The Sign on the Wall

Lately I have realized how much I dislike medical care facilities of all kinds.

After years of taking my grandparents to appointments and emergency room visits while caring for them, after spending most of this past year in one doctors office or another with my fiance due to her suffering from cancer. After driving hundreds of miles every week just to see these people who offer hopes of a cure, I can’t stand the thought, smell and or entry into any medical facilities of any kind.

With that said, here’s the rub to all of this. I’m a caregiver now due to her passing, and what do caregivers do, they go to doctors appointments with the people they care for!

Just this past month I took people to about 15 doctors appointments at various locations. It’s not the people at the different hospitals or medical offices I dislike, it’s the waiting around!

My career in television has always been one of hurry up and wait, but it’s nothing compared to the home health care business. You hurry to pickup the person or persons in some cases, then you get to the doctor’s office with only a few minutes to spare. The staff , most of the time friendly, check the patient in and ask you to take a seat. You take breath and relax a bit. You look at the clock on the wall and it says your right on time which shocks you since you felt for sure you were going to be late due to some other issue that came up the needed your attention ASAP before taking said person(s) to their appointment.

So here you sit in the waiting room feeling a bit satisfied and the you wait and wait and wait! Your mind is either feeling like half melted jello or your so amped up from the pot of coffee you drank earlier that morning to get you going since you didn’t get to bed early enough the previous evening?

I try to make small talk with the person I have brought to get examined. Icheck my pockets for gum, receipts, pocket lint and some occasional change. I look at magazines that are two to three years old. Mostly I stare at the wall in some mindless haze and yawn a lot. I look up and see a sign that says “if you have been waiting more than 20 minutes since checking in please let the receptionist know”. It’s funny how I remember this sign being smaller in past visits and I make a comment to another person waiting as we are.

The receptionist window is open, so I ask if that sign had always been there? The young woman behind the counter tell us that there had always been a sign, but it was much smaller so that had increased its size. The person that was also waiting said to me under their breath, “they probably made it bigger due to people who didn’t see the small sign that kept asking how much longer is it going to be”.

A few minutes later we were called to go into the back area where the examination rooms are located. Once entering through the door, the person I brought is asked by the nurse to get on the scale to be weighed. Following that we are escorted to an examination room where there persons blood pressure is taken and a few questions are asked. Following that we are told the doctor is running a little behind, but it should only be a few minutes.

At this point I look at my watch. The persons appointment was scheduled for 11:00 a.m., and it is now 11:25 a.m.. So again we wait in a room about the size of a small bathroom. There are no magazines, just brochures on how to quit smoking, how to loose weight, diabetes, cancer and so on.

As we sit you can listen to medical staff bustling about outside the closed door, other patients talking and occasional doctor asking a nurse or patient some final questions before releasing a patient. I look at my watch again and it now read 11:40 a.m.. I started to think about what I need to do after we leave the office. On this day I have another medical visit with a different person at a different location. I start to plan my time in my head when all of a sudden there is a knock on the door and in walks the doctor. I glance at my watch and it is now 11:45 a.m.. Brief hellos ensue, and then the doctor does his Q & A of the patient asking pretty much the same questions the nurse had asked some 15 minutes earlier. The doctor looks in the person mouth, ears and eyes and then proceeds to take the persons blood pressure for a second time.

All of this lasts about 5 minutes at which point the doctor orders blood work and a follow up visit in three months. He asks if the patient needs refills of medications. I help answer the questions for the doctor and then the examination is over. In less than 10 minutes we have seen the doctor and we are on our way. By the time we schedule our next appoint and get in the car and hour has passed. Hard to believe it takes an hour for 10 minutes worth of doctoring?

The patient and I leave and head back to the house. Funny how I get to do this all again in just an couple of hours?

A Song In My Head

As I wake up with a bad taste in my mouth and a song in my head, I wonder what the day will hold?

On this day a funeral service is being held for a woman that most gave up on, but Kristine took a chance on her and took her on as a client.

The woman suffered from severe mental illness that had progressed over the years. The illness had left her a shell of her former self according to friends and family that saw this illness consume her.

When she was a younger woman, she had went to college and graduated from Central Michigan State University with a teaching degree. She went on to teach elementary and secondary school in Michigan, and then later in California. While out west she took more classes at Fresno State before returning to Michigan. She was an accomplished accordion player and loved music. She was also a sports fan and enjoyed watching the Detroit Tigers play baseball.

Then in her late thirties to early forties, she began to break down. She was later diagnosed with mental illness which progressed over the years.

After several years of this woman living on her own, not taking care of her self due to the illness she suffered from, she was placed into the “system” and moved into an adult foster care home. A few years later Kristine took her in like she did with so many other hard cases. You see Kris took in several of the people that nobody else wanted due to the severity of their problems and illnesses.

I have decided to tell you this brief story about this woman so people understand that we are all special, we all have problems in life, some large, some small. This woman, who some described as having a brilliant mind became debilitated by mental illness by no fault of her own. She became part of Kristine’s extended family, which in turn became part of my extended family.

In late August 2008, following a routine medical exam, a large mass was found in her abdomen. It was soon found that she had cancer. This was extremely hard for me after what I had been through this past year.

Within a few days she had surgery, followed with an extended hospital stay. She was then placed in a nursing facility. Following treatment for her cancer she became quite ill, then died last week. She was only 73 year old, which as I become older seems like a very short life.

During her service, several of her childhood friends, several family members and her roommates that I work with came to say goodbye. After the service I walked to the front of the room to see some pictures of this woman. There she was in old black and while photographs looking so young and ready to take on the world. At this point I began to cry.

This year has been so tough on me personally, but also on the people I now take care of. They have not only lost the one person that cared for them all like a mother in Kristine, but now one of them has too fallen?

Regardless of each person’s mental and physical challenges, we have all stuck together. I depend on them to keep me on my toes with taking care of them, as well as they depend on me for their day to day living.

So on this day I think of her memory as the song in my head plays on…a polka that she played from her bedroom on her accordion. I don’t know the name or words to it, but its something she left me.

The Phone Message

Back in April 2008, Kristine called and left a message on my cell phone. She knew I wouldn’t answer since I was in trainning that day learning about the rights of individuals living with mental illness.

The message moved me in such a way when I heard it, that while driving home I went directly to Kristine’s mothers home where she was staying to talk with her. After we both broke down having a good cry and a good long conversation, I later decided not to delete the message.

Following her death in July 2008, I have listened to the message several times, getting really upset to feeling pretty good about the message she left me that day. After saving the cell phone message, every 14 days I have received a call that lets me know the following message will be deleted and then it replays the message and then it gives you an option to resave the message. Most of the time I don’t listen to it…sitting the phone in my lap while it replays, but sometimes I feel the need to just hear her voice and listen.

On October 21st Kristine would have been 41 years old, and on that day of all days I received a call. It was Kristine’s message. The world works in mysterous ways. With that, I would like to share the message that Kristine left me for eveyone to hear. I will add, that this was proabaly the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.

Time may change me, but I can’t trace time

With the year swiftly coming to an end, I have been reflecting some on the changes have taken place in my life. As I have spoken and written much about my trials and tribulations regarding the death of Kristine and the massive changes that I have been going through, I haven’t taken much time to write about what good has come out of all these changes.

I know what most of you are thinking, “what good could have come out of her death”? or something like “there must be something really wrong with him to think that her death could result in anything good”? My answer to this is that the more I reflect on what Kristine gave to me, which includes the business, the bills, the care of her family and the people she worked with for so many years, I feel that in whole has made me a better man.

A few years ago I thought my life had been planned out? I would live comfortably in the small Lake Michigan town of Frankfortwith my beautiful and loving wife. The children would go to college and both become successful in life along with raising children of their own. I would work in the television industry or somehow be involved in video production which I have always loved doing, and Kristine would continue to take care of the people that she loved so dearly.

With that said, the dream was only that, but recent changes in my plan for life has actually made me want to be a better human being. It has given me more self worth than I have ever felt or had in my life.

Yesterday, I received a catalog in the mail with video and lighting equipment for sale. It got me thinking about how much I enjoy working in the video medium, that I miss the whole creative aspect of it. It’s a little odd that I feel torn between my life working in the television field and my new life as a care giver and business owner? Even though my career path has changed, I feel very accomplished with both careers. I have become one damn good caregiver and I do love and care for every single person I work with, Kristine gave that to me. Maybe someday I will once again work with video, either professionally or for personal use, but for now I’m happy with what I’m doing?

While listening to the radio the David Bowie song Changes began to play. While listening to the song a lyric really stuck out to me “Just gonna have to be a different man…Time may change me, I but I can’t trace time”. This is my new life, its changed me for the better, and as time passes I will change with it, hopefully for the better.

The Icy Hand of Winter

Cold, bleak, no sun for days on end. This is what is about to happen to one of the most beautiful places on earth, Northern Michigan.

It’s late October and for the most part the weather has been mild for this time of year. The colorful leaves of autumn have almost all fallen from the trees. But over the last three days, with rain and snow mixed in the forecast, many in the area are beginning to feel the icy hand of winter approaching.

Growing up and living most of my life in the Pacific Northwest, I have experienced winter weather many times in my life, but it is nothing in comparison to how it is here in Michigan. By pure observation I have found that the first one and a half to two months of winter are both beautiful and bearable. It’s the second one and a half to two months that tends to get one down.

Since moving to the shores of Lake Michigan, I have had to drive close to sixty miles one way to work in the wintry mess. Several evenings while working late, I had my doubts of getting home safely due to the weather. Most locals take it all in stride, accepting what Mother Nature has handed them, but non-locals, Northern Michigan transplants, which I am one, have a much harder time with it.

After traveling here for over six years, I had thought I had learned what the snow or “S word” was all about. I’m here to tell you it is nothing compared to living here and having to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.

With winter quickly approaching there comes winter preparation which includes weatherizing your home, your vehicle, and lastly yourself! Not only do you have to gather up anything that isn’t attached and put it away if your afraid it will freeze, but you also have to rotate your entire wardrobe, exchanging all of your colorful, light weight summer clothing that will not be seen until possibly late June or early July, for the warm and usually dark and drab clothing of winter.

Being a city mouse now living in the country, the lack of being able to travel to wherever you want during  winter really hits home. The closest large city from where I live is close to an hour away considering winter travel. This makes one tend to stay home and buy goods from local business and vendors. With living in a small tourist town that mainly survives on wealthy “summer people” and tourists “fudgies” (locals refer to all tourists as fudgies due to the fact that they buy large amounts of fudge while visiting), the town virtually shuts down during the winter and everyone tends to patron the local businesses with a sense of survival. Yes, things tend to cost a little more, but its the feeling of community that makes this area as special as it is.

Everyone in town supports local high school sports just as if the were the local professional team. The first two years I was here the girls basketball team won the state championship two years in a row! Places like the post office, the grocery store and pharmacy tend to turn into local gathering areas when the snow is deep and the wind off lake Michigan is howling down Main Street. People stop to talk with friends, family and neighbors while just passing by.

Since coming here I have met some very wonderful people that have treated me like I have lived here all my life. I have some great neighbors that have helped my family out over the past year, and I have made some extremely close friends who I love dearly.

My late father asked me when I first announced that I was moving to Michigan, “Why in the hell would you want to move to the God forsaken place”! If he were alive I believe I would tell him that I truly love my hometown with all my heart. It’s where I was raised, it’s where my family and friends are from, and its the town and community that made me the person I am today. But I would also tell him that Northern Michigan in my new home, and even though the winter cold tends to pin you down for a few months out of the year its still is my home and I love it here. I love it here as much as living out west, just differently.

With that said, could someone please send me some warm socks!

The Gift

While out having a good time the other night with my friend Jyl, we left the Halloween party at the local Eagles hall and headed over to a local restaurant and bar called the Cabbage Shed to meet Jyl’s friend Heather whom I had never met.

Once arriving there we ran into some mutual friends and were having a good time chatting and having drinks. Jyl introduced me to her friend and while Jyl was talking with our friend Kelly, Heather and I started up a conversation.

After asking her to tell me about herself, she proceeded to tell me how she met her husband and how she had helped him care for his parents. His father had passed away a few years ago, but his mother had suffered from Alzeimers and died seven years later. She then went on to tell me that taking care of her mother-in-law is how she got into her carrer as a caregiver.

Heather then asked me to tell her a little about myself and after hearing my story she said to me, “You must be a very caring person”. The thing is I have always tried to help others out when I can, but I have not always done so unconditionally, sometimes only thinking of myself.

After meeting Kristine some 9 years ago and learning what kind of person she was, I slowly have learned to be more thoughtful and caring without asking for anything in return.

I told Heather this and she said the most insightful thing to me, saying “You have received a gift”. I didn’t think much of it until today? I now feel that there is a reason I’m here and my life with Kristine was not to be. That some cosmic force for a better word has other plans for my life.

This is where I’m supposed to be, this is what I’m to do with my life. Kristine has given me this gift to make me a better and stronger person. I have had much sorrow, grief, anger and depression over her death, but I now believe this was what was supposed to happen.

I also feel that me meeting my friend Jyl has been my saving grace. She has listened to me and has helped me through some tough times. I think she needs me as much as I need her in this time in our lives. I also think that the meeting of her dear friend Heather was just a missing piece of the puzzle.

I was talking with Jyl the other day about fate. I feel it is a somewhat powerful and positive force in my life? I’m still confused about some things, but I know now I will be alright. There are other plans for me, I just have to wait and see what they are?

The Pain of Life

Originally posted on October 16, 2008 on www.myspace.com/bowyer512

I was thinking about how to deal with the pain that follows us through life.

The first feeling I see in facing past events that continue to cause pain, is to wallow in them, allowing them to control your every move and decision and consume you. But I don’t know anyone who really wants that. Even when you feel that you have no other choice because the pain is so overwhelming and agonizing, it’s not something you would choose.

The other option, to “just get over it”, is often suggested as a quick fix by shrinks who give or lend their advice in the form of self-empowerment and personal responsibility. But their opinions assume that you should never allow yourself to be in pain, and that feeling pain is somehow not a healthy part of being human? But I don’t think that’s right either?

I think to be human is to feel, and sometimes that means to feel pain. There’s nothing wrong with that and there is nothing to be ashamed of about it either. It’s not a feeling of guilt, it’s just the feeling of concern for your own personal mental health, which can be confusing?

The real question is how to honor the pain you feel, finding an appropriate place for it in your life, without being enslaved by it. And, when in the course of time you are ready and able to let it go, you will.

Why I do what I do

Originally posted on October 6, 2008 on www.myspace.com/bowyer512

 

I have been asked many times over the past months why do I do what I do? Why after all that has happened this past year did I stay here? Why didn’t I go back to Washington?

After these questions are asked, I give them an explanation that is followed by people saying how admirable it is of me to take on so much after all that has happened?

I won’t lie, it has been extremely hard on me, but I can’t even imagine just up and leaving Kris’s family in their time of sorrow and confusion, plus there is the whole financial issue. I did give up a lot to come here and be with her, but life takes strange turns that are unpredictable. 

I made the move to Michigan three years ago this month following the death of my grandfather and six years of Kris and I crossing the country just to see each other.

It’s been a year ago this month that Kris was diagnosed with cancer, just a few days before her 40th birthday.

I guess the real answer to “why do you do what you do”? is why wouldn’t I? I would be a lesser man if I just got up and walked away. Someone very close to me said the other day that I was a saint? I told her no, no I’m just a man that loves to love, and that is what this is all about.

I loved Kris and always will love her. I did make some promises to her that she said she didn’t expect me to keep, but I told her I would do my best. She made me promise that I would find someone and be happy since I deserved to be as happy as she was with me coming into her life. She also said that I was the most loving man she ever met? She asked that I make sure the kids were taken care of and get through school. She also asked me to help her mother.

Kris always told me that she could not live without her mom and that she would die if her mom died. She also told me that her mom promised her that she would live forever when she was a kid, following scary dreams about nuclear war. I always thought this was silly, but now I believe something in Kristine’s soul made her aware that she would not be around?

I’m not a very religious man, but I do believe this was my purpose for meeting her and moving here? I think this was a plan set forth long ago when Kris and I first met online in 1998. Be it the great cosmic joke on me or God’s plan, I do believe this was the way my life was to be.

Since moving here I have met several people that I can truly call my friends, and all of them have helped me my through sadness and grief. I just want to say I will be sad for some time, but I deserve to be happy and carry on. I will not be the “grieving widow” and I will be happy! Kris wanted it for me and I most definitely want it for me.

With that I move on! My life is one of emptiness along with renewal. I have changed my views on life and look at it as a special gift that I must live to its fullest. I was taught by a very wise woman several years ago that love will prevail and that I need to be trusting of people and myself.

This helps me do what I do.

Morning time in Michigan

Originally posted on September 30, 2008 on www.myspace.com/bowyer512

Its morning time in Michigan and Fall is here. The rain began yesterday evening while I was driving to Sutton’s Bay for some well craved Thai food, which I might add was quite tasty!

I shared dinner and the evening with my friend and it was a good night filled with laughs and conversations, which made me feel good!

This morning the folks here at work are a little edgey due to the change of seasons and this week is no exception, but we will get through it.

How I love Fall, with all the colors and the coolness in the air, but with mental illness, changes are not accepted as well. I need to get folks to concentrait on something like the upcoming Halloween Dance this next month and things will be a little better.

Sillyness in Empire, Michigan

Originally posted on September 23, 2008 on www.myspace.com/bowyer512

 

After work today I went to Empire and had dinner at the Friendly Tavern were Jyl works. While there our friend Will aparently called my cell phone which I had left in the Jeep and then sent a text message to Jyl wanting to hook up for drinks and grub.

After several attempts to text Will back on Jyl’s phone, I walked back out to the Jeep where I saw he had called and left me a message. After speaking to Will and hearing about his amazing new high power light kit (he was like a little kid with a new erector set) I told him to drive out and meet us at the Village Inn in Empire for a drink.

Jyl finished up at work and I followed her to the Village Inn. Shortly after ordering drinks and having a discussion about the NBA and how Jyl dislikes basketball ( I will convert her) Will arrives only to show us his hairy nipples pressed up against the window next to our table.

With that being strangely entertaining, the sillyness was about to begin.

Its funny how Will and I play off one another? Jyl just stares at us like we are a couple of deranged lunatics, which were are, but that’s what makes it a fun time. I know Jyl was tired since she didn’t sleep much lastnight, but she seemed to be entertained somewhat by our ramblings.

After crazy conversations along with food and drink, we decided to head back home. I did have a good time and it was a nice break after working such a long day.

Its nice to just be able to hang out with people you care about and let your hair down.

To be quite honest, if it wasn’t for Jyl and William, I don’t think I would be doing as well as I am. I love them both and just want to say thank you for everything.