writing — Christina Mimmocchi

Sitting it Out With Dad

Draft notes towards a longer piece

Christina Mimmocchi

There’s a parade of characters. I imagine a dramaturg in the next room distilling the relentless plot and reducing the number of actors, for budgetary reasons of course. But just now, the character stream is endless. I remember the extra nice nurses and the quirky ones. But as their shift ends they leave the set.

Dad’s sick of being here, and also just plain sick. The days pass quickly. It’s surprisingly busy. One enters the submarine of the ward in the morning and whole days get swallowed up. Hospital staff, by definition, must all become nocturnal beasts, released into the night after a day in the trenches.

Ever-keen for new ways to dissociate, I’ve started a photo series of waiting room chairs. That’s a pretty sad sentence (in every way)

The variety of human being and human personality fascinates me. At the core of it all, and emphasised by the identical hospital gowns and beds, we’re fundamentally the same organism. And yet there’s the endless parade as roomies come and go. The man who watches real crime shows (with the sound up). People with no visitors. Patients who arrive shackled and accompanied by police. Patients who try to escape. The parade passes …

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Yesterday a patient did a dash. I told my sister and she asked if he was Russian. Well, yes, he must have been in a hurry. There was a flurry of security and a couple of staff wandered through the ward calling his name like he was a cat hiding under the bed. I don’t know if they found him.

Today’s a good day. At least for us. What a relief.

Today’s roomie is a real character. She has a voice that could sharpen a knife. You’d be a great singer, I called from our side of the curtain. Well - turns out she IS a singer. In decades past she fronted bands in all the local clubs. Ha! Fate has thrown us together. So she’s playing dj on her ipad for us and we’re all speculating on whether the orchestra is the NY Met or Nelson Riddle. And now she’s singing along with Basin St Blues. Says she went to Sydney Girls’. Ah, I say, for smart girls - what happened? And we cackle the morning away.

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Fewer jokes today. But tons of stores in the air.

Jim (not his real name) is a big fella. He’s on the same treatment (I’m trying to be vague here to protect his identity) schedule as dad so we’re in the same department three times a week. We’re all waiting to go in when we come face to face so I greet him - tentatively, in case he’s doesn’t want to be greeted. Not everyone here does. He talks animatedly, shifting from foot to foot, and I look around thinking he’s talking to someone behind me, but he is in fact talking to me. Jims story is on high rotation. I’ve heard it before because he tells medical staff - A Lot. So we can’t help but know that he’s just had his first birthday out of prison for some years. He’s still young so he must have gone in as a very young person. He’s also very young to be so unwell. He tells me his more medical misadventures and wants me to see how bad his leg is. I’m one who faints at the mention of medical objects (I know there are better words for those items but I’m not going to ponder them because …) so I politely decline the offer and tell him why. He apologises profusely and we all enter and take our places.

He gives the nurses heaps. All sorts of heaps. In the midst of one of the heaps he notices I don’t have a chair so he goes off and nicks a stool from somewhere. He must have decided we’re friends and I’m chuffed. He tells me fragments of stories which include recent brushes with the police. He’s convinced the medical system and police are against him because of his skin colour. He tries to tell this to nurses who aren’t very responsive. I hope it’s because they’re just trying to get on with things but I can see that he believes they don't care. I want to tell him (but don’t) that they’re an introverted lot and generally don’t seem to be into giving sympathetic responses to anyone. Anyway, dad is brought way too much food so we’re happy to pass on a nice chicken dish to him which cheers him up at least momentarily and he tells me its the first time he’s eaten today. It’s 5pm.

If not for medical circumstances, the 20 or so patients in this ward would never have met. We (and in any case, I’m just a sidekick… it’s dad who has to endure the experience) are all from vastly different lives and backgrounds. But for the time we’re here, we’re all on the journey and know what questions to ask and what to talk about.

Back in the ward, Lily (not her real name) the singer tells me about some terrible things that happened to her as a little girl. I have a cry, she has a cry. We agree that there’s a special place in hell for those monsters. She shows me photos from her youth and tells me how she got her bouffants to be so, well, bouffie.

It’s a bit tricky because she wants to talk but I want to be with dad. He’s not well and her voice, with its extraordinary twang, is ever-present. The doctor comes to give dad a memory test and she can’t help yelling the answers through the partition. Quiet in the peanut gallery! I call over. And we all have a cackle.

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Night shift. I don't know how my sister does it night after night. Here I am tonight, taking a turn.

"10 o'clock and all is well!" calls the medieval time cryer, way louder than the machines that go ping, the staff having loud discussions in the doorway, the gentle snoring of two patients.

We're now sharing a room with a man who speaks no English. I've been looking up a few Turkish words online and hope I'm at least bringing some levity with my clumsy attempts. There's a nurse on tonight who repeats things to him several times, each time a little louder all the way up to 11. Pity he's not deaf. He seems content in spite of the shouting and at least his loud tv is on the ABC. There's something soothing about the sound of the Hard Quiz repeat. He must feel the same way given he doesn't understand a word of it.

Good night, to all those who celebrate.

***************

Dad’s room overlooks the helipad. About 3am, the helicopter came and I watched it lower and land. It was swarmed over and a patient was wheeled away. The coloured flashing lights glowed through the room.

Back in 2007 I was in Brisbane and happened to call the family. I could hear a helicopter through the phone and dad said - the hospital has just called: there’s a kidney coming for me. He had to pack his bag in a hurry and get down the road to the hospital. Truly a miracle day. Now when I hear the medical helicopter it’s a reminder that it’s either someone’s lucky day or someone’s very bad day and there’s only a blink between the difference.

The physio comes around every day. I know it’s the physio because he has a red shirt and looks like a Wiggle. He’s chatty. He and dad chat about football. Even though he follows Chelsea he knows a lot about Italian football going back decades. Dad can’t get up at the moment but the physio will come later to do some sitting exercises. Dad’s face drops at this news and we laugh.

***************

Porters are all men. I really reckon we’ve met them all now so I’m confident about this. There’s one guy who has been here for years. He knows everyone by name and if he’s forgotten he’ll call you habibi. He plays Arabic music through a little speaker and when he turns up it’s like the party’s in town. He’s pretty big and makes pushing even the biggest barge of a bed look easy and even fun.

I don’t know how they do it. For a start, how do they know their way around this warren? There are elevators and doors and corridors unavailable to the general public. They know all the secret ways. As I follow them and dad’s bed, my big wish is that they would never leave me to make my own way back. Lost forever, and look out for the minotaur. For another thing, I’ve realised that the patients are the only ones who have windows. The staff generally have internal windows, and like the cheap berths on a ship they can’t see out. Same with porters - unless they’re passing one of the new corridors, they might as well be underground. Moles digging through dirt. Or, as my son and I like to chortle, boring machines.

The fellow today - Sam (not his real name) was very amusing. He had a “learner driver” with him - a young lad with hip sports shoes. Nice shoes, I said to the kid. I lent them to him - quips Sam. Then he sets about trying to “guess the nationality”. He guesses Italian right. It’s ok when I’m asked by someone who’s also visibly not from “here”. Because sometimes when people say “where are you from?” I don’t know if they mean Randwick or Italy. I often get the answer wrong, even with 50% chance of being right.

Know where I’m from? - he asks me? I laugh: American? Sam and lad roar with laughter. They’re both very Kiwi. Sam tells me he’s going home next week and heading straight to the fush and chups place. He’s not even joking. He’s just craving his favourite chippo.

It’s really hot in here. Really claustrophobically, dead-air hot. I see people walking around, four stories down. I’m envious, then feel selfish I feel envious.

By the way, first world problems and all ... do you think it's weird that hospitals can't afford properly printed bed number signage? They're handwritten. Their wonkiness makes me feel a bit ill. I have a printer and laminator. I could make them proper ones.

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Warning: examination of memory loss.

This is how it begins: it whispers, it stalks. We’ve all said it: I don’t want to be here if I lose my faculties. But there’s no new paragraph, no knock on the door when it starts. It’s a seamless cross-fade from sharpness to blur.

In my 20s I visited my great aunts - Bruna and Esther - when they lived in a care facility in northern Italy. They were my mother’s aunts and my favourite people in the all world. Zia Esther had Alzheimer’s and the sisters shared a room. We spent a lot of our days sitting outside and following Zia Esther’s imaginings. She said she could see St Peter’s Square in Rome. What we could actually see was an ordinary-looking courtyard with a dried up lawn, but we went along with it. Yes, how amazing that we could see St Peter’s from here. And there’s the pope’s window. Who knows if we’ll see the man himself on Sunday morning. Other times she saw American soldiers passing through and she’d talk about the war.

One morning I woke at my cousin’s nearby place and had the sensation that I was Zia Esther and I experienced being her. I can’t describe what it was like because I wasn’t observing her or myself. I WAS her - in bed and peering at the world through crumpled sheets. The morning took over and the experience dissipated but I can still recall that moment which felt like a premonition of sorts.

Now I go to write about dad, but I’m reluctant. He gets no say in what I am writing, and also his grasp on what he might or might not have said or done is tentative. Some days are good days, other days I’m the enemy. Being in hospital for five, going into six, weeks doesn’t help. There’s so much to write, but for now it’s too big and too raw to describe.

I’ll end with an amusing anecdote as those don’t ever cease here on Planet Hospital. Another patient today was very loudly playing Phil Collins music. By choice. We had no choice. And then it came to me: straitjacket required.

***************

Sombres.

He came into the room in a slightly-too-tight business shirt with his tie folded and clipped and looking sombre. Obviously he was an accountant, come to bring the bad news that after six weeks in hospital we had a mighty huge bill to settle up. At least, that’s where my mind went (cue: “his mind ran on money cares and fears,” - WB Yeats). But no - he was here to help dad shower. Is it any wonder patients lose their bearings around here. He calls the other staff “comrade”. I can’t tell if he’s sarcastic or sincere. I later find out he’s an Occupational Therapist who as well as helping is assessing how well dad can shower himself. A double agent.

Later: six doctors and the physiotherapist who looks like a Wiggle* come in. It’s taking a team to get dad better and we still don’t have a diagnosis. They talk in bunches of weeks … if in a few weeks, if THIS doesn’t happen, then we’ll do THAT. And then in a few weeks after THAT we could do THIS if THAT works. It’s like at auction when the bids go up and up by a few tens of thousands as though it were play money. A few weeks are apparently nothing. We will be here another few weeks at the least on top of the six weeks we have already been here. Dad is very impressively eloquent in his gratitude to the team for all their work. I’m grateful to them for persisting, and I’m also sombre.

Later still: the geriatrician visits. Her name is Christina so you’d think I might be unlikely to forget it (watch this space). She’s really across so much that’s going on and I’m relieved we’re in good hands. She tells me about available resources including her own website. Then she starts to talk about worst case scenarios and changing expectations and the room colour changes from light to sombre.

Dad sees a black and a white cat in the room. They’re here a lot but I can’t see them. I get itchy with cats so I take an antihistamine just in case. There is, in a courtyard out the front, a mouse called Steven. I was queuing for gozleme a few days ago and all eyes were on Steven. He’s a twitchy little critter and doesn’t seem afraid of humans. Siberian hamster - I mutter, and no one laughs (or hears).

remember him from a previous post?

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Week 7

There’s a staff member who brings around the tea trolley twice a day. In days of old this person would have been called “the tea lady”. I don’t know what to call them now. My favourite, who I’ll call Dana, is tall and solid. I look forward to her visits. She would fit in well in a Monty Python sketch (as would so many people). Possibly Eastern European background, going by her accent. Her base-line appears to be that everything is grim and obviously she should be elsewhere. I’m completely in agreement.

Dana calls out: Tea? Coffee? Banana?

Me: (Thinks: BANANAS? In a renal ward? You’re pulling my leg. Bananas are a big no-no for renal patients due to potassium-restricted diet. Forbidden fruit - literally. See below for a cartoon from Peter Quaife - original member of The Kinks - from his book The Lighter Side of Dialysis. A favourite in our family). Oh, just some biscuits please.

Dana checks list: BISCUIT? BISCUIT? NOT ON LIST. NO BISCUIT FOR HIM. BANANA?

Me: no thank you we’d really just like a few biscuits.

Dana: NOT. ON. LIST. NO. BISCUIT. FOR. HIM.

Dana wheels on to crush her next victim.

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Week 8

Dad is better. Tons better. Still gets tired, still has pain, but is better and walking. Slowly but surely getting well.

Dad's favourite nurse (let's call him Ned) has just announced: I have special adventure for you - it's called showering! Ned is such an amazingly patient, gentle and skilled nurse. He doesn't take any nonsense and he and dad seem to get each other. I cheer when dad is allocated to him. One night, back when dad was having regular deliriums, Ned came to check vitals and dad looked at him and said - what is your shadow? Ned has dark skin and I guess he's heard it all, but the comment made him chuckle. Who knows if dad was even talking about skin colour.

Lily is across the corridor. She is always friendly and has been here for a while (but not as long as we have). Yesterday she cornered me and said nice things about the way I looked. Call me suspicious, but I knew something was afoot. Then it came. She shooed the nurse away who has hovering and asked me to get her a packet of fags. She had the money. In the three seconds I had to think about it I decided it would be bad form to smuggle something in that was life-sapping while the hospital was trying to make her better. My refusal didn't go down too well. I wonder if she'll talk to me today.

Dad's most recent room-mate - lovely young guy who we already knew from previous hospital adventures - snored like a tractor (Solidarity Choir buddies ... sounds familiar?!). Drowned everything out including the helicopters landing. One morning about 3am Lily shouted across the corridor "for god's sake stop snoring - I'm going to kill you!" It didn't wake him. She woke me whereas the snoring, like white noise, must have lulled me to sleep.

This is the end of Week 8. While we've been here the season has turned, my child has graduated from school, pros and antis and undesirables have marched with flags, kids are starved and blown up. I'm ever grateful that we're here. Those words aren't adequate, but it's a mantra so many of us here in hospital are clinging to at the moment.

Week 9

Dad dropped a rare gem yesterday. I asked him how he was bearing up with being in hospital so long. I didn’t really expect a response, but he said - you have to go into these things with an open heart. How profound, patient and beautiful.

There’s a new nurse - new to us. He discovers dad’s Roman and starts quoting Marcus Aurelius. Besides googling stoicism a few times, I don’t really have anything of substance to say and he seems to be disappointed. He reads philosophy whenever he can and might have thought this was his chance to have a gutsy conversation. Sorry.

Current neighbour is a lovely gent from LaPa - let’s call him Neville. He and dad chat about boats for ages and he tells us about his time in the navy. As I type this and dad snoozes, he’s playing dj and we’re cruising though some classic 50s and 60s songs with a bit of country thrown in. Peter and Gordon, Roy Orbison, Everly Bros - forever great music. From across the corridor Lily is screaming that this hospital is a great big stinking place and she is never coming back. I just glimpsed her wheeling past and towards the lifts. I didn’t see anyone dashing after her. Maybe the staff need a break.

A SELECTION OF COMMENTS

I’ve always enjoyed reading your posts on all types of subjects, but this “sitting it out with dad” is mesmerising each post is read several times. I have been we you are now, but you put a quite fascinating twist to it.

I'm really enjoying your reporting, Christina Mimmocchi and I hope whatever is ailing your dad can be stopped or at least made to feel better.

There's a great big mixed bag of humanity out there, eh? Good luck to all of them.

Oh Christina, you have heart, humanity and humour. Love these life observations at such a difficult time

again beautifully written. you're gently taking us with you on this journey

I would comment. But it’s too close and real. Hugs

This is such a lovely share, Christina. Very painful and emotional for you. And a privilege for us. Thankyou. I’m experiencing a very similar thing, but partner not dad. So hard.

Hugs from Scotland. xx

Beautiful words, feel the rawness of your situation.

thank you for sharing xxo some of your friends have said the importance of story telling and I agree, thank you for sharing this journey with us. Xx

You write beautifully Christina and have a bottomless pit of empathy. I’m experiencing similar with my own mother but unfortunately not everyone around her has the same depth of understanding, compassion or interest. Sadly, I’ve seen the worst of some of the people closest to me. Sending you lots of love.

Your words will become lyrics

Thinking of you lovely having just gone through this with mum. She had a 12 week stint in hospital and has Alzheimer’s too…we finally got her into a home just the cruel journey of memory loss and confusion is heartbreaking. sending so much love your way xxx

There is no doubt that this is one of the toughest times to endure as we watch our beloved parents fade in whichever way has been appointed for them.

I think I may have been on your journey when I was teaching Tomas Christina. My work was my life saver as I juggled Dad at home on full time oxygen with emphysema and Mum finally in care with Alzheimer’s. My grand daughters had also arrived in quick succession then as well.

I love the story of sharing some of the imaginings your beloved aunt and the extraordinary experience while staying with your cousin. Your story telling is so beautiful. I hope it eases your pain a little too.

Your descriptions are touching, compassionate, and many of us are seeing our aging parents in a similar situation.

Oh Christina you have been shining a light on the everyday experience of so many but not talked about.....and the love in your words makes my heart swell.