Thursday, May 04, 2017

i have my transcendence, some esoteric unit of measurement that's unknowable. i meet a strange man in a wheelchair, he has no ability to communicate with me as he is a quadriplegic but i can read him well. 
it's my new unit where i work for one month dealing with staffing dramas and sometimes interact with the clients. i never worked with people so damaged and it's confronting, you really never want to ride a motorbike ever, or do anything high risk. maybe unsafe sex is my limit but never ride without a helmet. i don't know, it's spooked me. this guy needs a hoist to get out of bed in the morning, it's operated by two people. i just need coffee. 
everything requires two people with this man, i watch people working with him and i'm impressed by their level of care. i don't know if i have that. i push myself. i can work with wild out of control people fucked up on alcohol and drugs people wielding knifes but here i am challenged by a man who has no ability over his body.
i don't want to think about quality of life. i mean this guy gets well looked after and the people helping him really love him, but me, i'm thinking if i end up like that i want the million dollar baby ending. 
each day i get to know the guy better, sometimes i speak to him like he was an ordinary guy, he likes that. his face seems to respond. i talk to him about girls, he's a sexual being, he must dig girls. 
his face lights up so i figure that's a good thing. occasionally i feed him, he eats squished up food, mush. no solids. to eat his food his wheelchair has to be tilted back at 45 degrees, he eats slowly and his head involuntary turns from side to side so the act of getting a spoon of food in his mouth is an art in itself. 
i don't know what to make of the situation, i'm really not set up to deal with this level of care. i work with mental illness mostly, never have to deal with personal care like this. it's not really my thing but i figure what the hell, this guy is surrounded by women all day, a strange freak like me may be entertaining for him. 
i play him various songs, he loves the church. i take that as a sign of vast intelligence and think i may stick around this guy a bit longer, see if he holds the secret to the universe.
i am sitting there all calm contemplating this when suddenly my man has a seizure, for on top of all his conditions he is saddled with this. i go into epilepsy management, timing the length of the seizure as i protect his head, three and a half minutes, which is short. if where longer than 10 i would have to administer medication. after the seizure i try to calm the man down, he's disoriented and his equilibrium all out of whack. 
i'm calm, cool and collected but i am out of my depth. it all passes and we are back to spoon feeding mush, talking about girls. what was all that about?

No comments: