{"id":1735,"date":"2020-12-17T21:03:49","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T21:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/?page_id=1735"},"modified":"2020-12-31T16:08:07","modified_gmt":"2020-12-31T16:08:07","slug":"kathryn-trueblood","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/kathryn-trueblood\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathryn Trueblood"},"content":{"rendered":"

Death Fever<\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yesterday, I went over to my mom\u2019s house to fix her bathtub drain. \u201cIt\u2019s not working,\u201d she told me. I looked from the toilet plunger in the bathtub to the drain, then I leaned over and pushed the lever down. The water went on its way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s not going very fast,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going fine, Mom. Why don\u2019t I look at your bills, since I am here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Halfway up the stair, she sat down. This is a gesture of the women in my family, confidences in stairwells.<\/p>\n

\u201cGive me your word,\u201d she said. Her voice was tremulous, her breath ragged. She read the question in my face. \u201cGive me your word you won\u2019t lock me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t, Mom, I won\u2019t. But we have to figure out something else we can do when it gets bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have no idea what they did to me in there.\u201d She is squeezing her own hands and turning them over each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing like that is ever going to happen to you again, Mom. You have a family that supports you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what will happen? Can we get some pills?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Mom, you\u2019re not entitled to the Death With Dignity prescription.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not? I\u2019ve already received a life sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause of the way the law is written. It says you have to be six months from the end of your life as determined by a physician and also in your right mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd by the time I get that far, I won\u2019t be in my right mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s rotten.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is. It makes me angry. The only legal option is Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow long does that take?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSeven to ten days.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow ghastly. I want to go quick.\u201d Then she is crying. \u201cI don\u2019t want to lose who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I realized my mother was changing this winter when the first heavy snow hit, weighing down the lines and taking out the electricity. When I called, I learned that my mother had no lanterns and no snow tires on her car. She also needed new boots. She came out into the snow wearing clogs and managed to navigate her way down the stairs to the parking lot. In the store, while she was trying on boots, she kept changing places, moving from one bench to another while I zigzagged across the floor,\u00a0 collecting our purses and shopping bags.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like Mr. Magoo,\u201d she said, when she realized.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not allowed to move again,\u201d I said, dumping our purses. We laughed.<\/p>\n

Does anyone know who Mr. Magoo is anymore? His main problem as a comic-book character was short-sightedness, which he refused to admit he had, even as it got him into one amusing predicament after another. He seemed always to be saved by a stroke of luck, unscathed and oblivious. I wish the same for my mother. But I picture her future brain, the deposits of proteins like the snow weighing down the electric lines, the world preternaturally quiet and stark, the hum of everything in our houses stopped.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My eighty-four-year-old mother is at her best on a trail and keeps a pretty good clip in her hitched gate\u2014two hip replacements later. We walk alongside the Nooksack River, around us the thronging green of new spring. At the bank, she remembers her father teaching her to fly fish. From the way she gazes at the glinting water, I wonder if she sees him there. The next day, she thanks me again for taking her. \u201cLet\u2019s go back to the desert soon,\u201d she says. The river roils with new run off. I am seeking the headwaters of this story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As a girl, my mother felt most herself in a horse stable, mucking out a barn. Her father owned a cattle ranch in the Ventura hills, Running Springs Ranch. Pepper trees lined the drive. She took me there when I was a child, before the tract home developers shaved away all recognizable topography. She remembers the name of her first horse: Tickle. She still walks her dog a mile or two every day, even when her vertigo is so bad she thinks she might fall down. We meet to walk to the dog park in Sudden Valley, near the old red barn that is all that remains of the cattle ranch this place once was. The golf course lies in a gentle basin bounded on one side by a nine-mile lake, and on the others by foothills and forests. She\u2019s slender and walks fast, forward tilted. When she is a certain distance from me, she looks like a girl, and I feel a wistful anguish as though I could see the working ranch of her childhood from here or as though she could have seen this former ranch when she was a girl, this place where she will choose to die.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We\u2019re at the breakfast table on a Sunday with my brother when my mother says to me, \u201cI saw you talking to my doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, I haven\u2019t even met your doctor. You have an appointment next week.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I saw you at the cocktail party. You were talking to him.\u201d She sounds none too pleased.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, we\u2019re in a pandemic. I\u2019ve never been to a cocktail party with your doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it was a dream,\u201d my brother suggests.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe,\u201d she says, not sounding convinced. \u201cIt felt real.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe my mother has trusted anyone since she met my father.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She was in her third year at Stanford studying art history. He was a Catholic boy on scholarship, son of a widow, studying pre-med. She was an upper-class Protestant, and back then their match was considered a cultural crossing. Though she lives in a small condo now, my mother grew up a debutante in a 1929 brick Georgian house in mid-Wilshire Los Angeles. When I watch the film version of Little Women <\/i>with my mother, we spot pieces of her furniture: the horse hair chair with the spiral arms, the walnut chest with its sculpted fruit and nut handles, the oil painting of a stately quarter horse. My father\u2019s beauty as a young man was piercing\u2014the plush curvature of his mouth\u2014and I imagine my mother associated it with sorrow, or maybe shame, something recessed in him she wanted to touch. His mother, Hayd\u00e8e, was a New Orleans creole who found work at the unemployment office because she was fluent in both Spanish and French. Hayd\u00e8e confessed to my mom that for years, instead of going to mass, she dressed up and went to Dunkin Donuts. Even later in life, my father\u2019s distaste for the church in which he was raised was pronounced, more like revulsion than distaste, more like fury. He once pointed to my son who was six and said, \u201cImagine being a boy like that, like that, and being threatened with fire and brimstone.\u201d<\/p>\n

I believe a sin was committed against my father early in life. Perhaps it happened at Loyola Catholic School for Boys or at his local parish. I believe it\u2019s the reason my grandmother quit going to mass, quit making her boys go. I\u2019ll never be able to verify if he was abused though both my brothers think so, too. My father was covert in his actions. Once he flew up to Seattle from San Jose without telling any of us and dropped in on my brother at the office because he was angry. My father liked stealth.<\/p>\n

I have no compass points for the truth from my parents. I do know that when my father left his third wife, she told me he had already rented and furnished an apartment without telling her. Unprocessed trauma plays out as pattern. That\u2019s why this story loops like a lariat in a rancher\u2019s hands, a circle in the air first and then a circle in the dust.<\/p>\n

My mother cries when she tells me this story: \u201cAfter I was released from the hospital, I went to the house where you and your father lived, except it was empty. I stood there, looking through the windows. I didn\u2019t know where he\u2019d taken you.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want you there when I speak to the doctor.\u201d My mother\u2019s tone is arch. \u201cI am perfectly capable of handling my affairs myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, you have a disability now. Short term memory loss is a disability. You can learn to compensate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do. I write everything down in my calendar.\u201d<\/p>\n

She does write everything down in her calendar. And then she gets mixed up and whites it out. Then she says she can\u2019t use the white out tape. It\u2019s not made for left-handed people. She gives it to me. I spin the loop back in and take it home. We buy her bottled white out. She says it makes her wheeze. What she needs now is white out tape. Some pages of her calendar are so covered in white out, I can\u2019t see the date.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to take over your doctor\u2019s appointment, Mom. I am just going to be there as your co-pilot, as your auxiliary memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be useless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not, Mom. We\u2019re all making adjustments.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is abruptly tearful. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry. I am so sorry for what this is doing to your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

I almost prefer her fighting with me or blaming her memory loss on the pinched nerve in her neck, prefer it to this torment, this floodplain of grief.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think about traumatic brain injuries now that my mother is losing memory and cognition. In high school, my mother had a ski accident that concussed her, and she lay in the hospital for weeks while the cortisone dissolved the clots in her brain. This morning, she called to tell me she didn\u2019t need to see the neurologist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI only lose my memory when you put pressure on me. You\u2019re so bossy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBlaming me is not going to help, Mom. This has been going on for a year.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

My mother and I have resolved to look through the photo albums this summer, so I can annotate them for my kids. One afternoon, we are leafing through the album from Germany, where my father was transferred by the army to treat soldiers diagnosed with syphilis and deliver the babies of officers\u2019 wives. She says quite matter-of-factly, \u201cThere\u2019s your father\u2019s lover.\u201d I peer closer, a dark-haired woman no less vixen than my blonde mother.<\/p>\n

My mother was supposed to stay stateside with us\u2014 I was six months old and my brother was two\u2014 but within weeks, she grew restless and decided to join him. She maintains that my father picked her up at the airport with a woman named Annaliese, his new friend, and that my mother had to sit in back with us. Maybe he borrowed the woman\u2019s car. Maybe not. According to my father, Annaliese became pregnant after an affair with a senior officer. My father confronted him in order to make the man do the right thing and support the child. According to my mother, my father was having an affair with Annaliese and the baby was his. Either could be true. Dr. Trueblood certainly liked to be the hero for women. He was also very principled and stood his ground. Later in life, when he was chief of staff at El Camino hospital, he publicly posted the C-section rates of all the obstetricians until the numbers fell.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Dad died, I found handwritten letters from Annaliese,\u201d I say. I don\u2019t hasten to turn the page. \u201cAnd pictures of her daughter under his bed. The child certainly didn\u2019t look like Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother shrugs. \u201cThe art of innuendo,\u201d she says. \u201cYour brother doesn\u2019t look like him either.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there were love messages in those letters, they were couched in \u201cremember when\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0 Scenes of ice skating and leaves falling. Prosaic. Naturally I was hoping for something definitive. And I only found a handful of letters \u2026though she wrote to him for nearly twenty years. You decide which version of the story you like best.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like either.<\/p>\n

We lived in the village and my mother drove a Volkswagen with walnuts in the tire treads for traction on the snow. By accident, she drove through a tank squadron and the ground shook. There\u2019s a fetching picture of us as a family from that time\u2014my father and brother in lederhosen wearing felt hats with jaunty feathers, my mother and I in our dirndls. We had friends in a farm house, mulled wine, Krampus at Christmas to chase the children around. He was Santa\u2019s devilish sidekick. We screamed and ran while he roared. My grandparents hired my mother a housekeeper who waxed the floor with mayonnaise, and we all slipped and fell. To amuse himself, my brother lit toilet paper on fire while sitting on my parent\u2019s bed. My father came home to a mattress smoking in the snow; my mother had managed to shove it out the window. Towards the end, my mother confronted my father about the alleged affair. It seemed he was always gone, and so stony when he was home. He denied the liaison, saying it was all in her head. \u201cHe was God, judge, and jury,\u201d as she puts it. When he left that weekend for a hunting trip, she took us to the farmhouse neighbors, then took all her sleeping pills and lay down.<\/p>\n

My father arrived home early and saved her. She was medevacked back to the states in a Red Cross helicopter. He would follow later on a military flight that dropped us off in Philadelphia, where my father boarded a train and rode with us to Los Angeles, his two children aged four and six.<\/p>\n

Years later, when I told my father that my mother believed he had had an affair in Germany, he said, \u201cI can see why she might have believed that, but it\u2019s not what happened.\u201d I remember exactly where we were when we had this conversation because he did not look at me as he spoke. We were standing at the western edge of the university campus where I teach, eyes traveling from the dark teal blue of the Puget Sound to the glittery peaks of the Coast Mountains in Canada. \u201cShe was the one who ran off to Vienna to have an affair with a sculptor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next time I spoke with my mother, I asked her about it. She said, \u201cOh, that. That was only after<\/i> his affair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, she taps her finger on a photo I cherish: the four of us on a blanket at the beach, my mother\u2019s heavy hair swept up in a French twist, a tender cast to my father\u2019s face, their babies lolling about in their laps. Evidently, my parents\u2019 fights were epic:\u00a0 \u201cI tried to scare him,\u201d she says now, \u201cand I guess I succeeded.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the suicide attempt, she wound up in Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, and it would take her parents and lawyers to get her back out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The young neurologist asks my mother if she has ever gotten lost. \u201cYes, I did once, in the car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what did you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just drove around until I recognized something.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is news to me.\u00a0He has her fill out pages of questions. She draws shapes, erases them, redraws them. She looks at me. \u201cDon\u2019t ask me to do geometry, Mom.\u201d We laugh. \u201cI can\u2019t help you there.\u201d His walls are hung with enlargements of Mt. Baker and the Twin Sister peaks. For a moment, I feel dug in at the summit, bivouacked where the air is thinnest. After the tests, he tells her he thinks she has a major dementia syndrome developing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I feel like myself. Are you sure?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no doubt in my mind, from the tests and what you have told me, that there is a major dementia problem going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

With great kindness, he asks her to stop driving. \u201cI wish there was some way for you to maintain your independence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll only drive to town and back,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s ready for this. \u201cI\u2019d recommend that you get a behind-the-wheel test at the DOL. They do them for seniors. I have to ask that you not drive until that\u2019s done, and the office may not be offering the tests yet because of the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

He mentions blood tests, MRIs, and medications to boost the brain chemicals for improved memory.<\/p>\n

She cuts through his medical-ese: \u201cDoes it just get worse and worse until you\u2019re no longer a person?\u201d<\/p>\n

No,\u201d he says, \u201cYou\u2019ll always be a person, you will just need more help, eventually a full-time caregiver. But that progression is five to ten years. Once you come to terms with this terrible news, you\u2019ll realize you have lots of quality of life ahead. You don\u2019t live in pain, and you are capable of joy. We all get a dementia of some kind in the aging process.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother squints at him. \u201cI fear being controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are entire organizations to support you,\u201d he says, smiling.<\/p>\n

While my mother pays the copay, I roll up brochures full of senior care options, and breathe the heated air inside my mask. On the one hand, I am grateful to this doctor for his positive outlook, and on the other, I think, buddy, you\u2019re ducking it. I\u2019ve read about what end stage Alzheimer\u2019s looks like: intelligible speech lost, ambulatory ability lost, ability to sit up\u00a0 lost, ability to smile lost, ability to swallow lost\u2026<\/p>\n

She and I are stunned and silent going down the stairs from the neurologist\u2019s office\u2014my mother always takes the stairs. In the car, I propose we get a milkshake, an old family tradition in tough times, except we don\u2019t know what\u2019s open in our town anymore. Eventually, I find a smoothie shop. There are instructions on the door for ordering from an app or via the website. I can\u2019t make the website work, and I don\u2019t need a free app on my phone to gum it up with advertisements. I can see two young women inside running the juicers. Finally, I just call the shop\u2019s number and ask if I can order. We wave through the window.<\/p>\n

Back in the car with my Mahaolo Mango and her Pina Koolada, we suck in some sweetness. After a few moments, my mother rests the cup in the holder and turns to me. Her blue eyes pool with fear. \u201cI won\u2019t go into one of those places,\u201d she says, her voice running out with her breath. It takes me a moment to realize she isn\u2019t talking about the smoothie shop. She takes a deep quaking lungful of air. She means assisted living or a nursing home. \u201cI don\u2019t ever want to be locked up. Your father had me committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, Mom, and I know it has made you really afraid,\u201d I say. \u201cBut you heard the doctor, we can hire people to help you at home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have no idea what they did to me in there. And your father colluded with the doctors not to let me out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, that\u2019s not what is happening now. We\u2019re going to make every decision together.\u201d But she is not hearing me. The sound of pain in her ears must be like the rail squeal of a mile-long freight train. She clutches my hands.<\/p>\n

\u201cPromise me,\u201d she begs, \u201c promise me, you\u2019ll never lock me up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, I\u2019d rather die than live in a nursing home. My friend Carolyn lived in one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMe, too,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d rather die.\u201d She sighs and looks out the window.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been afraid tell you that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be. It\u2019s a relief to hear it said.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople choose to voluntarily stop eating and drinking, Mom, so they can stay at home. It\u2019s kind of a movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what I want to do then. When it gets bad. I want to stay in my home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI learned about it a few years ago, Mom. My church was sponsoring a workshop, and I went to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would you do a thing like that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I thought this day might come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh sweetheart. You are so courageous.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

As a young woman, I tried to understand what had happened to my mother at Langley Porter. At U.C. Berkeley, where I went to college, I read feminist critiques of the male-dominated and male-defined mental health system, and the histories of women who had been institutionalized. In Women and Madness<\/i>, Phyllis Chesler asserts that \u201cWomen who reject or are ambivalent about the female role frighten both themselves and society so much that their ostracism and self\u2010destructiveness probably begin early.\u201d My mother received electro-shock and Thorazine, I know that much. Following her release from Langley Porter, she divorced my father and won custody of us in a courtroom. When I see her walking toward me with her lilting gait and her girlish wave, I think of the courage it took to fight for us, and how exceptionally close it made us\u2014 my mother, brother, and me. My husband thinks we are a volatile family emotionally, and it\u2019s true, we go the mat with each other. We shout a lot but we also show up for each other; we hear each other out. I believe my mother trusts only us in the world. She is like an electrical storm, beautiful and terrifying. There is something so solitary and brave about her. How else could a person make the decision to voluntarily stop eating and drinking?<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

My mother still likes training dogs on agility courses and in the mornings when we walk, she makes her foxlike Shiba Inu bounce back and forth over a hanging chain or walk along a log. She likes the single-mindedness of animals. After she got custody of us, she moved us in with our grandparents and took to jumping horses and hanging out with journalists who were shooting a documentary about the Ku Klux Klan in the South. She flew off a dressage horse as it went over a jump. As with the ski accident, momentary flight followed by major crash landing seemed to be the theme. She was in Louisiana with a journalist and Nieman Fellow who was in love with her; also his best friend, who was in love with her, and married. The two men had a shouting match over her hospital bed where she lay with a concussion. There was a commercial airline strike at the time, and my grandfather, who was constantly getting her out of scrapes, arranged for a flight out of Louisiana. The seriously boozing journalist secured a private pilot to fly her to Atlanta. My mother swears the pilot\u2019s name was Monkey Scales and that he could not read the instruments. Every so often they\u2019d swoop down over the Interstate to read the highway signs. He crash-landed, and it\u2019s never been ascertained if that was what concussed her again or the riding accident. I remember visiting her in the hospital. She wanted me in bed with her, and she let me have her chocolate pudding. Strands of light came through the slats of the shutters, glistening like fishing line, and I knew even then, if you put my mother to the test, she could pull more than her own weight.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

My mother\u2019s doctor is Polish, somewhere in his mid-sixties, which means he graduated from medical school in Poland in the 1970s, emigrated here, learned English, and completed medical school a second time. Under \u201cpersonal interests\u201d on his doctor profile page, the first thing he lists is \u201cfamily.\u201d Also, \u201cboating, ham radio and Coast Guard Auxiliary.\u201d He speaks English, Polish, Italian, and German. I followed the advice that Kathleen at Compassion and Choices in Seattle gave me and called the doctor\u2019s office first to find out if he would be willing to support VSED medically, so we could avoid an uncomfortable exchange and the doctor could prepare\u2026 or not. His nurse called back to say we should make an appointment. The doctor would talk to us about Voluntarily Stopping Eating and Drinking.<\/p>\n

We wait a long time in the examining room because while he is appreciated for his thoroughness and attentiveness, his patients also know this means he runs chronically late. In the examining room, my mother\u2019s blood pressure is high. She asks to take her black cloth mask off and is told not to. She turns to me, \u201cI feel like I can\u2019t breathe in this mask. It\u2019s so thick. I\u2019m claustrophobic.\u201d I ask the nurse if we can have a paper one.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zieli\u0144ski enters the room in a big way; evidently a big and blustery guy\u2014\u201cHello Sara, how are ve doink? You don\u2019t look like a person who is dyink. You look very nice, as alvays.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell,\u201d I\u2019m not dying,\u201d my mother says, brightening noticeably, \u201cbut I do want to talk about end of life issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you vant to talk about end of life issues, you vill have to convince me you are dyink,\u201d he says, gazing at her with a soft smile. I suddenly remember coming across a poem on my mother\u2019s computer filed \u201cFor Dr. Zieli\u0144ski.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had this recent diagnosis.\u201d She can\u2019t seem to summon the word Alzheimer\u2019s. I wonder if she is panicking under the mask. \u201cAnd I want to know what my choices are\u2026 Can I take this mask off?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCertainly. Take it off.\u201d He pulls his own mask down beneath his chin and pushes one hip into the counter. He looks like a bald, round-headed baby with a bib under his chin.<\/p>\n

\u201cVat your choices are\u2026vell, nobody has a right to force feed you. That can be honored. Help me understand vat you are seeking.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the time comes, I want to choose to die.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother is perched on the examining table and the doctor is standing. I am sitting in the corner of the room, literally, and their conversation seems to be taking place over my head. I wait for my mother to say the words she came here to say: Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking, or even the abbreviation, VSED.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t do euthanasia, Sara. The drugs that bring about death are controlled substances by the federal government. I don\u2019t vant to go to prison. I tell my vife, if I am in a really bad shape, take me to the mountains, I vill walk off into the snow. That vill be between me and my maker. In certain religions, you cannot take your life. But every year, so many people drive off the cliff, and these are not recorded as suicide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to commit suicide,\u201d my mother says. She looks at me, quizzically, as if to say, what are we talking about? I am no longer sure either but it is becoming clear to me that he may not support VSED. Is he recommending my mother drive off a cliff?<\/p>\n

\u201cListen,\u201d I say to him, \u201cMy mother has just been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s and vascular dementia. She has only this window of time in which to make plans. While she is mentally competent. And she doesn\u2019t want to spend years in a nursing home.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother echoes this, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t want to spend years in a nursing home.\u201d She is ready to get back on board.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zieli\u0144ski squints as though he is trying to see us from the other side of the world. \u201cI say, if<\/i> you get<\/i> to go to nursing home, if <\/i>you get<\/i> to. I took care of my mother and it vas very hard time; my grandmother took care of her sister. Nursing home is luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother is swinging her legs like a girl and looking down at her knuckles.<\/p>\n

I try from another angle, scrambling to get my footing. I thought he was going to help us. \u201cWhat about the vascular dementia? My mother is at increased risk for stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf she has stroke, it\u2019s simple,\u201d he says. \u201cSimple.\u201d<\/p>\n

I feel my cheeks redden. \u201cMy husband\u2019s mother was in bed for eight years after a stroke, disabled and locked in. How is that simple?\u201d<\/p>\n

The grey and grizzled doctor sits on his stool so we can better stare at each other.<\/p>\n

\u201cListen, two hundred years ago, you vent how you vent. Too much morphine suppresses breathing center. We, as physicians, are being put at tremendous risk in this litigious country. Government immediately counts any narcotic I prescribe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand, but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re asking. There are doctors in Whatcom County who are providing palliative care to patients who choose VSED.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know about that.\u201d He takes off the square yellow-tinted glasses he wears that make him look like a seventies game show host and scrubs at them with his lab coat. \u201cI have malpractice. I let hospice take care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHospice won\u2019t come in Whatcom County if she chooses to do VSED. That\u2019s why we need a doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Zieli\u0144ski stands and puts his glasses back on. He resumes looking at my mother. \u201cVe don\u2019t know how things gonna go. Nobody knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, we don\u2019t.\u201d My mother raises one shoulder as she says this, a very feminine gesture I\u2019ve known my whole life.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour daughter is legally vell-versed. I am not. People do all kinds of things, that is between them and their God. I am not able to completely satisfy what your daughter vants me to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of me doesn\u2019t mind the way he has cut me out in order to return the conversation to a one-on-one between them. This is my mother\u2019s doctor after all, and I feel a little bit like a child in time-out watching my parents. Yet another part of me feels utterly dismissed, and worse implicated, as a spoiled American daughter who wishes to duck out on pain and responsibility.<\/p>\n

Dr. Zieli\u0144ski tells his nurse, \u201cVe going to do a new POLST form,\u201d and when she delivers it on a clip board, he gets to work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re in a bad shape, you\u2019re not making these decisions. Ve take measures now. You have dementia, so ve going to say nobody search for cancer, okay?<\/p>\n

It takes me a few minutes to remember that POLST stands for Physician\u2019s Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment; it\u2019s the form the medics take off the refrigerator if you\u2019re going on an ambulance ride.<\/p>\n

He begins checking off boxes: \u201cNo to cardiopulmonary resuscitation. No medically assisted nutrition\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, thank you,\u201d my mother says, \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t be so grateful, I think, and in the same breath, at least he is getting us part way there.<\/p>\n

\u201cSara,\u201d he says, \u201cI have seen bad things. Ven I vas only doctor in my county in Montana, I also act as coroner. This couple, many years disputes between them. The husband, he put couch up against door and rifle under chin, so vife would see him thru front window. Blew his whole head off. I have to see that.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother says, \u201cThat was an act of rage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Zieli\u0144ski nods. \u201c\u2018Lady,\u2019 I said to this woman. \u201c\u2018Your husband must hate you, really hate you, to do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have seen such terrible things,\u201d my mother says. They are gazing at each other. I feel like they have forgotten I am in the room.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I have seen these terrible things,\u201d he says. In that moment, I see that my mother is someone to whom he has spoken his mind, a person to whom he could<\/i> speak his mind, these many years. At first, I wonder why he is telling her this story. To let her know he can\u2019t bear to help anyone end their life? In a moment, I have my answer. In parting, he stands right in front of my mother and looks into her eyes. He knows this is goodbye. He has a big face with a small smile in it, and he keeps his teeth hidden, which adds a kind of sweetness to his countenance. And then they embrace\u2026in the middle of a pandemic\u2026 the doctor who has a crush on my mother and my mother who has a crush on her doctor. I am embarrassed to be in the room.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

In the car, my mom says, \u201cHe\u2019s not going to help us, is he?\u201d<\/p>\n

I am relieved and impressed that she has pulled the essential information from the exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I think he is Catholic, Mom. That\u2019s the majority religion in Poland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very emotional, all over the map really.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was that hug all about?\u201d<\/p>\n

She laughs. \u201cI think he has a crush on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you have a crush on him! Sheez, Mom, still working your wiles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt bad for him. He couldn\u2019t stand the idea of helping me die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has a good heart, but yeah, he\u2019s not going to help us VSED.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen did we become \u201cwe\u201d?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, I can\u2019t ever be the one to bring up VSED to a doctor again. That can\u2019t come from me or other people will think I am coercing you. Dr. Zieli\u0144ski thinks I don\u2019t want the bother of caring for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s so not true. You\u2019re caring for me right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know, but you heard what he said about nursing homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

“He\u2019s just very conservative, paternalistic. I thought he might be. What next?”<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to find you a new doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

That night at home, I ask my husband, the child of Latvian refugees, how the doctor could view walking off into the snow as natural but not voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. \u201cHe\u2019s old world,\u201d my husband says. \u201cStarvation is something other people do to you, it\u2019s not something you do to yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

At night, I research, and I talk to my brother. VSED sounds like it can go one of two ways\u2014my mother could lapse into a coma in three days and be gone in six, or it could be a long haul, nine or ten days of shriveling and thirsting while her hands and feet turn blue. For several weeks, I\u2018m frantic on the internet, fueled by a rash grief: I reach out to Compassion and Choices (formerly the Hemlock Society), and the Final Exit Network, another volunteer organization dedicated to \u201cself-deliverance and assisted dying for the terminally and hopelessly ill.\u201d I learn that the helium hood method is the most popular, and that it is not painful to breathe the inert gas. But there are\u00a0 other problems: my mother would have to do it entirely herself (none of our fingerprints on the hood), although we could be there with her. (It is not technically illegal to watch a person commit suicide.) I also learn that party stores no longer sell pure helium; it\u2019s now 20% air and won\u2019t work for the purposes of departure. One morning, I make an urgent call to my brother: \u201cCan you get pure helium?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d he says, \u201cfrom welding supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust call me Katy Kevorkian,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

I visualize everything, my mother\u2019s brass bed, her terra cotta red chair, the books at her bedside, the brass clock with the black roman numerals. I can\u2019t decide if my brother and I should throw away all evidence of the helium tanks and equipment afterwards (so she won\u2019t be found with a turkey baster bag over her head) and do as Derek Humphrey advises in his book: leave her house and buy something so that there will be a receipt with a time stamp. Then, on the morning of the next day, call the doctor. Humphrey advises against calling an ambulance, which would bring the police. With luck, the doctor and the coroner will deem the cause of death as old age. No autopsy, no investigation. I find no records of assisted suicide being prosecuted, and ours is a right-to-die state. Still, there is a risk here. My mother is adamant we not take any risk. \u201cI\u2019m not going to ruin your lives.\u201d So, I picture leaving her in her bed, beneath the lemony satin quilt, hood on, plastic sucked to her face. That way, it will be clear she did it to herself. The roman numerals on the clock in her bedroom seem to keep time to a different era, a different universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d my mother says, \u201cbut if Andrew is going to buy the helium and bring it here, that\u2019s a problem.\u201d She lets out a huge sigh. \u201cWhy can\u2019t I just have pills?\u201d<\/p>\n

This I have explained to my mother repeatedly. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in Washington but excludes dementia patients.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I\u2019m screwed,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cBasically,\u201d I answer.<\/p>\n

Next week, we will have this conversation again. I wonder about the role of credulity in her memory. After all, she was hanging out with movie crews during the barbiturate-plenty seventies. She can\u2019t believe phenobarbital and Seconal are that hard to get. She also can\u2019t believe Alzheimer\u2019s is excluded from the right-to-die law when in her view it is a terminal disease. \u201cIt just takes forever,\u201d she says to me ruefully. When she forgets why she can\u2019t have the pills again, I will remember that she took sleeping pills once, a long time ago in a far, far away land, at least that is how my child mind framed it, my mother the queen locked in the tower by her husband.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

She calls me at 8:30 one morning. Her voice is hoarse and she is gulping air. \u201cI\u2019ve started,\u201d she whispers.<\/p>\n

\u201cStarted what?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cVSED. I\u2019m not going to eat anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom,\u201d I say, \u201cIt\u2019s not something you just do. We\u2019ve got to have a doctor on board in case you need pain medication. We\u2019ve got to get the lawyer to rewrite your healthcare directive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d she says. She sounds tearful. \u201cWell, I want it to be soon. I look at you kids and at Connor and Eva and my funny little dog. I go walking, and I am so in love with life, this is how I want to leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom, I\u2019m going to respect whatever decision you make, but let\u2019s get into Dr. Henares first and make sure we have the medical support you need.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I hang up, I get a cup of coffee and call a close friend. Her husband is undergoing treatment for Stage IV cancer. I know that recently he has switched from oxycodone to morphine for pain management. In my state of mind, asking for his drug surplus seems only a little bold. I\u2019ve known Lucy since 8th grade\u2014I once went on a road trip with her up California\u2019s Pacific Coast Highway and got so high on hash oil I fell out of her car. After years of underage drinking and our generally reprobate behavior as two jailbait girls hanging out with Viet Nam vets, this doesn\u2019t seem out of bounds.\u00a0 In retrospect, I think I was suffering from death fever, the condition that arises when you\u2019ve never thought much about death before and now you think about it all the time. Lucy was very loving. She said, \u201cUm, sometimes he still needs the oxy for breakthrough pain, but I\u2019ll talk to the palliative care social worker and see if we can get more.\u201d Her tone was squeaky with discomfort, yet also honeyed with concern. \u201cI mean, we want to help your mom out.\u201d I thought about the liability and guilt they would feel\u2014his pills inside my mother\u2019s body, stopping her ticker. I never ask Lucy again, and my having done so does not disrupt our friendship. If anyone could understand and forgive my temporary insanity, it is Lucy.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

We have to wait a month to get the results of the MRI back from the neurologist. Unlike us, my mother is able to forget that she may have Alzheimer\u2019s or vascular dementia. Sometimes, she is light-hearted. She calls from the front hall when she comes to dinner, \u201cThe ninny is here.\u201d She has forgotten her hearing aids and the pie back at her house. \u201cBearer of little brain!\u201d Other times she tells me, almost as a warning, \u201cI\u2019m going to live a long time like my mother.\u201d Yes, I think, your body will live a long time, but you brain is dying. Often, she completely forgets the visit to the neurologist and his conviction that she has a major dementia disorder. I have to remind her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do you know?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was there with you, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWas I there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut how can you be sure it\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s in the chart notes he gave us. You put them in a file upstairs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou gave me the chart notes?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, I did. Let\u2019s go upstairs and read them.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we\u2019re done reading them, she leans back in her chair with the fingers of both hands covering her mouth. Then she drops her hands to her lap, suddenly gasping. \u201cPlease don\u2019t lock me up. Please. You have no idea what they did to me in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

I take her hands. \u201cMom,\u201d I say again, \u201cI know what happened to you, but that is not what\u2019s happening now.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

In the days and weeks that follow, I swear she can feel that I am withholding something from her, she can feel all that agitated research I am not sharing. Instead I talk to my therapist about the pros and cons of helium hoods versus VSED. I consider aloud where I can get pills. My therapist and I are on ZOOM and we often bend our heads towards the screen so that I have the feeling we really are putting our heads together. His eyes get fishbowl large. I expect him to favor the legal options, but he says something that squeezes the blood out of my heart. \u201cA body may be barely occupied and still fight for life. It can get very unclear. The memory of it could stay with you for years.\u201d There is no way I want to wonder if I killed my mother.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Kathryn Trueblood<\/strong><\/span>\u2019s newest novel, Take Daily As Needed<\/em>, presents the challenges of parenting while ill with the desperado humor the subject deserves (University of New Mexico Press, 2019). She has been awarded the Goldenberg Prize for Fiction and the Red Hen Press Short Story Award. Her work is situated firmly in the medical humanities. Her previous novel, The Baby Lottery<\/em>, dealt with the repercussions of infertility in a female friend group (a Book Sense Pick in 2007). Her story collection, The Sperm Donor\u2019s Daughter<\/em>, takes a look at assisted reproduction. Trueblood has offered workshops in therapeutic writing at The Examined Life Conference at the University of Iowa, the Hugo House in Seattle, and the Lighthouse Writers Conference in Denver. Her essay, \u201cWriting from a Pile of Shoes: Chronic Illness, Kids, and Creation<\/a>,\u201d was published by Literary Mama, <\/em>and you can find her interviews at Invisible Not Broken Podcast<\/a>, Montana Public Radio<\/a>, and Writing It Real<\/a>. She is a professor of English at Western Washington University and a faculty member of The Red Badge Project<\/a>, a non-profit organization serving veterans in Washington through the use of storytelling techniques.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Death Fever   Yesterday, I went over to my mom\u2019s house to fix her bathtub drain. \u201cIt\u2019s not working,\u201d she told me. I looked from the toilet plunger in the bathtub to the drain, then I leaned over and pushed the lever down. The water went on its way. \u201cWell, it\u2019s not going very fast,\u201d … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Kathryn Trueblood”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1735","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1735"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1921,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1735\/revisions\/1921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/vice-versa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}