on campus with a magnificent bowl of gumbo or jambalaya in the university cafeteria. It worked out very well for the two years I had to do it. And I was very grateful for the home the truck provided.
When I was leaving the U.S. and had to sell my friend, the truck, I cried as it went down the road without me.
Magic Carpet Leaf was my dear car when I was an immigrant in Israel. Its end was very dramatic. But that’s a story I’ll leave for my next post.

While I am putting my health back together, other things in my life are falling apart at a rapid rate. There is my car – a 1993 Oldsmobile I inherited from my dad in 1999. So, we’ve been together a long time.
I truly felt this car was my friend as well as a machine. That may sound odd, but I distinctly remember a book I read about living on Antarctica that fascinated me with its description of the very special relationship that certain workers there had with the machines that existed to keep them alive. That made sense to me. Although I don’t have the skill of a mechanic or understand how machines work, I loved my car and felt it protected me. Whenever it had a problem with the tires, brake, etc., it never endangered me. Most recently, I was driving the car twice only 15 minutes from when I fainted away from dehydration. If I had been driving at that time…well, the consequences would have had to be even more of a calamity. Safely parked in my carport while I was in the hospital, fluids leaked out from various places. Even though I was eventually assured my fainting was from dehydration and not something that would happen again, I was adjusting to the idea of not driving for awhile.
In fact, I have become more and more a skittish driver as I’ve aged. I stopped driving the freeways, and didn’t like going places I didn’t know well. I also knew my night vision was deteriorating.
It will be a definite harsh adjustment to life without driving permanently. But, in our retirement community, we have an internal bus system that augments the public bus system. And through a subsidized program for seniors, I can ride the taxi for half fare. It will have to do until I can decide whether or not to get a golf cart, or possibly a motorized three wheel tricycle.
The very day my car was towed to the garage to assess its problem, my trusty computer fell ill too. It was the first computer I bought in 2005 in order to write my book. I’m not sure yet whether or not it’s terminally ill, but I’ll have to make a decision about it. Either way, fixing it or getting a new one, will cost a lot of money at a time I’m being hit with other extra expenses, including my hospitalizations.
And today, my phone took several voice mail messages without ringing. Hmmm! Is my phone dying too?
It’s a strange time! I wonder what tomorrow will bring. Fortunately, even though I felt I was dying just a few short weeks ago, my natural health is re-asserting itself as other things in my life continue to fall apart and die.

Feeling like I was dying makes me look more closely at life again. I can feel myself coming alive again after my ordeal began on July 9. I’m still weak, but it’s good to feel my natural health reasserting itself after such a low point.
Although I attribute a lot of my ordeal to medical care run amok, my friend is right in saying that I have rarely been sick so that was part of my suffering. It’s always been true that I get depressed when I don’t feel well. My whole world turns gray. But I’d never been this sick before. Looking back when I truly felt I was dying in the hospital, I was quite calm. I felt my affairs were in order, I mentally sent goodbye messages to the close friends I believed I’d never talk to again, and I definitely smiled when I thought I wouldn’t outlive my meager retirement savings. I have lived a good life that includes accomplishments, adventures, and self-fulfillment.
My anger at the medical care I received was one sign that I was beginning to feel better. I have always championed fairness and reasonableness, so the incompetence of my doctors appalled me. However, I have long distrusted modern medical care and have intentionally stayed only on the fringes of it. My recent experience only strengthened that distrust.
Although I can’t yet describe it, I feel I have changed with the past weeks. I was definitely heartened and grateful for the warm cocoon that my friends and neighbors wove around me during the last weeks.
As my health and strength flows back, I look forward to what may remain in my life’s journey to follow. Will I change parts of my life? Which parts will I re-examine, re-explore, take on, or give up? I can’t tell yet, but I do know that there is more than a touch of luck that pulled me through.

Once again, I was overjoyed to be in my own home again after three more days in the hospital. Dr. W., the infectious disease doctor,  gave me a prescription to continue the antibiotic, Doxycycline, for seven more days at home. I also knew that I’d need to take probiotics to prevent my tongue from developing thrush in the wake of the antibiotic sweeping my body clean of EVERY bacteria, good and bad.
Already weak, instead of getting better, I felt worse and worse. The antibiotic drained every ounce of energy from me during its 12-hour cycles. My friends and neighbors were wonderful bright spots who brought me food, did my laundry, and tried to keep up my spirits. But I got paler and paler and felt worse and worse every day.
With three days left of the antibiotic, I called the infectious disease doctor just for reassurance that I needed to be feeling this bad. When he called back, he blithely said, “Your tests show no reason for you to be taking the antibiotic, so you can stop.” He had never said he was giving the antibiotic to me as a preventive measure because of the tick bite. I had believed there was a good reason for me to be taking it. But the fact that he had no intention of calling me to tell me I didn’t need more of the antibiotic left me speechless. Could he have so little idea of what the drugs he prescribed did to people? When I asked him why I fainted, he said he didn’t know, but perhaps I had had a virus — just what I had suspected and had tried to tell the doctors after the second time I fainted.
Once off the antibiotics, my body finally and slowly started its recovery. I’ll never quite be the same after this gruesome experience. I, who had never really trusted doctors, hospitals, and drugs, lost any lingering confidence I might have had in medical care. And the bill for these two hospitalizations that amounted to 4 days — $40,000!! All those unnecessary tests — CT Scan, MRI, EEG (a brain wave exam) added up to thousands. The food I couldn’t eat and those miserable sleepless nights in the hospital were charged at over $3,000 a day.
I don’t know what my Secure Horizons medicare plan will actually pay the hospital since they negotiate the price in the big Medicare game. I, however, must pay for two hospital admissions and two emergency room fees which amounts to $900. That’s a lot of money in my meager retirement budget, but way more than I think my care was worth.
It was more than an ordeal. This time, I survived.

It is ironic that hospital patients all need to sleep well, but it’s quite impossible to sleep well or long at night in the hospital.
My roommate’s huge family gathered around her at night. I’m not sure which language they were speaking, but they spoke a lot of it — and not very quietly. When they weren’t with her, she had two phones that kept ringing loudly and constantly. Another sound that rang often was a warning when she wasn’t breathing well. The sound was like an angry, insistent alarm clock. I called a nurse several times saying that someone needed to check on my roommate. Finally, someone came in and said that, since we were being monitored on screens, they didn’t need to have her machine so audible. One sleepless night for me.
The second night, my roommate had, if possible, even more family members noisily gathered around her. The number of visitors swelled as her condition worsened during the night. I’m sure her body had to be very confused with all the medication I had heard the nurse giving her. The warning bells and worried voices of family members escalated as she went into a crisis and a Rapid Response Team was called to assess her condition. The curtains couldn’t contain all the people gathered on her side of the room. She was taken to Intensive Care.
A kind nurse gave me a pair of blessed ear plugs, and with the other side of the room empty, I fell into my first deep sleep. I was unwillingly pulled out of my sleep by another explosion of sounds. I was dragged back to consciousness. Yet another person had been put into my room and this person was also attended by multiple loud family members and warning bells. Another sleepless night!
The nurse felt so sorry for me that she actually called the hospital social services the next day and asked them to apologize to me for two very loud, sleepless nights. To emphasize their apology for my discomfort, the lady gave me a $5 Starbucks gift card!! But I was totally exhausted.
My next hospitalist, Dr. A., dropped by a couple of times for literally a couple of seconds and said nothing to me. I pleaded with the nurse to remind Dr. A. that I had recently been in a different part of the country, had had a tick bite, and felt like I had a virus because my stomach felt strange and I wasn’t able to swallow any food. Her oft-repeated response to me was that I was far too anxious about my condition and should just calm down and let the doctors figure out what was happening to me. I definitely found her more patronizing than comforting. But she did get special permission from Dr. A. to give me Ensure with each meal since I wasn’t able to eat.
And suddenly a pretty, petite prophet with a dangling curl appeared next to my bed. She introduced herself as Dr. F., a fainting specialist who had just returned from maternity leave. She patiently listened to everything I described about my condition. And then she said, “You will not faint again. You will be fine. You will be able to go back to your activities.” I basked in the positivity in her voice. I also asked about the Cat Scan and MRI I’d had and she smiled and said assuredly they would show nothing because they had nothing to do with my fainting. She also noticed my dry mouth and said I was still dehydrated.
She then summoned an infectious disease doctor whose bland, almost wordless personality, was a stark contrast to her quiet animation. He looked at my hands and, from what I remember, acknowledged my earlier backache and headache as symptoms of my tick bite even though I never had the traditional symptoms of fever and rash of the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. He started me on two intravenous doses of the very strong antibiotic, Doxycycline.
That night, a neurology specialist sent by my primary care physician visited me and said he would like to do a lumbar puncture the following morning to rule out meningitis. When I asked the side effects of the test, he said I could possibly have a headache for a week or so. I said incredulously, “After yet another sleepless night I expect tonight, you want to come at 7:30 a.m. and do a test that I’ve heard is very painful and will give me headaches for possibly a week. I’ll have to think about it.” That night, the most efficient nurse of all the ones I’d had, printed out information about lumbar punctures for me to make an informed decision. That decision was a definite NO since I already felt I’d had too many tests without enough evidence of needing them.
Although I got a new roommate that night, it was quieter and her few visitors kept their voices low. What I didn’t know then was that the worst was still to come.

To Be Continued…

I was very happy to be back home, but I was weak. And I also had lower back pain, which I attributed to my kidneys still recovering from dehydration. But I was glad my heart had passed the test of a night’s monitoring in the hospital even though I was asked several times by nurses about my low heart rate. I have monitored my blood pressure and heart rate for years, so I knew it was normally in the 50′s – an athlete’s rate even though I definitely didn’t qualify as an athlete.
As instructed, I dutifully set up an appointment with my primary care physician for a few days after I was released from the hospital. I felt tired and weak, but went to the appointment. Just as the doctor came into the room, I said those three dreadful words, “I feel dizzy,” and woke up once again in the strong arms of a paramedic team. Repeat performance in the Emergency Room with monitors and saline solution.
After I was stabilized, a young lady came over and introduced herself as a “hospitalist.” She didn’t explain what a “hospitalist” was, but I later asked a passing technician what the term meant. In my experience, “hospitalist” came to mean a doctor who makes big decisions about your life in record time without consulting you.
This young doctor spoke quickly and authoritatively, but didn’t ask me any questions. She said I’d need a CT Scan and an MRI to determine whether impeded blood flow in my head was why I was fainting. She then said my white blood count was very low with immature white blood cells and I might need a bone marrow test. After her pronouncements, she rode out into the sunset, and I never saw or heard from her again. But she had scheduled me for a Cat Scan and MRI.
The Cat Scan was fast and easy, but the MRI is an ordeal, especially when you feel lousy. I can’t even imagine what it might be like for a claustrophobic person. It required another trip in an ambulance with paramedics to a long cavernous hall that housed the MRI machine, and then about 45 minutes immobile in a thin tube with ear phones on to accompany a very strange assortment of clicks and groans from the monster machine. My thought once inside the machine was remembering an article I’d read that said far too much radiation is used in MRI testing.
When the very polite and kind paramedics brought me back to my hospital room, my friend’s very serious face greeted me. I must have looked absolutely awful. “I’m dying,” I simply said and laid back on the bed. And I truly did feel I was dying. I had fainted twice within days, had been brought to the ER twice, my white blood cells were apparently too low, and no doctors talked to me. Control over my own life was spinning out of my control.
I thought over all the details of putting my affairs in order and decided they were okay. I had had a happy trip in the spring to old friends in China, Taiwan, and Bali, and had just completed a Wild Lands Restoration service project near the magnificent Grand Tetons. A smile even crossed my face when I realized that I wouldn’t outlive my meager money after all.
My cell phone wouldn’t last long, and I didn’t have phone numbers of everyone I wanted to talk to anyway. So, I quietly sent mental “goodbye and thank you for being in my life” messages to some of my closest friends. I’d had a good life. I was ready to die if that was my fate.
But my roommate’s large family and the close quarters wouldn’t let me die in peace and quiet.

To Be Continued…

Once admitted to the hospital for a night of heart monitoring even though my heart had shown no indications of a problem, I became a virtual prisoner on my bed. Because of the possibility of cardiac patients falling, the bed is set to give off an alarm whenever anyone gets off the bed. For previously highly independent people like me, that was a big adjustment. And, since fluid was flowing into me, I was required to summon aid several times to de-program the alarm on my bed and allow me to walk to the bathroom pushing the intravenous contraption with me.
There were many questions during the intake procedure, including two women who somewhat apologetically said they were supposed to check new patients for signs of elder abuse. I showed them the rough and still very red mark around my left arm where the tourniquet had been forgotten and left for hours. They even took pictures of the mark and the nurse came by several times that night to check how my arm was recovering. Since I’d missed dinner time, and in fact hadn’t eaten all day, the nurse scrounged up one last cottage cheese and fruit salad plate. Then started the long, long night.
I wasn’t yet at all sure what had happened to me and why I was there. I was extraordinarily grateful to find some chapstick in my purse because the oxygen the paramedics had given me had really dried out my lips. I played around with the bed possibilities since I’d never been in a bed that could move around.
I shared the room with an elderly lady, but it was late and I wasn’t sure how much she’d welcome conversation. I was envious of her periodic snoring since my usual night owl ways made sleep impossible for me. If I had to pick the single most disturbing aspect of being in a hospital, it would be the sounds — crying, pain, misery, calling out for help. I wished for my earplugs and slowly waited for the dawn in between frequent trips to the bathroom. At least my kidneys were functioning okay.
Conversely, the vampires arrived with the dawn to draw the morning’s round of blood. Eventually, a huge breakfast arrived — at least three times what I’d normally eat. But I’d had an early snack of graham crackers and milk and wasn’t hungry.
And then the technician arrived to do an echocardiogram of my heart. This was exciting!! I knew I had a heart, but I had never seen it before. And I’d never heard it beating away with such a sound. I was fascinated watching my heart on the screen as it bumped and wiggled its life dance. It looked wonderful to me. I hoped it would to the people who can “read” such things.
Dr. D., whom I’d never seen before but who was apparently in charge of the decision whether or not to let me go home, popped in for quite literally a second, and said he’d release me after my echocardiogram report. I waited and waited.
Since privacy is impossible in those cubby hole rooms, I heard my roommate’s conversation with a nurse. The “M” words threw me into a panic. I am medication-phobic and am always horrified to learn how many daily medications people my age are taking. The staff at the hospital had registered surprise when they asked what drugs I regularly take and I told them “fish oil” and “calcium.” So, it was clear that drug interactions were not a factor in my case. My roommate, who had had a heart attack, was prescribed a very loooong list of daily medication that I lost count of. In addition, she was also taking several very strong medications for other conditions. The worry started creeping in that the doctors would try to force medication upon me.
The kind nurse, who looked like a friend of mine which I found comforting, finally told me that Dr. D. had arranged for my release after lunch. Apparently, I had passed my night of heart monitoring without turning up anything of concern although no doctor bothered to tell me anything directly.
I was ecstatically happy to return to my home which had been patiently waiting for me. But my joy at being home was to be very short-lived.
To Be Continued

“I feel dizzy,” was the last thing I said before fainting in my yoga class. According to my teacher and classmates, I sank to the mat and turned alternately gray, white, and blue. My body became ice cold and then I started to sweat profusely. I awoke to the voice of my yoga teacher saying, “Breathe” and then the paramedics arrived.
Even from my prone view and very foggy brain, I could tell that the paramedics worked quickly as a team, communicating constantly with one another and also with me. They quickly reassured me that my heart was okay, and mentioned “vago-vasal” which I vaguely understood meant my heart rate had been increasing until my blood pressure suddenly sank. But why?
How could this be happening to me? I’m a healthy person who could only remember fainting once at the age of 18 after catching bronchial pneumonia three times one winter. The faces changed from the paramedics to the Emergency Room Team who connected all sorts of things all over my body. I was thankful that one of my yoga buddies had come to the Emergency Room with me.
Eventually they told me I was dehydrated, and I told them that I had recently been bitten by a tick in Yellowstone National Park. The doctor dismissed the tick bite, saying it couldn’t be responsible for my condition in such a few days. And so, fluids poured in while one arm was pinned down by an overactive blood pressure cuff that kept throttling my arm. The other arm was pinned down by the intravenous needle.
Explaining that I had just had a very rigorous week working on Wild Lands Restoration near Grand Teton National Park, followed by camping in Yellowstone National Park, and due to my night owl nature, was sleep deprived, the doctor decided to chalk it up to exhaustion and dehydration and send me home after rehydration. He returned five minutes after telling me I would be released to say that he had reconsidered after realizing I was older than I looked and he wanted to hospitalize me for one night on a heart monitor.
There was a nagging pain in my left arm which had the intravenous flowing through and I mentioned it a few times to the nurse. She said it was just the needle in the wrist area that would cause pain when I bent the wrist. Eventually, I convinced her that the pain was higher up around my muscle. She finally looked under the gown and a strange look crossed her face. Someone who had intended to draw blood from my arm had left a tourniquet on my upper arm for at least the last 3 hours!! There was an ugly raw red mark when she finally released it. Apparently, this is a very big mistake and the person responsible would be severely disciplined, or even fired.
And so, I was sent upstairs for the night of being monitored. I was still more stunned at the day’s strange twist of events than anything else. But it was only the beginning of stranger things to come.
To Be Continued

A month shy of my 67th birthday, I intentionally wanted to add some firsts to my life. The service trip with Road Scholars to Teton Science Schools in Wyoming provided that opportunity.
The first day we learned of the dangers of noxious weeds and how they force out native species. Our task was to weed out an area around a pond where trumpeter swans were kept. Sometimes the noxious weeds were quite beautiful, as well as tenacious. Shovels, short tools, and gloves helped our group of 12 fill trash bags that piled up from our labor. Although I’m used to exercising, I’m not used to manual labor that actually accomplishes something.
Our second day’s task was to check bird houses that had been set up around a certain area, but had not been checked. First, we had to locate the boxes, peek in and see if there were eggs in them, and record many details about the boxes to put into a data base. If the box was unoccupied, we cleaned the old nests out of them. This was one of many programs in an effort to collect data about the bird population with the long term goal of conserving the wildlife.
It was the first time I saw tiny eggs in nests, and in one case, two-day-old mice, but I felt sorry that we had to scare the mother birds (and mother mouse) to get the information.
I observed trained people capturing wild songbirds in mist nets and then collecting data about them before releasing them. Our part, other than observation, was to hold each fragile bird on its back in our open hands before it realized it was free to fly away. It was a brief connection to a wild songbird and I felt good to participate in its release back into the wild.
Another first for me was digging a hole for a post. One of our team of 12, a gentleman of indeterminate age who had spent years in the Forest Service and now spent his time going to service projects, showed me how to maneuver the tool used to make a post hole. He explained how to best angle the tool to dig down efficiently and then pull up the dirt. Our posts for bird perches along a bike trail stood firm and tall when we finished.
Of all our tasks, I suppose the one I least expected I’d ever do is take down barbed wire fences that result in many deaths of animals who get mangled on them. The walk uphill to the fences was steep, but led to a beautiful panorama. Leather gloves protected our hands as we cut the barbed wire from the posts and rolled it up to be discarded.
I never got fast at rolling it up, but learned nevertheless how to roll the barbed wire from side to side so the barbs would catch onto one another. These circles of death piled up quickly. I had read a very vivid description of a swan that was caught on a barbed wire fence, so this contribution to making wild lands safer for wildlife gave me a distinct sense of accomplishment.
While our group was staying at the Teton Science School, there was also a group of 100 Indian children from area tribes. This was the first time I saw Indian children being taught by white people about nature and their connection to it. How sadly ironic!
Although not an Indian, one of our leaders came closest to my idea of what being with an Indian would be like. His knowledge was extensive. And he was inextricably intertwined with nature and wildlife emotionally and spiritually.
I have volunteered as a docent for the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California, for 9 years to help make a little difference to wild sick and injured seals and sea lions. While volunteering, I have also gained in my personal knowledge and connection to wild creatures. My participation in the Road Scholar service project has extended my progress even further from mostly an appreciator of the wild to a participant.
Beautifully worded on one wall of the Laurance Rockefeller Preserve Visitor’s Center is the essence.
“Mindful of different ways of being,
Our awareness as a species shifts –
We recognize the soul of the land as our own.”

On my week doing Wild Lands Restoration through Road Scholars at the Teton Science Schools in Jackson, Wyoming, wolves and wildness have been heavily on my mind. In Wyoming, the subject of wolves, as well as bears and other wildlife, is complicated and passionate.
I found a book in the library at the school that elucidates the whole issue of the troubled connection of humans to the animals that share human territory. “Shadow Mountain: A Memoir of Wolves, A Woman, and the Wild” by Renee Askins puts the issue into a wider, deeper perspective. The author still lives in a small town called Wilson near Jackson and she eloquently describes why she fights on the side of the wolves. Wolves were once totally eradicated in very vicious ways.
“What hunger did torture satisfy that a bullet would not? What fear was soothed or vengeance realized by the suffering of these animals that a painless death could not have accomplished? What is it in ourselves that we had to kill in the wolf? The answer is, of course, wildness. And even though we killed the wolf, every last one of them in the West, we never extinguished the wild — we only became more deeply alienated from it. In the panic of our alienation, we attempted to control what we feared; when we couldn’t control it we tried to extinguish it. But the wild is not controllable, or even extinguishable, so inextricably is it bound to the force of life itself. It flickers on – without us, within us, and between us – its nature buried in the mystery of our origins.”
After great effort by conservationists, the decision was made to re-introduce wolves in certain areas like Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. But it’s a troubled, carefully watched, and perhaps temporary situation.
When humans and animals come into conflict, it is the animal that loses. Very recently in Yellowstone, two bears were intentionally killed by authorities; a grizzly who killed a hiker, and a female black bear who kept coming too close to humans in its search for food. The grizzly bear had awakened after being tranquilized and a collar put on it so it could be tracked. Would he have killed the hiker if a collar had not been put on him in the name of conservation research?  Would the black bear have been killed if her territory hadn’t been invaded by campers and easy food?
Those of us who live far from the wild and wild animals form opinions about both in alienation from these animals and the wild. This week I have come closer to both and I feel a profound impact from the contact.