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Tag Archives: sisters

From Missing Dad: John Is Born

21 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in birthday, Blessings, Children, Community, Delight, Family, Father, Giving Thanks, Gratitude, Happiness, Home, Joy, Life, Love, Marriage, Mother, Neighbor, Neighborhood, Night, Share, Small Town Life, Stories, Tenderness, Thanks, Wait

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

birth, birthday, blessings, brother, celebrate, Christine Marie, cigars, communities, Corona, family, family life, gratitude, heart, home, hope, John Steven, joy, love, mother, motherhood, my brother John, Newtown Field, patience, persistence, Playschool, responsibility, siblings, sister, sisters, Vacation Day Camp

Today is the anniversary of my brother John’s birth. This is a story I tell him about that day every year… and it’s also the story I told about my father at his post-funeral repast.


After four girls, we were all sure that John would be a girl, too. We decided that our new baby would be named Christine Marie. I drew a picture of my baby sister-to-be on the last day of third grade in Mrs. Gumpers’ class at Our Lady of Sorrows.
Every summer, we went to Playschool – the free vacation day camps that the New York City public school system ran in the neighborhood school buildings from early July through the end of August. At the end of the season, there would be a huge gathering of all the schools in the district at Newtown High School’s athletic field, and each school would put on a little musical show. We’d make costumes out of crepe paper, do the Charleston, sing Oklahoma!, things like that. It was great fun, and parents were encouraged to attend and cheer for their offspring.

It was in the high 90s and humid the day of our pageant. My parents attended anyway — my father brought folding beach chairs, and he and my enormously pregnant mother watched and cheered and sweated in the boiling sun as class after class did their song and dance routine. It was over by about half past four. We piled into the car, went home, had dinner.

Mom’s labor pains began, and Dad took her to the hospital at around half past six. Our Yaya (Mom’s mother) was already at our house (probably watching Barbara, who would have been too small to sit still and watch the pageant at Newtown Field).

We waited and waited and waited for the call that our new sister, Christine Marie, had arrived.

The phone rang, and Yaya picked up, listened for a minute, and made some uncharacteristically loud sounds. Somehow, Janet and I gathered that we had a brother. We jumped up and down, and ran down the three flights of stairs, yelling. “IT’S A BOY! IT’S A BOY!!”

We took it to the street, running up and down 42nd Avenue, from 99th Street to National Street, the full length of our block, yelling yelling YELLING “IT’S A BOY! IT’S A BOY!!”

The neighbors came out, everybody was out. If it hadn’t been August, it’d have been a Christmas miracle.

Everyone was so happy, so excited that we finally had a brother. When my dad came home, and handed out the first-ever blue cellophane wrapped cigars, the look on his face said everything. I had never before, and never since, seen such a look of pure and absolute joy on his face.

And that was how Christine Marie, now named John Steven, was welcomed to the world.

John1963


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Well, It’s No Day at the Beach!

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in Beach, Body Image, Family, Father, Fun, Gratitude, Happiness, Health, Joy, Light, Love, Memories, Mother, Senses, Swimming

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Atlantic Ocean, brother, confidence, father, Floating, Growing Up, healthy-living, Jersey Shore, Jones Beach, Long Island, love, mother, Ocean, overcoming oneself, Point Pleasant, self-confidence, siblings, sisters, Summer, Summer Pleasures, Summertime, Toes Pointing to Portugal

This slideshow requires JavaScript.


….Oh, yes it was!

A week ago this past Friday, my sister Barbara and I went to Point Pleasant, New Jersey and swam in the Atlantic Ocean.

How Does This Work?

Me, trying to take a picture with my phone for the very first time.

It was my first time at a beach, my first time in the ocean, in thirty-six years.
The reason I avoided the beach for all that time is the same reason I avoided swimming altogether for all those years — shyness, embarrassment, not wanting to expose my (now less) ample flesh to the eyes of strangers.
Spending this year learning to swim, and swimming laps four days a week now, and losing twenty-two pounds so far, have all disabused me of the notion that how I look in a swimsuit is or should be important to anyone but me. (And anyway, now I can outswim a lot of the people who might cast a critical eye my way…)

Oh, That's How.

Oh, that’s how.
That little thingie goes CLICK.

How can I ever even begin to describe the pure sensory pleasure of floating on salty swells of ocean, my red-painted toes pointed toward Portugal, the hot sun warming the anterior surface of my body, the cool water supporting my back, legs, thighs, arms?

The way one floats on salt water is so different from fresh; the buoyancy is not just physical, but spiritual.

My sister and I floated side-by-side, talking, laughing, riding the perfect swells.

We recollected the many family beach trips over many years when we were children; she reminded me that our dad woke us all up VERY early on beach days by shouting “REVEILLE!” in his un-gentle clarion tones, repeatedly, until all five of us were awake and moving around.

Because my bedroom was next to the kitchen, it was usually the aromas of frying Italian sweet sausage and chicken wings that woke me before his voice did — that was the beach fare my parents cooked and packed every weekend, along with a jug of ice cold lemon or root beer Fizzies (never Kool-Aid!).

My job as the eldest was to help Dad pack the beach chairs, the umbrellas, the beach blankets and the towels, the totes of extra clothes, and Grandpa’s old suitcase (which held the food for the seven of us).

When Janet was old enough, she would help, too; by the time I aged out of the beach trips (because I thought I was way too cool at 19 or 20 to go the beach with my parents and little sisters and baby brother), even John was helping carry all of our equipment and supplies back and forth to the car.

“Barb, I think Mom and Dad are smiling down on Daughters #1 and 4 today,” I said to my sister, as we floated and swam and made the oceanic equivalent of snow angels.

My parents loved Jones Beach; they were beach missionaries, too. They converted my brother-in-law Wally’s parents to their beachy faith, meeting up with them at Field #2 or 4, or at the West End beach.

They took fewer supplies in those latter days– their chairs, their umbrella, some food; it was just the two of them in the car on the LIE and then the Meadowbrook, not the epic beach trips of our childhood.

Those beach trips–every Saturday and Sunday, and almost every weekday of Dad’s two-week summer vacation, if the weather was good– are such sweet, rich memories… the long, long summers of my childhood, adolescence, early adulthood…all the books I read, all the sketchbooks I filled at Jones Beach.. all the photos my parents took, documenting their growing and then grown family.

How I treasure them…

DadMomMe1
One of my very first times at the beach. Summer 1954
1955-DaddysGirlAtTheBeach
Me and Dad at the beach. Summer, 1955

1963-4Girls
At the beach Winter 1963
1966-Beach-detail
Me at the beach. Summer 1966

How Does This Work?
Me, figuring out for the first time how to take a picture with my phone.
Oh, That's How.
Oh, that’s how. That little thingie goes CLICK.

#1 Daughter
Barb at the Beach
#4 Daughter

Thank you, Barbara, for continuing the Karabaic family beach tradition,
and for including me in them.

I can’t wait to go back.

___________________________________________________________

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From Missing Dad ~ Mom and The July Effect, Part 4; The End.

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in Accountability, Advocacy, birthday, Caregiving, Death, Father, Grief, Health, Justice, Loss, Love, Mother, Mourning, Regret

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

accurate transcriptions, brother, caregiving, elderly parents, family, father, health, health care facilities, home, hospital infections, hospitals, Kessler East Orange, Kessler West Orange, love, mother, physical therapy, post-surgical rehabilitation, responsibility, Rory Staunton, sepsis, siblings, sisters, surgical rehabilitation, The July Effect, twenty four hours

(The following is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress, Missing Dad. All conversations recounted here are accurate transcriptions, made at the time they occurred. All incidents described here are accurately reconstructed from contemporaneous notes and emails. No names were changed. There are no innocent people to protect.)

__________________________________________________________

I get up at 5AM to get into the shower and be ready to go with Jannie and Wally by 7. Before I get into the shower, I check the answering machine—no messages. Good.
When I get out of the shower, there are three calls on the answering machine. Not good.
The first is a doctor from East Orange General, telling me that my mother has had a major stroke during the night. He is sorry to say that there is no brain activity and that her body probably won’t live through the day. The second is Wally who has heard the news and is asking me when we should tell Dad. The third is George who has also heard and wants to know what to do.

Frank awakens, and comes out of the bedroom as I am getting ready to leave. I tell him what is happening. I have to go, now, to get to the hospital with Janet and Walter. They will be here in a few minutes. I take the phone number of the client Frank will be working with today, at Cryder House, in Whitestone. There is nothing he can do, so I think he should carry on with his day. I will let him know what is happening. I take my overnight bag with a change of clothes, just in case I need to stay in Jersey.
“I love you.”
“Love you too. Take care of yourself, please.” He holds me and kisses me.
I leave. I am already exhausted going into this day, the last day of my mother’s life.

My brother is coming back from Ohio. Nancy, Chris, and Grant are back on the road north to New Jersey, having arrived in Maryland a scant few hours earlier. I am on the road with Walter (driving) and Janet (riding shotgun).
Walter, Janet and I are trying to figure out how to tell Dad that Mom is going to die today.
“I think I should be the one to tell him,” I say.
There is very little traffic on the way.

We pull into the parking lot at East Orange General. I don’t know how, but John is already here. Janet, Walter and I meet him in the hallway. We all hug and kiss hello, and make our way to the ICU. John is crying. We are numb. Barb, George, Alyssa and Dad are already there. Dad is distraught.
“What happened? What HAPPENED??”
We go into Mom’s room.
Our mother is hooked up to a million tubes and beeping things. Gauges are everywhere. Numbers flit by, without context.
The neurologist enters, introduces herself to all of us, looks for the person she should talk to. She takes me aside. I tell her I have Mom’s health care proxy, and I know her wishes, which are “no extraordinary measures”. She asks me if my father grasps the seriousness of what happened, that my mother/his wife is being kept alive only by the machines. I tell her he might comprehend it if she tells him, but that he is unlikely to accept it from me without her saying it first. Dad has a real respect for medical authority (we will use this later on to help him).

All of us are in a knot around the doctor. I hold Dad’s hand as she tells him. He looks at me, questioning what he has heard. I tell him Mom is gone, only her body is still here.
“Is there any chance?”
“No, Daddy, no.”
We embrace him, I kiss his face, and start to cry.
He doesn’t know what to do next. We speak about what Mom said she wanted, if this situation ever occurred. Mom wanted us to just let go.
“Let’s wait,” he says. He doesn’t want to turn anything off; he wants to give her a chance. Nothing needs to be done right now, so we will wait.

There are tears, lots of them, a priest named Father Mitch, wooden rosary beads, a wonderful nurse named Beth. My two best friends in the world are named Mitch and Beth. I feel that this is a sign, that the priest and the nurse are God’s own angels sent to help ease my way into this new and awful motherless world that I am about to enter.
We have Father Mitch give Mom last rites, even though she is Greek Orthodox, and he is a Catholic priest. This comforts us all. I keep the rosary beads in my hand. (To this day, I carry them in my purse, everywhere I go.)

Mom hangs on for Nancy, Chris and Grant, who arrive around noon.

The hours pass.

Kids, grandkids, kids-in-law, Dad weave in and out of the room in a haze of prayer and silent pleading and endless, endless beeping.
My dad sees me crying at my mother’s bedside and tells me to stop.
“She might hear you,” he says. “I don’t want her to think there’s no hope.”

Despite my earlier reservations about East Orange General, the ICU staff is as good as any hospital staff I have ever seen, in real life or on television. They are sensitive, they are caring. They do their best to make Mom comfortable, and to comfort us. I wish these had been the people taking care of her at Kessler next door.

My mother’s face is gray. Her skin is totally relaxed, softly sagging from her cheekbones. She has a thin stream of black fluid trickling from the right side of her mouth. There is a tube in the left side of her mouth. She is no longer in any pain. I take a white cloth and gently pat away the black fluid, but it keeps trickling. I am on the window side of the bed. Alyssa is on a chair at Mom’s left side. I ask her if she’s scared. She’s only twelve and a half years old; I think she’s a bit young to sit through this. Even my sisters, her aunts, have a hard time looking at our mother like this.
“Oh no, I’m okay. I’ve seen things like this on Days of Our Lives. I’m not scared at all.”
We sit in the room, the wooden rosary beads from Father Mitch in my hand. I haven’t said a rosary in years, but the nuns at Our Lady of Sorrows taught me well. I only leave my mother’s bedside to use the bathroom, or if Nurse Beth asks me to leave for a moment so she can tend to one thing or another in the room.
I will keep vigil until it is no longer necessary. I have my change of clothes in case she lasts until tomorrow.
I look out the window, down to the street. There is a truck out there with the name “Angelica” on its side. My mother’s mother’s name was Angelina. I see this as a sign that she is close by, waiting for her daughter.

The grandkids are hungry and Dad is exhausted—they are going to grab a bite at the Wendy’s across the street and ask me if I want anything.
I want this never to have happened.
They leave to get some food, come back to the waiting room, and then decide to leave again for home and let Dad get some rest.
Jannie and I stay, Alyssa too.

At one point—I’m not sure how long after the others left with Dad—I am alone in the room with Mom and the endless beeping. I am holding her hand. I bring my face close to hers and whisper.
“It’s okay. You can go now, if you want. Dad will be fine, we will be fine. I love you. You can leave. Don’t worry.”

Nurse Beth comes into the room and says she has to tend to a few things.
I leave for a moment to use the restroom.
In a moment, Janet is outside, knocking on the restroom door.
“Come on!  Something is happening to Mom!”
Nurse Beth is there.
There is no beeping.
No moving numbers.

Our mother dies at ten to four in the afternoon.

We call the others. They pull off to the side of the Garden State Parkway. We tell John, Barb, Chris, Walter, George. We don’t tell Dad. We will tell him when he gets here.
They come back, it seems like only a minute later.
Dad is stricken, he cannot believe she is gone.
He weeps.

Dad takes me aside. It’s just him and me; the others are gathered on the other side of the waiting area.
He holds his forehead, shock and grief etched on his face. His eyes, wild and full of tears; he says “Claud, you kids…please don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone.”
At first, I thought he meant he didn’t want to sleep alone in the house that night. He had a houseful of family; he wouldn’t be alone. I realize later what he really meant; he is afraid that he will be alone now that Mom is gone, that we kids will leave him to his own devices, that it was our mother who was the center of all things and that now he will lose us, as he had lost her.


You will never lose me.

___________________________________________________________

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From Missing Dad ~ Mom and The July Effect, Part 3

17 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in Accountability, Advocacy, birthday, Caregiving, Death, Grief, Health, Justice, Loss, Love, Mother, Mourning, Regret

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

accurate transcriptions, brother, caregiving, elderly parents, family, father, health, health care facilities, home, hospital infections, hospitals, Kessler East Orange, Kessler West Orange, love, mother, physical therapy, post-surgical rehabilitation, responsibility, Rory Staunton, sepsis, siblings, sisters, surgical rehabilitation, The July Effect, twenty four hours

(The following is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress, Missing Dad. All conversations recounted here are accurate transcriptions, made at the time they occurred. All incidents described here are accurately reconstructed from contemporaneous notes and emails. No names were changed. There are no innocent people to protect.)

__________________________________________________________

Dad, Walter, Janet, Chris, Nancy, and Grant, accompanied by Barbara, George and Alyssa, return to Kessler East Orange on Sunday at around 11AM.
They find that Mom is still asleep in her hospital bed, still wearing the same clothes she had been in the day before and the day before that.
(What do the nurses and aides actually DO in this place? Can’t they even keep a post-surgical patient clean? Where are the standards of care? This is the #4 facility of its kind in the whole country?)  
Mom’s breakfast is untouched. (Hospital breakfasts are usually delivered by 8AM. Where IS everybody is this place?)  
Mom has an IV in her arm. (For what? Meds? Nutrition? Hydration? For what?)
Nancy tries to wake Mom, without success.
Nancy gets the charge nurse to check Mom. Mom has a fever. The nurse decides to have Mom immediately transferred to the ER of the hospital next door.

The ER at East Orange General Hospital is very different from the ER at Union Hospital. There are gunshot victims and overdoses here. There were gardening and golfing mishaps there.

Nancy accompanies Mom to the ER, where the doctor on duty observes that Mom’s surgical wound looks infected. Mom is hooked up to another IV, and after awhile, she wakens and becomes somewhat lucid.

Plans are made to transfer Mom back to Union Hospital on Monday.

The sibs call me from the hospital throughout that afternoon to give me updates. It’s a busy, rain-soaked Sunday at Crate&Barrel in Manhasset.  I can’t leave the store because we are short-staffed due to call-outs. It would take me about three hours to make the trip to East Orange on public transportation. By the time I got there, it would be too late to see her, and time to turn around and come back home anyway.

The sibs say that at this point, it doesn’t seem to be too serious. Mom was able to converse, even make a joke.

Nancy, Chris and Grant leave the hospital late in the afternoon to go back home to Maryland. Before they leave, they hire a private nurse to watch over Mom, just to make sure that she is properly tended to. We do not want a repeat of the treatment she received at the collective hands of Kessler East.
Janet and Walter and I speak on the phone before they leave the hospital. We make plans for them to pick me up early Monday morning on the way into Jersey from their home in Long Island. We will go the hospital together.
Dad, Barb, George and Alyssa go back to Dad’s.

I get home from work at about 7PM. My part-timer, Cherie, gives me a lift home so I don’t have to wait for the N20/1 bus that runs only once an hour on Sundays. I open the door to our apartment.
 “Oh God, what a day this has been. My mother was admitted to the ER, she has an infec…”
At the same time, Frank is saying: “Are you okay? There are a lot of calls on the answering machine. The kids…”
I listen to the messages.
There’s a garbled one from the private nurse, saying “I’m leaving. Your mother was already brain-dead when I got here.”
I moan/shriek/cry out loud and Frank comes running to me.
“Wha…”
“My mom, my mom…”
Another call comes in.
It’s George. It’s not true, Mom’s not brain-dead, but she has been put on a ventilator. The nurse has in fact left.
Maybe she was just prescient.

Mom is in the ICU of East Orange General Hospital now. It is late Sunday night.
Sometime in the middle of the night, she has a heart attack, and then a massive stroke, caused by sepsis.
We won’t find out that Mom is in a life-and-death struggle for several hours.

(Concluded tomorrow, with the events of Monday, July 18th 2005,
the last day of my mother’s life)

___________________________________________________________

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From Missing Dad ~ Mom and The July Effect, Part 2

16 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in Accountability, Advocacy, Caregiving, Death, Grief, Health, Justice, Loss, Love, Mother, Mourning, Regret

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

accurate transcriptions, brother, caregiving, elderly parents, family, father, health, health care facilities, home, hospital infections, hospitals, Kessler East Orange, Kessler West Orange, love, mother, physical therapy, post-surgical rehabilitation, responsibility, Rory Staunton, sepsis, siblings, sisters, surgical rehabilitation, The July Effect, twenty four hours

(The following is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress, Missing Dad. All conversations recounted here are accurate transcriptions, made at the time they occurred. All incidents described here are accurately reconstructed from contemporaneous notes and emails. No names were changed. There are no innocent people to protect.)

___________________________________________________________

Nancy, Chris and Grant arrive at Dad’s at around noontime on Saturday. They settle into the upstairs bedroom where they usually stay.
Dad, Walter, Janet, Chris, Nancy, and Grant go to Kessler East to see Mom.  They find her in the physical therapy room, asleep in her wheelchair.  Her hair is dirty. They can barely rouse Mom, who is still wearing the clothes she was wearing when she was admitted. The therapy aide says, “Oh, she is just tired from the move”, and leaves.
Chris is standing over Mom, his hands on her shoulders, while they all wait for someone to get Mom back to her bed. He notices a bad odor coming from Mom.
“Nancy, I think Mom needs a bath.”
They mention this to the nurses. They try to get someone to shampoo Mom’s hair, in case the odor is coming from there.  But it is late, and the shampoo person does not have the time.
An aide comes to move Mom back to her bed. Mom’s dinner arrives, they all stay to make sure she eats (she does, a bit). They all leave to go back to Dad’s.

They go to church, share some dinner, play a couple of games of Uno, watch a little television, and then to bed. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day. It will be Nancy’s birthday.

(Continued tomorrow, with the events of Sunday, July 17th 2005)

___________________________________________________________

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From Missing Dad ~ Mom and The July Effect, Part 1

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by ckswarriorqueen in Accountability, Advocacy, Caregiving, Death, Grief, Health, Justice, Loss, Love, Mother, Mourning, Regret

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

accurate transcriptions, brother, caregiving, elderly parents, family, father, health, health care facilities, home, hospital infections, hospitals, Kessler East Orange, Kessler West Orange, love, mother, physical therapy, post-surgical rehabilitation, responsibility, Rory Staunton, sepsis, siblings, sisters, surgical rehabilitation, The July Effect, twenty four hours

Mom and Dad
Seven years ago today, my mother was transferred from Union Hospital to Kessler East Orange, a health care facility where she was supposed to receive post-surgical rehabilitation.
What happened instead was that three days later, on July 18, 2005, she died of sepsis.
We suspect she developed sepsis as a result of the transfer.
Once a patient develops sepsis, there’s as high as a 50-50 chance that the patient will die. The odds are worse if sepsis is left untreated for a long period of time. It’s not just the very old, the very sick, or the very young who are at risk of death from sepsis; read this article from the NYTimes this week about how a healthy 12-year-old boy died of untreated sepsis in one of New York City’s best hospital systems.
If I had known then what I know now about The July Effect, I never would have permitted my mother’s transfer from one health facility to another on a weekend in July.
My brother John and I had secured a promise from the hospital’s social worker and my mother’s personal physician that we would get a minimum of 24 hours’ notice of any transfer; instead, this is what happened.
(The following is excerpted from my memoir-in-progress, Missing Dad. All conversations recounted here are accurate transcriptions, made at the time they occurred. All incidents described here are accurately reconstructed from contemporaneous notes and emails. No names were changed. There are no innocent people to protect.)

___________________________________________________________

On Friday July 15th, at around noontime, I get a call at work from Maureen. A bed has opened up at Kessler East Orange. Mom is being transferred that day.
“No she isn’t. I told you I have to be there for the transfer. I can’t let you just send her and my dad to another facility with no notice. We talked about this. I need to know twenty-four hours ahead, so I can be there to go with my mom, and someone who drives can be there to follow with my dad.”
“She will lose her place if you wait until Monday.”
“Let me talk to Dr. Eisenstat.”
I speak with Eisenstat who says that, in his opinion, she is well enough to go into rehab.
I call the other sibs, only reaching Nancy, leaving messages for Janet, Barb, and John. Janet and Walter are traveling, Barb is at work, John is on the way back home to Ohio. Nancy tells me to do what I think is best.
I call Mom at the hospital and ask her what she wants to do. Mom and Dad both say well, it’s what the doctor wants. I tell them both that we can say no if she doesn’t feel ready.
Mom says, “Do what you think is best. I trust you. Whatever you decide will be the right thing. I love you. You’re my prize.”
(These are the last words I will ever hear my mother say in this life.)

And that is how, nineteen days after her surgery, on Friday, July 15th in the early evening, Union Hospital came to transfer Georgia Karabaic to Kessler Institute in East Orange for post-surgical rehab.

East Orange and West Orange are very different communities. West Orange is an upper middle-class suburb, a bedroom community. East Orange is decidedly urban. According to the original plan, she was supposed to go to Kessler West, but we have ended up in Kessler East instead. I don’t know why. This must be the first Kessler bed that became available. Or maybe they just want her out of Union Hospital and into rehab, anywhere.

Somehow, Janet and Wally make it to Union Hospital from western Pennsylvania in time to accompany Mom on the wild, bumpy ride in the ambulance. They would tell me later that it was worse than a roller-coaster ride. Janet was in the ambulance with Mom, and Walter followed in his car, with Dad.

Note to self:
NEVER DO A TRANSFER FROM ONE MEDICAL FACILITY TO ANOTHER ON A WEEKEND. The A-team has left, maybe the B-team too. You will get the D-team and they do not know what they are doing.
(Years later, I will find out that what happens in hospitals on weekends is exacerbated when those weekends fall in July. It has come to be known as The July Effect; it’s what happens to staffs that are overrun with inexperienced staff fresh out of med school at the same time that experienced staff are taking their summer vacations.)

Walter and Janet are with Mom as she is being admitted. A female doctor who is not wearing an ID badge, who introduces herself as Dr. Vij, examines Mom. She and the admitting nurse, Maryanne, take Mom behind a curtain to look at her back. They take a photograph of her incision. Walter hears them discussing this. They do not tell Janet and Walter why they took a picture.
Mom’s admission to Kessler East is completed; Janet, Walter and Dad leave Mom in her room, and go back to Union. Janet and Walter spend the night at Dad’s.

(Continued tomorrow, with the events of Saturday, July 16th 2005)

___________________________________________________________

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