goodnight nurse

Note: photos are for illustration purposes only and are not depictions of actual nurses, night or day, described in this essay.


Maybe nurses are like refrigerators. During visiting hours, when the quality of your care is on display, they are a pleasing mix of pep and sympathy. They check your IV fluids on time and change your dressing gently. And before they even walk into your room, they know your name and which leg’s been amputated.

The night nurse is special. And morphine, while not particularly kind to the colon, is kind to the night nurse; it makes you lax when it comes to taking down names.

But I could never forget Kathy, who entered my room with that cheery, plump smile and said, “Let’s see, you had a knee, right?”

“Yup,” I said. My mom’s eyes bugged out. She knew what I did not: that Kathy wasn’t just pulling my leg; she had the wrong leg entirely. Mom gave her the wet fur. “No, uh, my daughter had back surgery—a laminectomy and discectomy.”

Kathy was flustered and embarrassed. How could that have happened? She looked at the room number again, then at her chart, apologizing and promising to return after she helped the lady with the bum knee.

When she did, I’d been in the same spot for hours, and I was beginning to brown unevenly, so I asked for some help. Kathy pushed me forward on the pad, then yanked me backward, then rolled me over, like I was some kind of stiff gingerbread cookie dough she was flattening. It hurt. I moaned. I asked if I would be getting Neurontin—because it helps me get to sleep—and she said it would be coming at ten with my oral and I.V. ibuprofen, as well as my I.V. antibiotic. The names of the medications were confusing both of us, but I was pretty sure I’d not taken an I.V. and oral version of the same drug. Well, I would be this time, she said.

Nuh-uh. When Kathy came back, she acknowledged her mistake, said she’d had a long day. She did not have a cup of water with her, and she wanted to save some time, so she added water to the ice chips I was allowed to have, the chips that kept me able to swallow. And with water in my cup, the ice would melt, and who knew when she’d come with a replacement cup of chips? I felt a little scared. “Oh, please don’t put water in that cup. If I have no ice, I can’t swallow.”

“You’ll be able to swallow. Take two sips of water before you take the pills.”

“That’s not what I mean. I can’t swallow. In general. And if you put water in my cup, it will melt all my ice chips.”

She went on and on about how it’s OK for me to have water to take pills, not understanding that my concern was that she’d not return all night with more ice chips. When I’d finished with the pills, she dumped the water out of my cup and returned the remaining ice. “That’s all I wanted,” I said with exhausted breath. “I just didn’t want my chips to melt, or I’d not be able to swallow until you brought them back.”

Adding to my concerns that night was my insomnia. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep with all the nurse’s and tech’s comings and goings and the noise in the hallway outside my door, but I asked them to close the door anyway so that I could try before the Ambien arrived. Every time I did drift off to sleep, Gerald, the tech, would knock on my door before entering to check my IVs or change the bag from my drain—things for which I did not need to be awake.

“Why do you knock?” I asked him.

“Well, I don’t want to disturb you.”

“But it’s eleven o’clock! I’m trying to sleep, and knocking is the thing that’s waking me up!” (I add exclamation points here, but I doubt my voice could have risen to that level of excitability.)

Gerald says he can put a note on my door, if I prefer, but it’s common courtesy to knock before entering a closed room.

Dude, I just had back surgery. I can’t walk unassisted, and I have a catheter. What could you possibly disturb besides my sleep?

I had forgotten my ear plugs, but I managed to fall asleep for a moment before the IV fluids ran out and started beeping incessantly. I waited a full five minutes before buzzing the nurse. Twice. It had been beeping nearly twelve minutes when a different nurse yelled in to me that my nurse was taking care of something and would be down in a few minutes.

I started crying. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. How dare I.

“Well, let’s see,” I said without a trace of sarcasm. “I had surgery today. I’m in pain. Every time I fall asleep, someone knocks on my door or lets my IV run out, and now I’ve been listing to this beeping at midnight for the past fifteen minutes.”

Nurse Kathy came in, once again apologetic and full of excuses about her busy day and busy night. She brought my Ambien (if I’d been asleep, she’d have awakened me to give me a sleeping pill) and roughly rolled me over, while the other nurse attempted to remove my catheter. Had Kathy gotten her handiwork in the mix, I’d probably be peeing into a tube for the rest of my life.

The pair of them threatened to cut off my morphine, too, and would have, if I’d said I was farting.

Some time in the middle of the night, a new nurse came in. I think she was followed by the clatter and pomp of a marching band. She began erasing my board and announcing loudly that she was Nurse So-and-So, and this was her shift.

She was erasing my hospital phone number, my room number, and all the information previously written on the white board, where most of the nurses just erased the spots after Nurse: and Tech: to put in their own team’s names. “Why are you erasing that?” I asked in my middle-of-the-night stupor.

“This is the way I do my board,” she said. She needed to awaken me to announce her exalted presence is all. And I got her just in time to save my PT appointment times.

In the morning, Lisa and Stephanie, the picture perfect nurses, were camped outside my door in a mini nurse’s station designed, it seemed, to undo all the damage done by the renegade band of evil night nurses and make us all believe we were simply the victims of a bad morphine drip.

ol' reliable

Every day, a squirrel climbs the ornamental cherry tree between my yard and my neighbor’s. I've been spending the afternoons on the living room sofa and am often startled by movement outside my side porch door. The squirrel makes his way down the limbs to the berries at the end of the tree, right outside my window. On the third day, I started noting the time: 2:45.

Last winter, between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m., crows partook of these berries. I remember being astounded by them while Serena and I were decorating the Christmas tree. They would let us watch them from the window— me, every day for a month or so until they'd moved on—but if I got the camera, they'd fly off. The crows have returned; 3:20 is berry time. They shoo away the squirrel, who sometimes comes back when they depart.

Few things in this world are reliable. Immanuel Kant’s walks around Königsberg were said to be so regular that neighbors could set their clocks by his passing by their homes. But that’s a legend, like the one about Mussolini’s trains running on time.* Swiss watches are more dependable than most. Seasons don't change on time; sometimes spring and winter miss Baltimore altogether. At least the planets still revolve around the sun, which rises and sets every day, sometimes with pageantry. Mankind hasn't found a way to interfere with that yet, unless you count pollution, which makes the skies better but the air worse.

We want to count on things, but we’re damned if we do. In my old days of cynicism, I kept my expectations low, but even that didn’t stave off disappointment. Because deep down you just want to trust even the untrustworthy things, like weather or your lover. You can rent the gigantic tents, but rain on your outdoor wedding is a bummer (it's not, however, "ironic"). You can prepare to be forgotten on Valentine's Day, as you are every year, but when there are no flowers, you feel both worthless and foolish.

It’s not your daughter’s fault that she’s sick three days before your surgery or that your best friend, whom you’re counting on to come down from New York to help with recuperation, is coming down with something herself. But it’s still disappointing. It’s disappointing that the B and E strings of your brand new guitar—the one—buzz annoyingly, so much that the guitar has to be returned for repair.

Right now, I’m still counting on surgery to restore the feeling to my outer thigh, my calf, and three numb toes on my left foot, as well as take the kick out of my butt, the hunch out of my back, and the hesitation out of my bladder. I’m not expecting it all right away, and I’m only asking for the minimum. I know it won’t rid me of all the pain or restore my strength or make me able to run five miles—ever again.

I’m counting on spending the next two weeks in my living room, perched on my electric recliner, which I had counted on to be one of the most hideous pieces of furniture ever, right down to the tufted back, the antimacassar, and the dark wear spot on the seat. I was not disappointed. Every day around three, I will wait for the squirrel and then the crows. This time, I will be the unreliable one. Instead of chasing the birds and beast away by running to the door with my camera, I’ll only be able to sit there and watch.

Unlike me, the crows will not be disappointed.





*False. Though the railroad system was better than ever under his reign, it was spruced up just prior to fascist rule.

the one

My husband is serenading me with “Angel of Harlem.” I tell him how I love this unofficial ritual, this regular Sunday morning worship of the guitar in the Miller Kitchen, as it has come to be known. (On other Sundays, I have taped the two of us doing Springsteen's "No Surrender" and the three of us playing Joan Osborne's "One of Us.) “This is my prayer,” Marty says.

He can’t think of the words to the U2 song, so he improvises: “Snow fell on the avenue, I stepped in some doggy doo, got that shit all on my shoe, wiped it off on the carpet for you, angel, angel of Harlem.”

Marty’s good at that—that improvisation of lyrics. He’s as quick as anyone I know and smart, too, so I shouldn’t be surprised. I count on him to replace the words to our favorite songs the way I count on him to poke me and say, “Vanagon,” every time we drive by one on the road and to exclaim, “Oh, look! Some old whore left her workbench in the alley,” every time we pass a discarded mattress. (Don’t tell him you have a weak back; he’ll ask, “When’d you hurt it?” and answer, “Oh, about a week back.”)

My husband makes me laugh at loud—we make each other laugh out loud—so often, even when life is shit for both of us.

As it is right now.

He’s a teacher at a Catholic school, and I’m a stay-at-home writer with sporadic freelance gigs and 2/3 of a book advance already spent. The Archdiocese has announced the need to consolidate due to under-enrollment, so we’re shvitzing.

The worst part of our lives right now has nothing to do with the economy. It’s my weak back, which has been killing me since summer—way longer than a week back. After three painful cortisone shots, acupuncture, physical therapy, and various forms of hocus pocus, I’m having surgery next week. I can’t drive now or for a month after, and I can carry nothing heavier than a carton of milk. Afterward, I will be able to eat, sit in a recliner, and walk. I think I can go to the bathroom but am supposed to wipe using tongs. (Don’t ask.)

Marty works about ten hours a day, with six preps, all-day teaching, and after-school commitments. As sole driver, he also must take our daughter to her basketball practice, ballgames, guitar lessons, and show rehearsal. He must walk our two dogs, shop for groceries, and clean our house. I can still cook and do the dishes. I’ve also become an expert kvetcher, moaner, pill taker, and cryer. None of these things has enhanced my appearance, my talents, or my self-esteem, and they don’t pay.

So I am surprised by the random kindnesses my husband shows me: the impromptu back rubbing, the chocolate donut, the lustful winks. Sure, he’s bitching a bit, but I have to let him. It might be just as awful to be the able spouse of a temporarily disabled person.

Since I’ve been cooped up for so long—except for doctors’ appointments and Thanksgiving dinner—I decided to join Marty and Serena yesterday on a trek to the guitar store. Weekly fliers are so tempting to them; sales and giveaways and coupons litter our kitchen. This week’s includes a $29 distortion pedal and a free guitar with the purchase of a case of strings. While they were shopping, I could spend quality time with my dream guitar.

Guitar Center is set up with a big main room full of electric guitars and amps stacked high. Every time they go, my daughter falls in love with something new. This Saturday, it was a bitchin’ black Gretsch hollow-body electric, with dual f-holes and a shiny whammy bar, which my daughter grabbed and dragged around the store with her like a toddler drags his blankie. Behind the open main room are doors to the acoustic room, where the cheap and mid-price acoustics are kept. And all the way in the back is a small, climate-controlled room with the expensive, quality guitars—mostly Taylors and Martins. A few high-priced Gibsons, Takamines, and Breedloves hang there, too (there goes the neighborhood, some would say).

While my family was out front, I was in the back making time with “the one.” Even if you don’t play guitar, you know “the one.” It’s not exactly love at first sight; it’s more reasoned than that. It not only looks glorious (ebony fret board, mother-of-pearl inlays on the frets and around the sound hole, sexy cutaway style), but it feels good in my lap and sings like an angel. I’ve played nearly every guitar in that back room, and some are nice, yes. But none of them are the Gibson Songwriter Deluxe. I never set out to love this one. Gibson’s not known for sweet and ringy acoustic guitars.

Ethan waited on me, and I wanted to know if this model was one of the Gibsons on sale for $500 off. It was only 10% off, but he said, “Want me to see if I can do better?” I had no idea that this worked like a car dealership, but I was game. He returned with his offer: $1,900 out the door, tax included.

I was excited, doing head math, playing with the numbers. With credit, I could have a year, interest-free, to pay it off. I calculated. One hundred sixty a month. Some good tickly stuff coursed through my veins. But Marty was a party-pooper. Number one, he said, I don’t deserve it until I can make a Bm smoothly. Number two, we’re broke. Number three, how many guitars do we need? I’ve already got a decent Guild. And then, of course, there’s the impending surgery.

I pouted and closed the door to the climate-controlled room. While I was fondling the Gibson madly, Serena was running through her repertoire on a curly maple Ibanez, on which she's had designs for about as long as I've loved the Gibson. She played snippets of “Crazy on You,” “Lola,” “Satisfaction,” “The Kids are Alright,” “Bus Stop,” “Surrender.” But she left in a snit when she learned she wouldn’t be taking it—or the Gretsch—home that day. A man stopped us to say what an incredible guitarist we have in Serena, so I blushed and gushed a bit, then went out to occupy her while Marty arranged to buy her that icky-sounding Ibanez.

I found Serena kicking the carpet sadly. Never mind that since April, she has gotten a classical Yamaha and a brand new Fender Showmaster, as well as having access to my acoustic Guild and Marty’s Strat. To keep her from chasing after her dad, I brought her the Gretsch and had her plug in and repeat her set list on the electric. I like to listen to her play, but I also like to watch people do a double take when they see that a kid—a girl kid—is at the helm.

When Marty came out, Serena became dejected once again. And I was moping, too, when we got in the car. Mostly I was tired. I hadn’t been out for this long in weeks. Marty said, “Well, you're gonna be upset, but while I was buying the amp, someone bought your guitar.”

I knew he was lying. It had been there for months and months, and no one had touched it. Except for some string wear, it was pretty perfect.

“Here, you wanna see the receipt?” he asked me, tossing the folded up paper in my lap. Why would I want to see that? I knew the total. I had done all the math—a $69 bass amp for my nephew, a $249 Ibanez acoustic, and a box of strings for a hundred bucks, which included a free Silvertone acoustic (which sounds better than the cheap shit Ibanez!). I heard the crinkle of paper as Marty smoothed the receipt and stuck it in my lap while he drove. The first item on the list: Gibson, $1,900.

I cried my eyes out with joy. The tears just busted right out of my eyeballs. It was like the nicest, most unexpected thing.

So now we’re in the kitchen on Sunday morning, singing together, and he’s changing the words, and I’m laughing, thinking how much I still love him, a little surprised that after 26 years, we still have this good thing going on. I wonder, in my defective state, how much I deserve it and the guitar. Are they both too good for me?

I take Serena out with my mom to a craft fair and buy him a chocolate-covered caramel apple and a chocolate chip cookie. He goes out to buy some guitars for his girls. And when we return, it’s there on the dining room table. “Well, aren’t you gonna play it?” he asks. I was going to wait until Christmas. “What for? Play it!”

I know that trick. He just wants to play it himself, which he does, several times, while I cringe and reach out to protect it as if it’s a baby being held by an ogre. When he goes to work after dinner (which he does frequently, in addition to his other duties), I take out the guitar and pose with it for some goofy Flickr CD cover group. My daughter comes up from the basement while I'm adding the CD title. "Oh my god! You took a naked picture with your guitar already?" she asks, as if I've, like, done this before or something.



Today, while I am at the doctor’s office going over surgery instructions, I note that I can’t pick up anything, but I wonder whether things can be put in my lap—things like, say, a new Gibson Songwriter Deluxe. “Sure,” the nurse tells me. But, as has happened with other guitar-playing patients, I might get a spasm when I try to put my arm over it. Oh, the indignity!

I give the news to my husband when he comes home from work, exhausted enough to pass out in the chair next to me (which he does). “Guess I’ll take it back and get myself an SG, a Taylor DN3, and some more strings. I’d still have a couple hundred left.”

“Go ahead,” I tell him. “I don’t deserve it anyway.”

“OK, I’ll do that tonight,” he says. “I also need some hot Vietnamese chicks who can bend over.”

“That’s going on my blog,” I tell him.

“They can be Burmese,” he says. “Or Cambodian.”

goodpill industries

My medicine cabinet probably looks a lot like yours: analgesics and cold medicines; assorted eye and butt creams (the latter rarely used, of course, and certainly not by me); clippers and cutters; Vaseline and Vicks Vapor Rub; an ear bulb someone might someday need—and where would we be without it?

Once or twice a year, I throw away bottles of pills, drugs that time finished when I couldn’t. Usually they are pain relievers from migraines or back aches or thoracic outlet syndrome. Sometimes they are anti-depressants that I decided against after the second dose, or they’re prescriptions for a misdiagnosed condition. In the last year, I’ve tossed whole bottles of Roxicet, Percocet, Oxycodone, Flexeril, Nortriptyline. Antivert, and Cymbalta. It’s thousands of dollars in pharmaceuticals—useful to some, I’m sure. Too bad there’s no Goodpill Industries. I’d drive up the alley and whisper, “Psssst…yo, Spike, I got the Percs.” If I could drive, that is.

The other day, I met with a surgeon to discuss my laminectomy and discectomy (L5-S1, in case you're new). He asked what I’ve been taking, and I complained that nothing worked, that if I take Percocet, I become a zombie. I’ve got five months worth of sample bottles of Cymbalta. I took it for two days and stood drooling in the grocery store, forgetting which aisles had the foods I buy.

This doctor actually listened to me for a change. He gave me two prescriptions and told me I absolutely must take them.

Before he wrote down the instructions, I told him I didn’t know what it was about prescription drugs in particular. He could tell me to smoke pot or take Quaaludes, Black Beauties, or mushrooms—no problem. But that mean ol’ Roxicet is scary! My mother tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the look of fear and horror (there was no shock) until I reassured her that once I became pregnant, I stopped taking any of those recreational medicinal risks.

She and the doctor were relieved as I waxed poetic over my drug of choice: “delicious beer.” I love the taste of beer, yes. And I love the way two beers make me feel. I’ve often wished someone could invent the two-beer pill—something just relaxing enough but not too mind altering. When you’re a control freak in pain, all you’ve got is your brain, and even that gets hijacked by the suck voice. You tend to agree with everything it says when your cognitive ability is equal to that of oatmeal.

The doc advised me how to take the Neurontin; the hydrocodone was to be taken around the clock, unless I preferred the Percocet, in which case that’s the one I should take around the clock. Whole pills, too, he warned, not the quarters and halves I’ve been taking.

The first morning, I took half a hydrocodone—just to make sure I wouldn't lose my mind. Not much happened, so I took the other half.

I’m a few days late for Thanksgiving shout-outs, but I want to thank the Norco people. I can now cross one item off my list of things to accomplish during my lifetime: Invent or discover the two-beer pill.

Though it hasn't done a whole lot for the pain, I will not be dropping any leftovers into the charity bin.

twenty-six-year itch

Two days ago, my mother-in-law would have celebrated her sixty-first wedding anniversary, had Marty’s dad not died a decade ago. This Christmas, my parents will have been married forty-seven years. Maybe long marriages are in our genes. My husband and I will celebrate our fifteenth anniversary next May, and we lived together for eleven years before the big day.

In twenty-six years, neither of us has ever cheated. There was an almost or two, but, unless you count my visibly swooning (and probably drooling) over Bob Schneider, we’re pathetically faithful.

Certain kinds of people always chuckle when I say I’m certain my husband has never had an affair—either sexual or emotional. Cheaters—they think everyone cheats.

A few times in our relationship—usually, coincidentally, before or after a Bob Schneider concert—I have given Marty permission to get himself some strange, but he just won’t do it. I know it’s because he loves me—and he’s terrified that it would give me permission. And then someone else might fall in love with me, too.

I've been thinking about it, and I wonder whether it would bother me, after all these years, if he had a meaningless romp in the hay with some nubile thing. I could say yes with certainty a decade ago, but now I wonder if all marriages shouldn’t come with a Get Out of Jail Free card or a built-in marriage vacation for a week every seven years.

Marty can't believe I'd give him up so easily, even for a night. “What if you came home and found Catherine Zeta Jones in bed with me?”

"I would point at her and laugh," I say. "No, really, if you could tap that, you deserve to!”

Marty looks wounded. “What if she falls in love with me?”

“Oh, yeah. Because poverty is so sexy.”

Maybe that’s what makes men’s fantasies so much more unrealistic than women’s. No, I’m not a 24-year-old blow-up doll, but I’m not bad for forty-inaudible mumbling], and I could very well be the hottest offering in a room—like those couple of times we trekked to small rock clubs on weeknights in snow storms. It was slim pickin’s for rockers. I could do in a pinch.

But even with permission, I couldn’t do it. What would be the point? Who needs the heartbreak, the disillusionment? Who needs to get naked in front of a stranger at my age? And who needs the host of dangerous microbes that only a lead condom could stop? (Talk about a seven-year-itch!)

What most people need to keep the sparks in their marriage is the knowledge that someone else desires them.

So, Catherine, now you know that you are at the top of my husband's list. This is my gift to you and Michael. Happy Anniversary.

they catch bad guys, don't they?

I have a television in my bedroom. I borrowed it from my sister, who upgraded. I used to bring the kitchen TV upstairs when my husband was out of town; I liked the company. But it was heavy, and I got tired of carrying it up and down the stairs. Besides, I have my own room, and it can have its own TV.

Back when we were twenty-something, Marty and I had a little black and white TV in our bedroom on 27th Street in Remington. I don’t remember what we watched—LA Law and NYPD Blue, probably—but I do remember that our roommate, an unemployed used car salesman, used to take that TV from our room while we were at work so that he could stay in his room all day, freebasing cocaine and peeing in a one-gallon apple cider jug. Imagine the day I came home and searched the house for that little TV only to find it illuminating the tighty whities of our roommate, a giant bottle of urine next to his bed. He muttered an apology, but he still stole it every day, even rummaging through my things when I hid it from him.

When we moved, we got a bigger TV, and the little one went in the den. (The roommate did not come with us.)

I never used to watch the tube a lot, though I confess to having a thing for the various incarnations of The People’s Court. Winter nights for the past fifteen years have always been capped with an hour-long soak in the tub with a good book. But since I put my sister’s TV in my bedroom, I’ve all but stopped reading and bathing. Instead, I get in bed and watch the cop shows—CSI, Law and Order, Without a Trace, Cold Case. If it’s got a bad guy and airs between nine and eleven, it’s on in my bedroom.

My husband hates it. He wants to be the only bad guy in my bedroom. Instead, he comes in to say his passive-aggressive goodnight before filling the adjacent room with hurricane-force snores.

You’d think that all these shootings and robberies and rapes and murders would keep me up nights, but I actually sleep a little better. In the past few weeks, in fact, something odd has happened. I can’t seem to stay awake for the ends of the shows. I’ve been falling asleep at quarter of ten and quarter of eleven, just before they catch the bad guys. I’ve seen magicians die, their killers disappear. I’ve seen kids get lost but never found. I’ve seen cops almost get their man. Then it’s all blank, and I wake up in time for the next show’s theme song.

You’d think this would have some kind of effect on me—that I would have begun to lose my faith in law enforcement or that I'd be worried all the time. Nuh-uh. The fact that TV shows no longer resolve has not made a

I ba-ROCKED the vote—and I'm proud of it

When I awoke this morning to what I consider good news, I logged on to Facebook to change my status message to something appropriate for an injured person who wants to express delight: “Leslie F. Miller is cheering, gently.”

This afternoon, I logged on and found an acquaintance’s status message: “[so-and-so] thinks seeing your politics in your status update yesterday is like seeing you naked -- in most cases, we'd be better off if it hadn't happened.”

First of all, that’s awfully presumptuous! Seeing me naked could have any number of positive results, not the least of them a determination to lay off the cake and beer!

Second, what’s the secret? Sure, voters have the right to privacy, but few people find it necessary or even desirable to hide their beliefs. Some post choices on their lawns or slap them on their bumpers. Others, like me, wear t-shirts in honor of our candidates. A political party affiliation is certainly no more sacred than a religious one, yet Orthodox Jews don’t hide their yarmulkes, and Christians don’t hide the crosses around their necks. Telling someone you’re a Jew is probably more dangerous, in fact, than telling someone you’re a Democrat.

Third, a Facebook status message is very much like a bumper sticker on a car, but it’s a car that you drive around a parking lot full of your friends and acquaintances. You choose who sees that sticker.

Finally, I’m proud of my vote. I made my informed decision based on my core values. That’s what people do. It’s how we pick our spouses and our friends; if we have the luxury of means, it’s how we decide where to live and where to send our children to school. And while we don’t always agree with our neighbors (close friends and family members voted for “that other guy”), we usually have other, more important things that unite us—like our love of music, our appreciation for art, our children’s friendship, and love.