Breakfast

 
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Plastic Flute

On January 3, 2021, I got the first dose of Moderna’s COVID vaccine. I arrived 40 minutes early—I was paranoid about being late and losing my spot. I thought they were going to say, “We’re practicing social distancing. Please stand outside until your appointment time,” but they invited me right in. The process was very smooth. They were only doing first doses at this location, with the second dose to be given elsewhere.

After I got the shot, I got a card documenting it, and a sticker for my work badge, and I had to sit down for 15 minutes to make sure I felt fine. About five minutes into the 15 minutes, I began to feel a slight pressure in my chest. This occurs from time to time, and so my heart has been checked over and over, and I also spent an entire night in the hospital about ten years ago plus several hours in the ED a couple of years ago for this same symptom, with no problem ever being found. On the other hand, this time it occurred five minutes after getting the COVID vaccine, so I mentioned it to the young lady who had given me the vaccine, and this was taken very seriously, though I made a point of telling everybody I discussed it with that I am a known hypochondriac.

I sat for a second 15 minutes, and then a nurse came from the ED and said they would like me to be treated in the ED. I was pretty sure this would mean six hours of hanging around in the ED (right near lots of COVID patients), followed by a long bike ride home in the dark wet, and possibly a large bill—with no finding of any heart problem—so I hinted that I was feeling better, though I really sort of wasn’t, and agreed that I would sit for a third 15 minutes and then start walking home with a friend of mine who was also there getting her vaccination, and this proposal was accepted.

My friend and I walked for several blocks, and then her husband picked her up in their car, and I rode home. By then, I was starting to feel some twinges in my shoulder near where the shot had been placed, and I still felt the pressure in my chest, and I also felt so fatigued that I got into bed as soon as I got home. The pain in my shoulder worsened steadily all evening and made it impossible to lie on that side that night. The fatigue abated after an hour or two. The pressure in my chest stayed all evening but seemed basically gone the next morning.

The next day, I didn’t notice the chest tightness or fatigue; my shoulder continued to hurt for a day or two.

And then it was January 6, 2021, and I was sitting in front of my computer watching the horrendous events instigated by our own President—I remember wondering what was taking the National Guard so long—and my eye fell on a thing in the New York Times: five minutes that will make you love the flute. I listened for a minute or two and still didn’t love the flute, but I remembered that sometimes I’m getting a massage, and the person plays music that sounds like rain dripping in a forest, with a haunting wooden flute sound which I like very much. Is this the Japanese wooden flute? (Much later, I found out it was more likely a Native American wooden flute. Which is much easier to play than what I now do play.) I Duck Ducked that, and next thing I knew, I was signed up for shakuhachi lessons with a really nice fellow in Berkeley.

The shakuhachi is a bamboo flute, and once upon a time, only samurai were allowed to play it, as part of their Zen training, but now any schlub can have at it. My new teacher recommended beginning with a more affordable epoxy version of this instrument, called the Yuu. (Available you know where.)

My plastic shakuhachi arrived and I found that I could not get a sound out of it. It’s basically just a tube with holes in it. As my teacher says, “This is a very primitive instrument. Body is the main instrument.”

I also found sound elusive at my first online lesson, though I immediately liked my teacher a lot. He advised that I should knock on the door of the spirits and God would make the sound. I did not succeed in making any sound during that whole first hour-long lesson, but later that night, while looking in the bathroom mirror, I made a sound! I made a little five-second video to send to my teacher and a few others. My teacher wrote back immediately and enthusiastically. At my second lesson, five days later, he declared that my sound was “ten times better.”

I made arrangements around then with two people to mentor me for my next try at board certification as a chaplain. One of them was a former CPE supervisor of mine whom I’m very fond of. I was put in touch with the other by my friend Sam, and she proved to be a dynamo. Her advice was superb, and she responded almost immediately to any piece of writing I sent her.

Marvin leapt one day onto the breakfast table, sloshing tea out of both cups. I was on the phone with my father and yelled, “God—excuse my language—fucking damn it!” A moment later, I said, “Sorry about my language. That was very annoying.”

My father said, “That’s okay. I’ve heard the word ‘annoying’ before.”

Cats

I venture to say the cat in the first two photos is Marvin, but the cat on the scratching post is Duckworth.

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Darnly Darn It

For a minute there (in November, 2020, this was), I thought Duckworth might have learned his name, but it turns out that he answers to any name, including Marvin’s, whereas Marvin answers to no name, including his own.

The Duckle also does not discriminate when it comes to food. Marvin is picky, but Duckworth eats anything that appears in his bowl, plus whatever Marvin doesn’t finish, though I now put the latter into the compost, because I don’t want Duckworth to look like a basketball with four stubby legs protruding from the bottom of it, though as of this writing, that's exactly how he continues to look.

On cooking day, they are strongly enjoined not to advance onto the area near the sink and stove where the floor is linoleum. They are welcome to linger in the other half of the kitchen, where the floor is hardwood. Sometimes one slinks by me, heading under the sink, and I can practically see the thought bubble forming over his head: “I’m going to my water bowl. I think I’m allowed to go to my water bowl, aren’t I?”

One morning as I had breakfast, Duckworth hopped onto the table. (Both cats earlier had jumped onto the table together, sloshing an inch of liquid out of my tea cup.) He sweetly put his face near mine and then tried to tear some of my hair out with his teeth. I don’t think it was malicious. I think he (correctly) perceived something unkempt about my coiffure and just wanted to help me achieve better grooming, as he and his brother do for each other. “That’s not lying flat! I think I can fix this.”

If the neighbors listen carefully, they can probably hear me merrily singing out from time to time, “Gosh darnly darn it!” or even, “Dang you dangheads!”, or something like that.

One day I found a pushpin in the cats’ water bowl. It had formerly been in use, several feet off the ground, to keep a couple of wires out of their reach. They must have sat on top of the bookcase just inside the next room and worried the pushpin until it fell to the ground, and then the conversation likely went something like this:

“Ooh, wow—nice! Where should we put this?”

“In the pool!”

In November, 2020, at my second job I participated in a training on trauma-sensitive crisis prevention, which included instruction on several ways to break free from someone who has seized your wrist, neck, clothes, or hair, or grabbed you around the waist or chest from behind. We practiced the latter with a partner. There were only six students, including two friends of mine, and two trainers. We were in a large room that allowed for plenty of distancing, and of course we all wore masks all day. Several of us got fish and chips burritos from Publico for lunch, which was a treat.

I thanked our boss for including us per diems in this training; that seemed pretty generous. She explained that because we are all on-call chaplains, we will often be the only chaplain in the hospital, and so we will be part of a crisis response task force.

Thanksgiving last year was via FaceTime with my parents and sister.

After an extremely busy night shift at my second job (in December of 2020; we’re almost to 2021, just in time for 2022!), I got an email saying that patients had transmitted COVID to staff members on two particular units. Those known to have had contact with the patients had already been contacted, but anyone who had been on either of those units was strongly encouraged to get a COVID test. My boss said there was probably little to worry about unless I had hung out in a breakroom with other staff members with my mask off, which I had not. I faithfully wear my mask, and goggles over my glasses. (I still do that now, in October of 2021.) I wasn’t worried about COVID, just slightly disgruntled about having to free up several hours the next day for this task, which required going back to work. It turned out to be the most pleasant of the three COVID tests I’ve had so far. I was handed a cotton swab and told to run it around the inside of my nostril. (As for the people who had to deal with a bin full of cotton swabs that had been in other people’s nostrils: less pleasant, I suspect.)

In mid-December, there was a Code Blue in the ICU at my first job. As I stood outside the patient’s room, I felt goosebumps go up the front of my legs, the third time this has happened. The patient did indeed die. Do the goosebumps come at the moment the person’s life force emanates into the cosmos? Don’t know.

Christmas was also via FaceTime with my family. It was fun, and also sad: there they were, such perfect little images, so familiar in every detail and so beloved, but the actual people so far away, perhaps not to be seen for another entire year.

Cone

Marvin with the cone he had to wear after his bloody injury to keep him from licking his paw. Sometimes he walked dejectedly along with his head hanging down, kicking the cone with each step.

Below is Marvin (or possibly Duckworth) shortly after adoption, about three months old.

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The Land Behind the Stove

A few feline doings: There was the night I was brushing my teeth and heard a stunningly loud crash from the kitchen. This turned out to be Marvin knocking a substantial small oven (much bigger and heavier than the average toaster oven) off the top of the fridge while Duckworth looked on admiringly from below (and fortunately did not get crushed). Needless to say, this oven had a large ceramic plate sitting on top of it. If my downstairs neighbor was in her kitchen at the time, she’ll never forget that moment.

One day I saw Marvin lick Duckworth’s rearward orifice and then back away slowly with an expression that suggested the experience hadn’t been as pleasurable as he’d anticipated.

Another day, I found that my stove had unaccountably stopped working. It is a gas stove with an electric starter and the problem turned out to be that one cat or the other (i.e., Marvin) had unplugged it, which would have entailed standing on the stove itself and pulling at the plug. Of course, that seems like nothing now that it is routine for Marvin to disappear behind the refrigerator.

He started by going behind the stove. Prior to the first time he did this, I had had a conversation with their cat sitter (retiring from this line of work at the end of this year—wonder how much my cats had to do with that decision) about the mischief they might get into while I was at work. She said that if one of them got into a tight spot, he’d get himself out. So the first time Marvin disappeared behind the stove, I just waited. There was dead silence for several moments. Duckworth was freaking out, and I wondered if Marvin had somehow killed himself doing this, but in due time, he scrambled up and out from behind the stove, the first of many, many trips to the Land Behind the Stove.

Eventually I figured out that the stove could be moved close enough to the wall that he couldn’t physically get back there, which solved the problem for about a week. I had thought Marvin would not fling himself into the dark abyss behind the refrigerator. I was wrong. That behavior continues to this very day.

One morning, I emerged from the shower to find the kitchen floor spattered with blood, likewise the cutting boards, likewise the kitchen wall. I examined Marvin and could not see any injury, and he seemed to be in a perfectly good mood. Just as I was concluding he must have cut himself in some area that bleeds a lot but that the wound had already started to heal, he began to gush blood onto the living room floor.

In the end, there was blood from one of end the apartment to the other, literally. There was blood on the windowsill in the kitchen, as far west as you can go, and blood near the windows in the living room, as far east as you can go and still be inside, and many points in between, including on the bed slats, which I could see only by lying on my back under the bed.

I called the vet and arranged to bring Marvin in that afternoon; I had to call my boss at the last minute to say I had to take the day off work. I still could not spot any wound on Marvin, whose mood continued sunny. The vet immediately discovered that he had torn a claw entirely out of his back foot, along with part of the bone it was attached to. It must have been excruciating. I know that cats are supposed to be good at hiding their distress, but had always thought I’d sort of be able to tell if a cat was seriously ill or injured. Nope. There was not the slightest sign. The vet said the claw might or might not grow back in time; it has not.

The cats soon learned how to open the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and fling my toothbrush, etc., into their litter box below. One day while I was visiting Carol-Joy in Novato, we made an emergency trip to the hardware store so I could get a barrel bolt to keep the medicine cabinet door shut. Eventually, they figured out how to open that, so I added a spring latch, which they cannot open—I myself have difficulty opening it. Someday someone else is going to move into this studio apartment and wonder why so many doors, small and large, have extra pieces of hardware—nine as of this moment—affixed to them. 

Unrise (Rather Than Sunrise): September 9, 2020

Here are two photos I took on that day. One is of a lobby in one of the hospitals where I work. It looks like it's night, but it was about 2 p.m. 

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Drumming Class

One day while I was sitting on a unit not my own, a nurse approached and asked, “Are you a chaplain?” She explained that one of her patients was reporting shortness of breath in response to her heart medication, but the RN wondered if the patient was actually having panic attacks associated with the anniversary of the suicide of her daughter. I agreed to visit the patient. Before I finished my charting, a physician came and asked the same thing, and told me the same story about the same patient. She added, “Shortness of breath is not a symptom normally associated with this medication.”
 
I went to see the patient, who was friendly and welcoming. Just as our visit began, her bedside RN gave her a new medication and warned, “This is the last resort.” The patient told me about the difficulty she’d been having with her prior medication and explained that if she had the same problem with this medication, she would have to have surgery.

After we’d been talking for 10 minutes or so, I said, “I understand something terrible happened at this time of year two years ago. I don’t know if you feel like talking about it.” The patient then told me the story of her daughter’s life, becoming tearful several times. Sometimes, as she looked into space, I imagined she was seeing the tiny face of a precious girl decades earlier.

Near the end of our 80-minute visit, I asked who she could talk about her child with and learned that she did not have a confidante. At the conclusion of our time together, during which I mainly just listened (and during which the patient did not experience any shortness of breath—maybe she was able to avoid surgery?), I expressed my sorrow at the loss of her beautiful child, and mused, “I imagine the anniversary has some impact. I don’t know what it would be, but I would think there would be some.”

The patient thought for a moment and said, “Yes, that’s probably right. Maybe I’d better go back to therapy or find a group.”

I reported a bit of this to the patient’s bedside RN, who seemed pleased, and I also felt pleased.

At the end of September, 2020 (a year ago!), I had my first COVID test, not administered in regard to Job One, but as part of onboarding for Job Two. It was pretty unpleasant; a stiff little plastic brush was stuck quite a ways up my nose. The result was negative.

Tom began leading his students in stretching each day via Zoom, which he reported was a popular offering. One day, after the end of stretching class, a loud, very repetitious noise commenced. When I called to ask, “Now what’s happening?”, Tom brightly replied, “Drumming class!” That evening, I called back to say that I had been impressed with his students’ mastery of drumming.

“I’d say they have tested out of drumming and don’t have to practice any more!”

My first day at Job Two arrived. You have to complete a screening each day before going in any building, answering the now-familiar series of questions, but your temperature is never taken, unlike at Job One. The day was chaotic, with calls, pages and electronic requests for spiritual care flowing in. When the next chaplain arrived, I had to turn over about six things I hadn’t been able to get to.

On October 8, 2020 (almost a year ago!), Duckworth and Marvin turned seven months old and I was finally able to find ten minutes to complete their microchip registration online.
 
Several months before the pandemic began, three friends and I had begun to co-facilitate a Buddhist meditation group in the Tenderloin under the auspices of the San Francisco Night Ministry. When the group had to stop meeting per social distancing, we began using that same time of week to check in via Zoom, and at this point, we have become fast friends. Late in October, one of us who lives in both Northern and Southern California came to town and we decided to meet, spread far apart, in the room where our meditation group had been meeting.

When the cab driver dropped me off in front of the building, he said, “Be careful.” Seconds later, a man came up to within about three inches from me and said, “How you doing?”

Seeing my three friends was wonderful and did not prove to be a superspreader event.

Around that time, I met with a committee for board certification as a chaplain (via Zoom), and did not pass. You send in a big pile of stuff, including 31 essays. The idea is that you will demonstrate your competency in each of the 31 areas in writing and/or via your conversation with the committee. I was asked to do more work on six of the competencies, and make a subsequent appearance.

At an orientation session prior to our committee meetings, someone at the national organization told us that if we didn’t pass after our first appearance, we should not take it as a “No” but as a “Not yet,” and she added that people routinely say the additional work they had to do was worth it, so when I got the news, I was perfectly gracious, and I resolved to have a good attitude about the whole thing, although sorrow soon set in: Ugh—I was so looking forward to this process being over.

Have you ever had someone important die and, for moment after waking up in the morning, you don’t remember it, and then you remember it? It’s as if the person has died all over again. This happened with my board certification. The following day I woke up and thought, more or less, “Another beautiful day! Isn’t it wonderful to be alive!” And then: “Oh! I didn’t pass my thing!”

One thing that made me feel better was the utter shock of everyone I told this to, and another was that three of my friends / colleagues also didn’t pass, including one whose MDiv is from a very fancy school and who started his own religious community after graduation. Apparently there was a huge crop of candidates, so there may have been inexperienced committee members, or even people serving for the very first time. Maybe committee members new to this process didn’t want to be the ones to let a psychopath slip through. Also, this was over Zoom, whereas these interviews formerly were always in person, and maybe that made it harder for the committee to get a good sense of the candidate.

In due time, I received my written report from my committee and found some disturbing things in it; for instance, the committee said they weren’t sure about the care I offered a Hmong patient, as written about for such-and-such competency. I looked at my essays and saw that I did not write anything a Hmong patient for that competency, but I did for a different competency—so which one did I not pass? There were three things like that, so I sent a note to the coordinator, and she got in touch with my committee. One of my committee members wrote back, “Well, whichever competency it was, we think such-and-such.” That seemed rather cavalier to me.

I convened a group of three of the four of us who didn’t pass, and invited several chaplains in the pipeline right behind us, so we could share what about our experience we thought might be helpful to each other. I typed up notes from this session and sent them to the CPE educators I am personally acquainted with; they were warmly received.

I started to not feel good about the whole thing, partly based on my own experience, but considerably more so in regard to two of my friends who were explicitly given a hard time for not being Christian. Finally, and somewhat on impulse, as is my custom, I sent a note to the organization saying I was feeling unenthusiastic about continuing with this process—could I maybe speak with someone who could restore my trust in this organization? I ended up having a very helpful conversation with someone who agreed that my committee had been rather flippant. As for understanding which competencies I actually needed to address, she said, “Maybe these are the competencies the universe wants you to work on.” I decided to assume that was the case.

The Great Outdoors (COVID Version)

Ah, beautiful!

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COVID Overview

I can’t remember what I’ve said about this so far, but to recap how COVID affected life at the hospital:

One of the first things that happened was that employees were instructed to use one particular entrance, and visitors to use another. (This made my own process of getting into the building about ten minutes longer.) We began to have to answer a series of questions when arriving, and to have our temperature taken every time we entered the building.

Visitors were restricted. This has ebbed and flowed over the months. At many times, the restrictions have been so stringent that the building has seemed quite empty. This has been a considerable hardship for patients, and is often mentioned by them.

Employees from the beginning have been required to follow social distancing guidelines: staying six feet away from others as possible; frequent hand hygiene; wearing of a mask when not eating; eating preferably done in the cafeteria, where tables have been placed far apart and many chairs removed. There are signs everywhere with instructions about social distancing and PPE usage. Plexiglas appeared here and then there. At times, people were seen carrying buckets around the hospital, wiping down high-touch surfaces.

Chaplains are considered essential employees and have reported to the hospital the whole time, whereas our manager, administrative person and one or two others began working from home in March (of 2020, this is) and have rarely or never been seen since.

At first it seemed there would be no effect on my income, and in fact, there seemed to be a double financial upside in that I was not traveling nor taking days off work in order to travel. However, after a while, the pandemic began to cause budget problems for the hospital, partly because elective and non-urgent procedures were put on hold to leave room for a surge of COVID patients, which to date has not happened in San Francisco, at least not in the hospital where I have been working for the past few years. Many workers have been forced to take time off (this might entail using PTO; I’m not sure, since this does not apply to me, since I am a per diem and do not have PTO), and retirement and early retirement have been encouraged. As mentioned here, I began to have fewer shifts than before, which is what led to my seeking and (fortunately) getting Job Two.

As for our actual work, from the beginning, we have placed new emphasis on staff support. Chaplains do not go in the rooms of COVID patients. If we are called to care for such a patient, it is done by telephone or video. I think this largely to preserve PPE and perhaps to put as few staff members as possible at risk. Because visitors are so restricted, chaplains have been more important than ever when it comes to emotional support of patients. There is sometimes a balancing act, as we try to stay six feet from patients and keep visits as brief as possible, while maybe being the only person there, besides the bedside RN, when a patient’s final hours are approaching. We want to keep ourselves and others safe, but not leave someone who is dying alone, or leave a frightened single visitor alone.

The supply of PPE has been uneven. At times, employees were asked to put their used N95 masks into special bins so they could be cleaned and reused. This didn’t seem to go on for long, and is not happening currently. However, rather than being fitted this year and last for N95 masks that come in at least two different sizes, we are now being fitted for one-size-fits-most models that I suppose are cheaper. In my case, I think the fit was better with the sized masks.

The first time I reported to work after San Francisco’s shelter in place order (which was a week or so later than my colleagues did, because that was also Hammett’s final week), I made sure my father and sister had my important financial information. However, I didn’t feel frightened of going to work, and I have never felt scared at work, though once or twice, at one job or another, I have walked by a whole series of rooms containing COVID patients and kind of thought, “Holy moly.” I do find I don’t want to stand around right outside such a room for long.

The hardest part has turned out to be when one of my very own colleagues has been sloppy about social distancing, which occurs exclusively at Job One, and the second hardest part was early on when people in my neighborhood weren’t wearing masks and/or allowing six feet when I thought they should be.