RIP Jimmy Roger Joseph LeBlond

My father was born in the remote tip of Maine...just over the border was the river of his youth.  He was a man of nature and history and loyalty to the end.  He hated liars and people that weren't thankful for the life and land they lived in.  He was a soldier, a husband, a brother, a father, and a friend to many.  He told you the truth, always.  He loved baseball and wrestling and dogs.  He was a man of the world, but more so a man of this country.

My life with him has been tentative for so many reasons.  I don't remember the very early years as he was gone by the time I was 4 years old.  My mother was hard to live with and I would learn this throughout my life.  I would eventually understand the distance between us was more because of her.

We came together again when I was 10.  He was a stranger that I wanted to know.  I had looked for him out my window for 6 years.  I waited by the mailbox on birthdays and Christmases to see if he remembered who I was.  I never got letters or cards, but I still sat there hoping.  When I was 10 he gave me a garbage bag full of letters and cards he had carefully filled out and labeled with his own return address...all with my name on them and no address to send them too.  I cannot remember this moment, ever, without crying.  I was validated as a person and a daughter.

In those years, he taught me about history, Native Americans, architecture, woodworking, painting, hard labor, games, respect, honesty, truth, how to read maps, how to laugh, fishing, hiking, fiddle head picking, and how to make an apple pie.  I learned that I was only as good as my word and behind all words there must be actions to back them up.  He told me then that he named me  Aleathia because it meant truth.  This is a name that I have done my best in life to live up to though I have not always had a voice to speak it.

In all the years that we have been speaking to each other, but especially when I was 10-12, he always used to tell me "Improvise, Adapt. Overcome.  Semper Fi".  As a child, I am not sure I really understood what that meant.  I knew he was a Marine and in Viet Nam.  I also knew that this war and everything that happened to him there would always keep some sort of steel band around his heart.  For a long time I hated the military, because I felt it stole him from me.  These were childish thoughts for a hurt child.

The toughest decision I ever had to make was when I moved away from him at age 12.  I was not sure what a future with him would mean and my mom had always been there for me despite it all.  Before I left I remember my grandmother Regina sobbing and telling me that I was going to break his heart.  I know that I did.  It was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt.  It may be the one decision in my life that I ever regret.

We stayed in touch over my years in high school and I was so thrilled when he came up to New York to watch me graduate high school with honors.  Sadly, we drifted apart after that.  I wandered around the country trying to "find myself".  I had many journeys and pitfalls, but I always got back up.  I remember reconnecting with him when he lived in Florida and I took a trip down there.  It was a great time and also when I found out that I was pregnant with my daughter Chloe.

Connections between us were hit or miss and part of me was so angry that he didn't make an effort.  I even went to counseling over the subject.  My project was to write him a heart felt letter.  I did this.  6 pages front and back and I sent it.  I never heard back from him so I expected that was my answer...that I didn't mean anything to him.  Years later I found out that he never got the letter and I had spent those years in anger for nothing.

I have to say that my renewed relationship with my father would have never emerged if it weren't for Michael.  We were at my Aunt's funeral and Michael suggested I reach out to him.  We stood outside the funeral home as he smoked and he asked me if I was happy.  I told him I was.  And he said that is very good.  We didn't talk much more and I returned back to New York.  Once home, I comiserated over how it didn't go well.  Michael told me that he felt my father loved me and just because he couldn't show me that love the way I envision it doesn't mean he doesn't love me.

From that point forward, we started writing each other letters.  We shared our lives and what we had missed.  Sometimes we just talked about the weather, but it was fulfilling.  I was again waiting by the mailbox and this time, there were letters.  In the last year or so we had moved to phone conversations and anyone that knew Pop knew he hated the phone.  I took it as a direct sign of love that he called me every week to talk.  I am going to miss that the most.

This summer, Chloe and I went home for some time with Pop that didn't involve a damn funeral.  We stayed there for 5 days and I feel like that might be the biggest present I could have ever given my daughter...the chance to meet him and know him for the great man he was.  I am happy to have shared meals with him, walked the dog with him, and watered his tomatoes.  I am happy to have good memories as my last memories.

During this trip, when no one else was around he told me that he thought I would have been a great Marine.  I had to hold back the tears because this is the highest honor he could give a person.  It meant that through the years I had Improvised, Adapted, and Overcome.  I had lived my life in some semblance of truth and honor.  That I had fought the good fight and lived to tell about it.

Pop...I am going to miss you.  I am thankful for everything you taught me.  For your quiet love, for your service to this country, for never giving up on me.

If you hear ringing...answer the phone.  I'm calling you every week.  I love you.

OM-11/23/2014 Being Truthful in Healthcare

Aleathia says:

Last week, while shaving my legs, I listened to a Ted Talk by Leana Wen who is a medical doctor here in America.  The video was about transparency between a doctor and their patient and how by doing this a true trustful relationship could begin to form.

She made valid points about patients having to hand over their most personal information, their lifestyle, their body to a person with a degree whom they know nothing about.  Patient's don't know where their doctor's stand in the community, with their beliefs, or their conflicts of interest.  It is like a one-sided conversation.

Leana Wen put forth this idea to a wave of hatred by physicians across the country.  She got death threats and bomb threats and was asked to "move back to her country" despite living in the US since she was 8 years old.

I am not a doctor and the nursing model of care is much different than the physician's.  Nurses are a bit more able to look at the bigger picture and take into consideration all of the peripheral reasons why a person might be sick or act the way they do.  We are also more honest and upfront, because maybe, we have less to lose.  We aren't going to get sued for our opinions like a provider might.

Yesterday I had a patient who had pretty severe cancer and was being seen at a prestigious cancer center that is nationally known.  They told him he had lung and kidney cancer and he was young and was undergoing chemotherapy.  When he came to us he had been coughing up blood which is never good.  When all was said and done, his exam revealed a worsened cancer in the last month and cancer in places that our facility had seen in August that were never mentioned to them by their cancer center.

The patient's wife was furious and in tears, because there at 3 am they were both realizing the severity of the situation.  She looked at me and asked my why won't any provider tell them the truth without sugar coating the outcome.  I told her that I could not answer that question as I am not a doctor, but I looked her in the eye and explained slowly and carefully the true possible outcomes of her husband's disease process as it stood right then.  She cried some more.  He cried some more.  I stood there and cried with them.

I understood first hand the power of cancer's grip to steal those that you love right from under you.  It is so silent at first, so evil in the end.  The wife thanked me for my honesty and my compassion.  We were going to transfer him to a higher level of care and after I finished the paperwork I thought about Leana Wen and I too was angry for this family.  Why don't doctors tell you how it is really going to be?  Sometimes it is because they want you to move forward with their plan of care.  Sometimes people don't want the truth.  Sometimes I think they forget what it is like to be on the other end of the spectrum.

I went into work last night and was told that as my patient was being put into the ambulance for transfer, he died.  His cancer swallowed him whole, so to speak, and he was gone.  I knew the ending to his story, but some part of me had a glimmer of hope that maybe I was being a fatalist or being too severe.  I know now that I was able to give them both a realistic picture as sad as it was.

A nurse's job is very hard.  We have to learn so much about a patient in a short amount of time.  We have to juggle 4-5 lives at a time while making everyone happy.  We get to save lives and watch them slip away. Each one chipping a layer away silently.  Each one embedding themselves in your collective personal graveyard.  Try to remember as patients that we are limited to what the doctor says we can do for you, that though we may seemed rushed, or busy, we really do care about making you better.  We wouldn't put ourselves through this daily torture if we weren't compassionate and loving at the core.

Today, I am looking for meaning in the face of untimely deaths, and I am not sure I find any good reasons.  Love your life while you have it.  Tell people how wonderful they are, don't forget to smile and laugh, and take all the hugs you can get.

Peace.

Quills and Frills - 11/1/2014 - A poem

Ally says:

Dog Eared

Impatient in both life and death

I dog ear the books.

As a collector of bookmarks

this drives my husband nuts.

The library books are one thing, he says

making allowances

but not ours.

Yet I find I’m always grabbing

the poetry books off the shelf and forgetting

a bookmark and beside

these sleek slender volumes

can barely hold their own words

let alone a whole bookmark.

So I dog ear,

the little bent corners

of the pages.

Sometimes nothing for whole chunks.

Sometimes one every other poem

after a quick read between subway transfers,

the corners flapping

like flags marking depots

across the dry cold waste of undiscovered land.

I wonder if later

when I’m gone

he’ll find these creases

in the books we shared

the corners still creased

rising now

my long distance death defying reminder

like a star winking at him

all the way from the past,

a message over time

a little salute and a hello

from the darkest corner of space.

OM-7/6/2014 Jack Perkins Tribute

Aleathia says:

The last few years have been spiritually rough...as rough as anything in my life which was never a bed of roses.  I have lost my mother, my aunt, my cousin, my grandmother, several friends, and several co-workers. I work in the emergency room.  I am used to seeing people die both traumatically and because it is their time. Seeing this often does not make it easier, it makes me harder.  It desensitizes me sometimes, or maybe I have just bricked a wall around me so that it doesn't hurt so bad.  I have watched people die alone which is my utmost fear in life....not death itself, but that there would be no one there in my final moments to say goodbye.  We are not born alone, we should not die alone.

This week we lost a wonderful man at work, Jack Perkins, who was an installation at Corning Hospital.  He made people laugh and always had a smile for everyone with a devilish look in his eye. He gave me the impression of man always up to something, but in a good way.  Jack was part of many of my co-workers families.  They loved him like a brother, a father, an uncle.  My crew at work (not me personally) spent hours working to save his life.  They endured what I am told is one of the most horrific things each of them had ever seen in their lives and they held it together with professionalism and love.  In the end when it is your time, it is your time, but Jack was not alone and I am thankful for that.

Tonight I take my daughter with me to stand next to my second family and the community to say goodbye to Jack Perkins.  Our lives will be a little less bright without him and our hearts a little emptier than before.  Fly high Jack.  We'll miss you.