life on the lost coast

I had to join dreaded my space to in order to correspond with some of the high school students I work with as the school counselor.  It’s a whole universe of good and weird and inane things.  I just put my toe in the cyber pond but, in the process, I happily found my best friend from high school.  It’s like a little treasure hunt out there.

Our delightful reconnection after way too many years inspired a story about an amazing experience she had. She said she had a “Jerry Springer type story” about her recent life and offered that when I was “sitting down and not holding any hot beverages” she’d tell me about it.  Pretty irresistable, huh?  Check out my story about her story and my new regular writing gig as long as you’ve finished that steaming mug of joe.

Ossian asked me whether I thought she would like the new boy who is slated to start preschool.  “Yes,” I answered, “I think you’ll like him” after her vehement rejection of my initial “I don’t know, what do you think” answer.  “I think he’ll like me, too,” she replied.  I like that self-esteem, I thought….

Then she said, “AND, he’s really electable.”

“Did you say he’s electable?”, I inquired searching my mental archives, as I often do, for a similar sounding word she might have intended instead.

“Yes, mommy.  He’s electable,”  she asserted before returning to her vibrant collage-making.

I am so lucky. Two healthy kids (ok - they both have 102+ fevers right now, but HEALTHY in the biggest sense), loving and gentle partner, supportive families, cherished friends, plenty of food to eat, an ample home in a pristine natural setting, a community that is not in a war zone….. gheez. Oh yeah, and a irrevocable blog.

So, on this, my fourth mother’s day as a practicing mother, I am grateful. Countless moms are spending this day worrying about where to sleep tonight with her children, how to feed them the day’s meals, whether she can protect her little ones from a violent partner today, how to shield her kids from the random violence of war…… it’s excruciating just to imagine into.

Mothering is serious business. It’s not supposed to be convenient or painless. But it should be free of violence. For so many is it the opposite.

Might be the right day to join up or pony up with a donation to an organization that supports mothers in dangerous situations. Here are few to consider:

• Support Iraqi moms coping with war thru Codepink
• Support efforts to end domestic violence through the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Support the National Coalition for the Homeless in its work to end homelessness

California’s poor are under attack. In response to a massive and looming state budget deficit, Governor Schwarzenegger is pushing a 10% cut to the Medi-Cal program. This would mean even smaller reimbursements to health care providers serving low-income people. Most medical providers who accept Medi-Cal already absorb substantial uncompensated costs for the care they provide to the state’s most disenfranchised residents. Further cuts will certainly mean decreased access to needed medical care for the state’s 6.5 million residents covered by Medi-Cal.

Fewer and fewer health care providers accept Medi-Cal due to the already low reimbursement rates that fail to cover the costs of their services. Many of these providers are community health centers that rely on additional donations, foundation grants, and creative fundraising efforts in order to just break even and generate the revenue needed to keep their doors open to low-income patients. Reducing reimbursements for practitioners means that some, if not many, will likely close their doors to Medi-Cal patients, leaving low-income folks with even fewer options.

Reducing access to preventive and routine health care services for those already in poverty can only lead to increased costs for the state down the road as:

• Medi-Cal recipients with shrinking access turn more heavily to costly emergency room care
• Require more expensive medical care for conditions that have advanced in the dearth of more timely medical intervention
• Increasing job losses result from insufficiently treated medical conditions
• Mental illnesses without supportive treatment become mental health crises resulting in costly hospitalizations, job loss, homelessness, child neglect, and violence - all of which cost the state money to manage
• Increasing housing instability and homelessness as the burdens of unpaid medical bills push low-income people with complex medical needs out of available housing options
• Greater reliance on entitlement programs as a result of increasing poverty and decreasing employability as medi-cal recipients’ health care needs find fewer available treatment options
• Increases in substance abuse as patients tend toward harmful self-medicating options in the face of decreasing access to needed prescriptions and health care

Once again, the heroic non-profits of the private sector are left with the challenge of providing for the basic needs of this country’s economically wounded…our friends and neighbors and fellow human beings who are hurtling through the expansive holes in our disappearing safety net.

The Governator’s proposed cuts to Medi-Cal are just this moment’s crisis in what is a continuous and extensively simmering emergency: the steady abandonment of a federal commitment to provide for the social welfare of Americans whose basic needs are unmet due to violence, mental illness, medical frailty, racism, and poverty. Many of these barriers could be ameliorated by a federally guaranteed system that ensured everyone access to basics such as health care (including mental health and chemical dependency services), affordable and safe housing, supportive education, quality childcare, and human employment paying a living wage. While our system maintains pieces of of some of these structures, they are disparate, deficient, and dwindling.

Cramming. That’s what I am doing. After a raucous week of hospitalizing our baby, I am woefully behind on my cramming schedule for CA Licensed Clinical Social Worker exam which I will be groggily taking bright and early tomorrow.

I even called today to see if I could reschedule but was mechanically told that if you fail to cancel with less than two days’ notice, your application will be destroyed and you have to start the entire process again. Doesn’t matter if your baby was in the hospital and has an extra hole in her bottom as a result. Nor does it matter if the test taker has an abscess and a missing filling, speaking of extra holes. Without going into the tedious details of applying for licensure in the state of Schwarzenegger, just know that getting the application together with documentation of thousands of clinical hours, continuing ed, and clinical supervision took forever and I would rather move to Detroit or get a job at Dairy Queen than do it again.

My cramming backdrop at the moment is strange but nice conference center hotel in Santa Rosa. Our 4 hour drive from home to here yielded NO naps from the wee ones. At least, we determined, they would be asleep by 6:30 and I could study, study, study.

We indulged in a vibrant dinner at my old friend Duskie’s award winning restaurant, Zazu. Anyone who lives within 3 hours of this restaurant must rush there and try everything on the sassy menu…and don’t even think of skipping the Better Nutters with Scharfenn-berger chocolate fondue dipping sauce for dessert.

Our children were insane when we got to the hotel. This being the one night ever that I’ve really needed them to go to bed somewhere close to normal bedtime, they rocked and rumpused around until after 9 pm. Which leaves the cramming a bit unmanageable. Mostly since I can’t seem to stay awake and my abscessing molar is throbbing despite my frequent doses of penicillin. Oh well.

This exam is already unbearable and annoying and I haven’t even taken it yet. In the exam prep books I purchased, the practice questions are prefaced with a statement about how poorly worded the actual exam will be… but that the authors of the prep books didn’t feel it would be helpful to also poorly word the practice questions. Fair enough. Keeping in mind that the authors opted to not poorly word the practice questions, the following sample question should give us all some disturbing indications as to just how very poorly written the actual questions are likely to be tomorrow morning in the testing chamber:

Question: You are providing services to a caseload of severely depressed clients of all ages. Many are medically ill or elderly. Some of your clients have been treated with only pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, whereas other clients have also been treated with electroconvulsive therapy. As compared to your other clients, you should expect those who have been treated with ECT to be more likely to experience….

a) more rapid symptom reduction in a greater proportion of clients with a lower risk

b) more limited symptom reduction in a lesser proportion of clients with a lower risk

c) more limited symptom reduction but with a higher risk

d) more rapid symptom reduction but with a higher risk

As Osh would say, is this a fair question?

The whole thing just reeks of the insecurity of the social work profession. I’ll have to expand on that in another post - I need to get back to the gory business of cramming now. Oh, and the test is 240 minutes long. Why not just say 4 hours?

Last thing… if I have to read one more thing about god damned oedipal complexes I’m going to scream through the taupe halls of this lovely hotel screaming “Electra” and “penis envy”!!! I think the Oedipal stage is bullshit!! So fail me, dear misguided Board of Behavioral Sciences, for being a psychotherapeutic heretic.

Cafe was packed this morning. When we arrived at 6:30 am to cook, arrange and generally transform the community center into the Lost Cafe, we were locked out. Searches in barns, calls to sleeping neighbors, and surprise early morning visits to people who might have a community center key finally yielded results and we were in. Behind by 30 minutes, Jamie and I had to move tables in a hurry and she whipped up veggie biscuits and gravy in anticipation of our loyal eaters.

With 6 orders up and all chairs full, the power went unexpectedly out leaving us impotent in the department of serving hot coffee. Kind of a silly obstacle for a CAFE. Dick begged for the cold surplus shot that had been sitting on the espresso maker for nearly an hour. At his behest, we warmed it on the stove and sold it to him.

By 10 am, we were sold out of all our muffins, coffee cakes, 4 batches of biscuits and gravy, and four dozen fresh farm eggs. Blase wasn’t afraid to glean breakfast from the discarded plates of other customers whose leftovers were destined for our colorful compost bucket. What a dedicated husband…

At 10:15, it was suggested that we could sell the compost - it looked so good.

Luckily, no one noticed the puffy mouse that lay in repose pinned beneath the snapper of an apparently effective trap on the shelf below the silverware.

Anyway, back to my cathartic, tell all “not all boils are created equal” story…..Lucky for us all, Nola responded well to the 3 rounds of intravenous antibiotics and gruesome abscess draining. Within 24 hours, we were discharged but encouraged to stay in a hotel for the night rather than taking her back to our remote home nearly 2 hours away. Many celebratory unagi rolls later, we all slept unrepentantly in a musty but thankfully scrub and scalpel-less hotel room.

We woke to find Nola smiling and interested in breakfast. No fever and no worsening of the abscess and so the pediatrician cleared us to go home. One more celebratory meal called us to the Big Blue Cafe where I fiendishly ordered a large bowl filled with rice milk mocha and a 4 pound breakfast burrito. Ahhh….. a few needed minutes of delightful relief and normalcy before my vision was abruptly distorted by a jagged diagonal line painted in prism light and flashing like a strobe. Oh shit, I thought, I just want to enjoy my burrito and rare coffee treat before dealing with a stroke or brain tumor or psychosis or whatever this weird lightning bolt means. I described it to Blase and sucked down my coffee. After 25 minutes, it went away. Reluctantly, I called the doctor and was encouraged to go to the hospital.

Back we went. Poor traumatized Nola clung to me and hid her face every time a person in scrubs passed by. She fell asleep on my chest during my triage interview and I caught a little bit of Obama’s press conference on the waiting room flat screen - a highlight of my week. (In case you’ve blocked this fact out, we don’t get television under the rock where we live. It simply isn’t possible). A fit and spunky doctor wearing a refreshingly bold party shirt asked me if I had a headache or was experiencing any nausea. Yes, I whispered in response, hoping that the hushed voice would keep Nola asleep a bit longer. The nausea and headache, though repulsive and uncomfortable, hadn’t seemed to be worth mentioning. Looking relieved, the doctor said definitively that I was experiencing a migraine. Further confirmation would come if the medication in the approaching syringe eliminated my symptoms. I was given the injection and then left in the room to react or not over the next 15 minutes. 5 minutes later, I felt flushed and lightheaded and knew I was about to faint. I scanned the room for options which would prevent my fall from harming the ailing baby strapped to my sweaty chest. I layed down on the crunchy paper covered exam table and put my feet in the air before tightening the straps on here carrier. After a few more weird visuals, I seemed to recover. This was an occasional side effect of the medication, the nurse explained when she returned to the room.

“Have a safe trip back to the boonies”, she said with a smile. Fresh air felt like a miracle as Nola awoke and we emerged from our strange medical home away from home to wait for the throbbing vehicular sound of our family, soon to pull into the driveway and whisk us away. Nola dragged me to the “life” sized Jesus statue that lorded over the hospital entrance and with a yawp, she gave him a jubilant high-five.

There is nothing quite like the smell of a hospital. In the ER, it is the smell of crisis and despair; an incongruous backdrop for the vibrant hope and innocence of a baby. That’s what I thought, among other things, as I sat halfway behind a faded powder blue curtain in room 7 of the emergency room two nights ago, awaiting some news about the prognosis for my suddenly and seriously ill baby and reluctantly listening to the growling arguments of our not-so-distant roommates on the other side of the uninspired fabric divide.

What began as a silly little boil on her tiny one-year old bottom, morphed into a hot and angry menace by dinnertime. A friend came by to pick up the sushi we’d brought her from town the night before and in our brief exchange, I mentioned poor Nola’s butt boil which this friend, luckily, couldn’t resist peeking at. Her medically trained eye recognized the growing threat and she insisted we take the now flat and feverish Nola to see Dr. Dick just down the road. We interrupted his dinner and with one glance, he sent us to the emergency room and called our pediatrician to alert him.

We did our best to maintain levity and calm for the sake of bewildered 3 year old who couldn’t conceive of this unprecedented spontaneous and hurried trip to town right at bedtime. I threw diapers, noodles, footie pajamas, and crayons in the car while tumbling through anxious thoughts of MRSA ravaging my sweet child. The winding 1.5 hour drive to town seemed eternal and I found myself silently bargaining with unknown gods to give up anything and everything in exchange for the health of my little one.

Ossian’s excitement erupted upon realizing that the hospital rooms were filled with band aids… one of her favorite things. By the time we reached the ER, Nola’s temp was 103.5 and she was miserable. Ossian and Blase headed to the freeway Best Western while Nola and I prepared for the invasive maneuvers ahead. We were, as Dr. Dick says, “inside the belly of the beast”.

First came the blood draw and IV. “We’ll need you to help us hold her down to the bed here”, the task focused nurse explained to me. It was horrible. She just kept crying in pain and terror and looking to me to save her. In went the first found of intravenous antibiotics. Next came the doctor with his various thoughts on whether to slice open the abscess and stuff it with gauze or to cut a piece away from her flesh, leaving a round hole thru which the abscess could drain. He decided on the latter and apologetically explained that the topical anesthetic that the nurse had rubbed on Nola’s wound would offer her almost no pain relief as he plunged his blade into her already excruciating owie.

She kicked and strained and yelled and sobbed in pain as he worked. I cooed and hugged and whispered in her ear. She was desperate for me to make it stop and I could not. All I had to offer was the boob. She seemed grateful and nursed like her life depended on it. Thus began our 22 hour nursathon as Nola did her baby best to cope with pain, fear, isolation, and heartache.

At about 11 pm, we graduated to the fourth floor pediatrics unit where Nola was hooked up to an antibiotic pump. She wanted to see what was outside our door but when we stepped across the threshold, we were quickly ushered back to our little sickly cell and told that we could not leave the room ….you know, because of the MRSA. All staff and visitors would have to don gowns and gloves before entering our room.

And so the nursathon continued… Nola and I clung to each other, just as we did when she was born. She was fragile and I had to be fierce.

The next day, Ossian and Blase returned for a visit. Ossian was given a special gown for big sisters but there weren’t any gloves that fit her miniature hands.

Blog posts are supposed to be short and it is nearly midnight. I still have to de-pan the fig walnut coffee cake for Cafe in the morning, stoke the fire, and brush my neglected teeth before falling into much needed sleep. This story to be continued very soon…..

blog neglect. that’s what I’m committing. It’s because I am doing a less fun thing by studying for my freaking licensing exam. My Washington state Clinical Social Worker license has reciprocity in all states EXCEPT, you guessed it, California. When I took the exam in Washington, I squirmed thru the entire unpleasant process of studying. I enjoy studying as an activity but studying for these licensing exams is not satisfying. Instead of measuring your competence, it seems to measure your ability to retain the random bits of esoterica contained in the volumes of study guides as well as your ability to divine the thought process of the test crafters. Neither of these abilities, in my opinion, are reflective of one’s skills and knowledge as a mental health clinician.

Anyway, all that these types of mini-rants do is divert scarce time from the necessary task of highlighting, transferring esoterica to blue and green index cards, and making eyes move across pages of monotonous text. I must return to reviewing “ventilation procedures”, “reflective discussion”, “disulfiram”, and “psychodynamic themes by stages of group development” in hopes of successfully cramming and putting this little era behind me.

Before doing that, I must report briefly on my children who are growing at astronomical rates. We had our maiden voyage in the double bike trailer resulting in gleeful squeals from the sisters in tow. Then, Osh and Nola were in the sandbox and Osh filled a dump truck with sand and said it was really “intense”. I asked her what “intense” means and she explained, “when you fill a truck with sand, that’s what intense is.” Then, she filled the sifter with sand and said it was “insensitive”. When I asked what “insensitive” means, she enlightened me by offering, “when the sand comes through here, it is really insensitive”.

For added cuteness, Ossian performs puppet shows for Nola.  Nola sits in the spiderman chair for most of the show.  Then, she rushes the puppet theater and climbs through the curtain, disrupting the show and enraging the puppeteer.

As part of our recent multi-week road-trip, we spent 5 lovely days in Lodi. Some of you may know this town through the Creedence Clearwater Revival song that immortalizes this funny place stuck in California’s vast central valley.

Why Lodi? - you might ask. Well, Blase went to attend the Salmonid Restoration Federation Conference and the girls and I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to languish in such an infamous locale. So, we tagged along.

Ossian’s fourth and final 3 year birthday celebration took place on Sunday. We left clusters of unswept cake crumbs, a battered pinata, and an oozing ooblek pit to head directly to town to stock up for Monday night barbeque. After serving 50 plus teriyaki burgers and mixed green salads to our beloved customers, the girls and headed back to town once again for tandem medical appointments and last minute trip preparation. Late night packing gave way to late night baking for Wednesday’s cafe. We decided to try opening cafe at a bit earlier, at 7 am to accomodate some elusive potential customers. Rubbing our eyes while grinding coffee and moving chairs into place, the cafe gals and I agreed that the 6 am arrival time to set up for 7 am cafe effectively sapped much of the fun out of our weekly event. Despite our reluctance, we sold out of all of our special (greens and cheese omelette) and nearly all of our freshly baked pastries (banana muffins, biscotti, and terribly flat cran-oat scones) by 9 am. I popped into the Community Center Board Meeting at 9:30, closed up cafe at 11 and was off to do crisis counseling at the High School at 11:30. My two little monkeys and their adorable father picked me up from school in a car laden with suitcases, peanut butter sandwiches, and Dora books that I’d crammed into the car the night before.

By 4 pm, just two hours into our 8 hour oddysey, the kids were asleep and in the quiet confinement of the humming car, I realized that I was ill. I’d been a little too busy to attend to the blood coming from my ears over the course of the past week and found myself repeatedly snapping at Blase to stop mumbling. Turns out, he was speaking quite audibly and it was my hearing that was the problem. We landed in lovely Lodi that night and I headed to Urgent Care the next day while Blase juggled our small charges during his lunch break.

Driving past Lodi’s ubiquitous strip malls and indecipherable apartment complexes with my brain pounding and fever peaking, I felt unabashedly excited by the thrill of momentary childlesness. Maybe I had faked the symptoms just for an excuse to have my first hour alone in weeks, albeit at Urgent Care in Lodi.

I arrived a little giddy and eagerly took my assigned clipboard to sit amidst the Christian Life and Diabetes magazines. In the blank asking for occupation, I brazenly scrawled “writer”. Why not… who was going to know the difference in LODI? If I couldn’t claim to be a writer there, then where? I was promptly taken back for my 3.5 minute visit with the doctor who diagnosed me with a severe double ear infection and handed me scrip for quick and dirty antibiotics. For once, I did not question the antibiotics. If he’d said that nibbling on elephant toenails would ease my pain at that point, I would have rushed to the nearest zoo.

I stopped at the check-out window where the receptionist stood up to ask me where I was from. I tried to explain our rural, small home but it is nearly impossible to paint an accurate picture. Then she said, “so you’re a writer?” “Um.. a little bit”, I stammered sheepishly. “You wrote a book or something?” she persisted hopefully. “Uhh…no,” I confessed. She looked concerned so I said, “Just some articles.” “Oh, like what?”, she perked up again as though ready to pull out something for me to autograph. ” Shit, I thought… “Nothing famous and NOTHING INTERESTING!”,  I blurted and scrambled for the door.

Not alone in my attempts to create medical problems to secure a break from parenting, Blase mustered up a noteworthy display of seeping poison oak blisters which covered his right forearm.  All it got him were some horrified looks from strangers and old hat empathy from his wife.

My delinquency in updating this blog could be blamed on many things. None of them are excessively interesting so I’ll skip all the excuses and dive right into what’s been going on out here since my last communique.

A week ago, a dead sperm whale washed up on our beach. With dozens of miles of wild coastline available, somehow, this whale serendipitously landed right at the end of the footpath leading from the parking lot at Mattole Beach. 10-15 years old, this 30 plus foot whale sat bloated and awesome for us all to study. I learned a lot about Sperm Whales this week including that they have the largest noses of any creature on earth but that they have very limited, if any, sense of smell. They are the largest toothed mammal on earth. They are the deepest diving of all whales, traveling one to two miles down in search of giant squid, their favorite meal. Giant squid, being - of course - giant, sometimes win. This whale had circular suction marks on his glossy back that were scars from epic battles with squid. The males travel solo to northern waters to eat and grow. When finished, they’ll significantly outweigh and outlength the females in what is one of the greatest examples of sexual dimorphism of any creature on earth.

The Sperm Whale’ s head takes up a 1/3 of its body. Most of the head contains the spermacetti organ - a highly evolved sonar structure that emits incredibly loud sounds likely used to find and stun prey. Sperm whales are rarely found on land. This was the second sperm whale to wash up in this area in a month - a truly rare preponderance. The first one died after eating 50 pounds of plastic fish netting. The one on our beach had an empty stomach and no obvious cause of death was identified.

It was hard to leave the whale every time I went to look at it. Despite a growing odor and relentless ooze from the carcass, it was irresistibly mesmerizing and unbelievable to get a rare, up close glimpse at the massive otherworldly body of a creature that inhabits one of the more mysterious places on earth, the dark and mythical world far beneath the sea. To imagine this 13 ton beast duking it out with a giant squid was mind boggling.

Check out a short snippet of video I took whaleside. I also wrote a story about the whale for the North Coast Journal.