!D for disability
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agk's phlog
9 August 2021 @ 0301
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written on Pinebook Pro in the garage
sore after a long motorcycle ride
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> In case studies, I manufacture a composite patient
> and invent a name. They cannot be identified.

I used to work on a stroke unit. Right or left side 
matters on stroke. It's easy to dislocate someone's arm 
on the affected side during transfer if the muscles are 
slack. Most patients are aspiration risks. Listen for 
diminished lung sounds and a-fib. Look for ankle edema.

Five years before I met her, Artemis did a huge bong 
rip while listening to Five Finger Death Punch. She 
stood to let down the blinds. Her hand wouldn't work. 
Her same-side leg gave out. She lay on the trailer 
carpet and yelled help for an hour. An ambulance came. 
That was her stroke.

Since the stroke, her mood slid all over the place: 
deliriously joyous and loving, heartrendingly beautiful, 
pitiful with despair.

Years before, she left her backwoods county to be a 
Vegas phone ho and stripper. She grinded on Snoop Dogg, 
partied with light-skinned black men and rocked out to 
metal music. Now in her fifties, she thinks she might 
be turning gay.

Discharge neared. We couldn't get an ambulance to take 
her to the long-term care facility. All we could fix 
was a three-hour cab ride---for a hemiplegic who can't 
sit up, a diabetic who might have a crisis on the road, 
a woman who can't control her bladder or bowels, who 
wants to love and be loved, who feels pathetic and 
useless.

"Quit," I commanded when she cried and pitied everyone 
who wipes her ass and moves her body. "Tell me the
nicest thing you done for somebody."

She thought and said: "Everybody treated my friend 
Joan awful because of how fat she was. A man wouldn't 
let her ride a ride at the fair. I came at him like a 
pitt-bull til he let her on."

"That set me thinking. I talked to a sweet boy I knew. 
He worked at McDonalds and was mildly retarded. That 
isn't the right word. I told him to ask her on a date. 
He did. They fell in love. He saved up and bought her a 
diamond ring. They married eighteen years ago."

"Still married," she said when I asked. "Completely in 
love."

"Since the stroke you can't move half your body," I 
said. "You can't control your bowels. You used to be
so dang stubborn and independent because of what those
guys did to you when you were a little girl. Why 
depend on people when they do stuff like that?"

"The stroke forced you to depend on people, trust
them to take care of you and not hurt you. You got
bedsores when caregivers neglected you. Everybody
needs people. It gets harder to pretend you don't 
once you're disabled." 

"You're going to long-term care. You'll lose the 
apartment and your dog. You'll have your good heart. 
People either can't stand you or completely love 
you. When you get to long-term care, don't dare lay 
in bed and feel sorry for yourself. People need you 
there. Love them with that amazing heart you got.
When they die, grieve quick and love again."

"Can I hug you?" she asked.

I leaned down and hugged her, washed my hands, and 
walked down the hall to Phoebe's room. I made Phoebe 
chuckle, wiped feces out of her vagina, spread her 
labia, swabbed it with antiseptic, inserted the 
catheter, and drained her urine. Her scalp drooped 
where the piece of her skull had been removed. Her body 
was covered with stick-and-poke tattoos. "Feel better?" 
I asked. Phoebe grinned.