After the Stroke (9 page)

Dr. Petrovich has doubled my dose of Bumex because I pant so much.

But I did pick a funny little bunch of flowers for the house in the late afternoon: self-sown nicotiana, opium poppies, veronica, day lilies, Shasta daisies, “an artless bouquet” as the interviewer from the
Times
described my indoor flowers—but it was a real pleasure to do it and I must tell Karen so. She has soldiered on without enough interest or praise from me, I know, and she is so dear with Tamas, he will miss her. I shall feel forlorn when she goes back to Tucson on August fifteenth.

Thursday, July 31

I lay awake a long time last night listening to the rain, and thought how badly I have handled myself lately. Loneliness has taken over what used to be a vitalizing solitude, a pause between poetry readings and seeing many friends who used to come. Now I feel abandoned and desolate—and would like to miaow in the way Pierrot does now and then to say, “Where are you? I'm lonely!”

People, especially Janice, with all her nursing knowledge and compassionate spirit, have been as supportive as they could. But Anne and Barbara are far away—everyone after all has someone important, a job—I become the extra effort in their full-to-capacity lives. And so, I must admit, I have been for years myself, the quick responder to cries of help, often from people I have never seen, but who write to me as a friend. One reason for my depression now is that I can no longer “respond” as I used to. I feel so cut off from what was once a self.

Everyone I know must be as sick and tired of this illness as I am.

People, friends, do come, and Nancy's daily arrival at eight all week is of immeasurable comfort. She is so steady and so kind, it is a blessing—and she is very good to Tamas and the Wild Beast, Pierrot, too. On the days when she is not here, a sort of blackness takes over the house and me.

Of course what is lacking is the tangible “we” when two people live together in amity—and at seventy-four I have to admit that the likelihood of its ever happening again is slight.

In spite of the gloom yesterday I made brownies, so all is not lost!

Friday, August 1

Back from lunch with Edythe to find a note from Nancy to say “prepare to be admitted to Phillips House on Saturday.” I called them of course. “Why?” “Because otherwise you might not get a room.” They will call me between nine and eleven Saturday morning and I won't know till then. I felt dizzy.

[For one thing the Molnar-Fentons were supposed to be coming Saturday afternoon to be shown around as I am lending them the house for a holiday while I'm away. Dorothy Molnar and Stephen Fenton came to see me six or seven years ago because, they told me, it was reading my poems that had brought them together and so I was a kind of godmother to their marriage. They were at that time social workers and I was drawn to them both. Dorothy's oval face and blue eyes reminded me of my mother's, and Stephen's black beard and rosy cheeks, his bright eyes full of tenderness, charmed me. So I was deeply touched when two years later I had the announcement of the birth of their first child and saw that she had been named for me, her first name “Sarton.”

Last summer they all three spent a vacation in Ogunquit so I saw something of them and they began to feel like family. When I picked them up at Foster's, little Sarton, now five, was happy to ride with me. She said, “It is very hard to be five. So much is expected of you,” and I was delighted as I think everyone feels this about whatever age he or she may be. Sarton is a ravishing little girl with a Dutch cut that reminds me of myself at her age and wide-apart blue eyes. She observes everything and, of course, Tamas is in his element and adores any little girl not much taller than he.

So I had offered to lend them the house this summer. I had planned to go to the Cape to Rene Morgan's that week when the Massachusetts General Hospital intervened. Because I could not show them the house I worked hard putting labels on all the drawers and cupboards to say where things were in the kitchen. Then all Saturday morning I waited for a call while Edythe Haddaway and her friend, Betty, waited to be told to come and fetch me. Finally at eleven I called. A new crew takes over on the week end. They had no message for me. “You are booked for Sunday at one-thirty,” I was told. All that suspense, all the frantic arrangements, the Molnar-Fentons put off, Edythe and Betty put off. It made me furious. I had so looked forward to seeing little Sarton before I left, and making the house feel like a good nest for them, all three.

Dorothy was wonderful on the phone. They will just walk in here at noon on Sunday after I leave and will spend tonight at a motel in Ogunquit. The logistics of all this made me so agitated I felt terribly sick all that afternoon.] As Dorothy compassionately put it, “Nothing goes smoothly for you these days.”

Phillips House, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Monday, August 4

I know now what it must be like to be a dog in a cage not knowing why it is there—hoping, waiting, punished she doesn't know why or what for—for I lay in a cubicle in the Emergency ward—I had been called at ten and told to go there and be admitted—from one-fifteen to six forty-five—lying with a heart monitor on behind me so I could not move or get up. After four hours I asked to be allowed to go to the bathroom. “A bedpan is all we can offer,” said a sadistic nurse who was as mean as they come. I explained that I found it hard to function that way and she sneered, “Well, you'll come to it.” Finally a black male nurse got me out of my misery by breaking the rules, and let me into the nurses' toilet. Relief! I had had breakfast at six, but when the head nurse offered to bring food I knew I couldn't eat it. Three doctors took, my history. One, a handsome young man, must have passed by me through the room a hundred times in those interminable hours but never smiled or said, “Hang in there.” When I complained about the long wait, a nurse said, “You are lucky. Some people wait twenty-four hours.” Whenever I asked, “Has Phillips House been notified?” the head nurse said, more than once, “Yes.” But when Maggie came at five she was told I was not in the hospital!

Phillips House, Wednesday, August 6

I have become acclimatized to hospital life, I think, and am no longer a trapped hedgehog with all its bristles erect. There have been a lot of tests, as I expected. I had a very good talk with the surgeon on Monday, and he talked in terms of the operation and pacemaker, but that afternoon I was brought a pill, a drug that has not been tried in York, called verapamil hydrochloride, taken three times a day, and my heart sank. No operation after all? I burst into tears.

Maggie Vaughan, the dear woman, is staying at the Holiday Inn during these days to be my support—comes twice a day—brought delicious gingerbread with her which greatly improves jello as a dessert—and ginger ale. She leaves today.

I am awfully homesick now and tired of the deadly hospital atmosphere, bland at best, cold and inhuman at worst.

Pat Keen arrives Sunday.

I have wonderful flowers—from friends near and far. After the traumatic hours of admission, I found a lavender freesia plant from Vicky Simon, such an intimate
real
thing to find in an impersonal room!

J. T. and Cora sent flowers—a marvelous variety all different colors like some dream of flowers—in the center a red and white lily, then pink African daisies, a deep purple flower that looks like a poppy—it is Japanese—those South American small lilies in a very bright orange—more than I can name.

Polly Starr delivered a rainbow of gladiola from her garden in Hingham: pink, lavender, orange—a clap of cymbals.

Judy Burrowes sent an exquisite basket all blues and whites: freesia, white snapdragons, delphinium.

And there were heartening phone calls from R.H.C. in Oregon, from Charles Feldstein, my adopted brother in Chicago, from Pat in Los Angeles, Rene Morgan on the Cape, as well as from friends nearer by.

And I hear the news from home every day from Dorothy and hold in my heart the treasure that she and Stephen and little Sarton are having marvelous days—as is Tamas who goes on long walks with them. Pierrot did not come in Sunday night—he is very shy and easily frightened—but has now decided that all is well and has become part of the family.

Hospital hilarity: a woman just came in and asked, “Would you like to do any needlework?” Since it is difficult for me to sew on a button it made me laugh.

I have been reading Mary Gordon's
Men and Angels
, which I found repulsive at first but am now absorbed in, and yesterday Maggie brought me
The Hospice Movement
, which will be real nourishment, I know.

My friends have surrounded me with love—and that should make me well. I forgot to say that among the phone calls have been two from Fred Rogers—“Mr. Rogers”—the dear man. I could hardly believe my ears. He is off to Nantucket—how glad I was to know he would get some rest though he said, “I have to do some writing.”

Phillips House, Thursday, August 7

I can go home tomorrow but hope to wait till Saturday so Sarton's holiday will not be cut short. Dr. Garan came in around six—just as my dinner was brought in—to explain
why
the operation and pacemaker have been decided against. My heart has been shown to be weaker than they knew or expected—and what is weak is the atrium's electrical stimulus which sends blood into the ventrical. The pacemaker
only
affects the ventrical, so would “or might only do harm. “The operation is irreversible,” he said. But he also said
if
I had heart failure, which could happen, they would then as a last resort do the operation! He said, “By all means go on your lecture tour,” and is confident the pill will work. I'll still have to take Coumadin and do the blood test for that maybe every two weeks. So I'm really back at square one and not sorry to be—
if
this pill works.

[I got into a panic at first because I began to have those cramps again, and when I met Dr. Kelly in the hall, asked if I could see her for a minute. “I am very busy,” she said and walked away. Then followed me to the desk and asked in an irritated voice, “What is the matter?” I murmured that I was afraid the old symptoms were coming back and the pill might not work, a natural enough fear under the circumstances. “You were perfectly all right yesterday,” she said and turned on her heel.

Now that Dr. Garan has made his decision I can see I am to be ignored. They are through with me.]

I want to end this episode of the hospital with these pertinent remarks from
The Hospice Movement
:

It is a strange embrace we now find welcoming us into the place called
hospital.
It is one which neutralizes instantly whatever life force it is that makes each one of us into a unique individual.
Hospital
welcomes my body as so many pounds of meat, filled with potentially interesting mechanical parts and neurochemical combinations.
Hospital
strips one of all personal privacy, of all sensual pleasure, of every joy the flesh finds delight in; and at the same time, seizes me in a total embrace.
Hospital
makes war, not love.

I must believe that I am going home to be
well
, to find myself again, to function as my
self.

Saturday, August 9

I was moved the last night into a cell-like room at Baker—no one told me I could turn on the television by paying three dollars. It would have been well worth it. No towels. No light over the bed. But the nurses I saw were all very kind—one even recognized my name. I was to leave at ten. They forgot my breakfast. Edythe came at nine-thirty and we got a cart so she could wheel down the flowers I had chosen from the many in the other room and my suitcase and briefcase and pack Betty's car where Betty waited—and waited—and waited. Dr. Kelly only got to me with the prescriptions at eleven-fifteen! The thing that saved me that last night was reading the Hospice book which Maggie brought. It took me right out of self-pity and ugly surroundings to pure love.

In the hospital I had dreamed of home and saw it all as a dream, composed and quiet, full of beauty and the eternal murmur of the ocean, but when I got back after lunch and was alone here, the house fell on my shoulders like a heavy, weight. All there is to do! For Pat arrives tomorrow night.

Pierrot recognized me and purred when I picked him up, but Tamas does not like the bed I had ordered from L. L. Bean's with so much joy. It is too big for him and I must change it for a smaller one. At last nasturtiums are out in the garden.

Sunday, August 10

A fine summer day and no thunderstorms for a change! I've accomplished quite a lot—mostly dragging in food—how heavy melons are! It took one hour and a half—partly because of getting crabmeat—for I have invited Karen Olch and her friend for lunch tomorrow. The fish market is in the center of York Beach and it took me over half an hour of stop-and-go along the beach itself. How inviting the water looked, lovely little waves ruffling the edge of the ocean and people looking happy.

Monday, August 11

When I sat down to look at the news, with macaroni and cheese in the oven, I found the television was not working! Finally I got through to the right number and a very land young man drove up in about an hour, climbed a tree with a ladder and fixed whatever it was. Pat got here in the warm summer night around quarter past nine—and it was good to see her. How thankful I am to Edythe for meeting the plane, which was an hour late!

It rained in the night and will be hot and steamy for sure. The crabmeat salad is all made and the chicken stuffed for tonight, so I am on my way “with miles to go before I sleep.” I am tired, but able to cope—that is the good news. Hurrah!

Tuesday, August 12

Amazing—I can hardly take in that I do feel better, that I am myself again. I am so happy I managed to have Karen Olch and her friend for lunch and was able, I think, to tell Karen what she has done for me this summer, and under the difficult circumstances that I was not really here in spirit to see what she had done and appreciate it fully. I needed to say this and to thank her properly. The last two weeks since Debby arrived from Tucson have been too backed up, too much to do, too many people to say good-by to, so she is at the raw edge of exhaustion—and it showed when she came here to work. In the early days she was so happy to be here, so dear with Tamas, she seemed glowing with the pleasure of it and worked like a beaver. She is a brave woman, one of five who burst through police to pour ashes on the memorial, a bronze replica of a nuclear mushroom, at Pease Air Force Base on the anniversary of Hiroshima. They were arrested, then the case held off for weeks. I think they got community work as penalty and she will be allowed to do it in Tucson.