Visiting Scheherazade

One day at my paying job last August (yep), I had an unusual number of very long visits, including one early in the day that was 95 minutes long, and one at the end of the day that was 100 minutes long, which took me well past my normal stopping time. In both cases, I couldn’t figure out in the moment how to get out of the room; there was no obvious pausing point. I felt like I’d had two visits with Scheherazade. However, getting out of a room is something I can actually do, as long as I remember and am determined: “I’m sorry—I will have to go in about five minutes. Is there any last thing particularly on your mind?”

As I wrote my chart note for the last visit, I realized that my ex-boss would scold that it looked more like the note of a social worker, and I wondered if that had anything to do with how utterly exhausted I felt when I got home, plus that whole evening, and the whole next day.

I wondered if I should be trying to make my visits true pastoral conversations, or is it inevitable that many conversations will have nothing to do with the patient’s religion or spiritual practice? I believe the answer is yes: I should be mindful that I am a spiritual care clinician, and people are  going to talk about whatever they need to talk about. It is also very clear to me by now that if I’m going to find out what’s really going on with someone, patience is required. It can take an hour to find out what is really on someone’s mind on a given day.

Late in August, the group of people who are in the chaplaincy program in Santa Fe and who live in the Bay Area met for tea. Afterward, I attended a small and congenial vipassana meditation group in the Castro for the first time. I decided that I would attend regularly, but have not been back since.

My knees had been killing me since June, unprecedented both in duration and the intensity of the pain. About that dance party after the talent show at school: One knee was giving me particular trouble at that point. While dancing, I did not notice any pain, but the next day, I very nearly could not walk at all.

I saw the wonderful chiropractor again after I got home from Santa Fe, and continued to do what he said to do, and at this point, my knees are basically 99 percent fine, as long as I do my exercises every day. My mother, who has had two knee replacements, worried that it might be time to see an orthopedic surgeon, so I did. He said that my basic problem is that I’m aging. He also said that the amount of degeneration does not correlate with the experience of pain. Some people have horrible degeneration and little pain, while others have the opposite. As for my particular knees, he said he could do surgery, or inject steroids, or I could find a set of exercises that keep pain at bay and do them faithfully. Basically, he validated the approach of my chiropractor, and he agreed that when there is pain, it’s something to do with the kneecaps.

At my paying job, I was thrilled to see that a doctor had pasted a few sentences from one of my chart notes verbatim into her chart note. I ran and told my boss.

Once upon a time, if we called a priest to come during the night, we were required to be present to act as the priest’s host and chart what he did. This was under my former boss. Late in her tenure, she changed her mind and said we could just call the nurse to confirm that the priest had visited and make a note of it in the patient’s record. Our new boss has instructed us to go back to the original procedure, and I was getting ready to feel disgruntled about it when I remembered that it is absolutely moot. We used to be attached to a church that actually would send priests over at 3 a.m. to provide Anointing of the Sick (formerly known as Last Rites). Now that we have moved to the new hospital, we are attached to a church that won’t even answer the phone after 5 p.m.

Early in September, Tom and I went to see his mother, Ann, in Sacramento. It was a gorgeous day, and it was nice to be with Ann, as always. The following day, I went to see Carol-Joy in Novato, for lots of eating and card playing.