Thank you to everyone who came, called, or wrote. This has been the most amazing and awful week of our lives.
Today I went back to work a federally funded Hispanic clinic where I sometimes work when I am in town. It was more difficult than I thought it would be. I love the people I see there - they are a grateful bunch.
The first person on my schedule was a Caucasian woman I had seen for 15 years at United Family Practice, where I worked until I started doing travel medicine April of 2008. She was one of my chronically mentally ill patients. I also followed her for kidney cancer. She lives in a nursing home because she just couldn't function anymore living with her somewhat sadistic husband. She can't leave her wheelchair because of her obesity and arthritis. She thinks of me as a friend. I asked her if she came because of my daughter's suicide and she said no. She had no idea. So it was a coincidence.
She reminded me that she was abused sexually as a child. She was in psychiatric institutions until her husband took her home as his wife in her 30's
But she had to be institutionalized again in her 60's because she'd do things like call our clinic team nurse everyday with a recurring or new complaint. Or show up too often to the ED. And she stopped walking. This being the twenty-first century,she went to a nursing home instead of the state mental hospital.
She's really quite linear when we talk. All her psych meds keep her functioning cognitively pretty well. She asked about her terrible tremor - a side effect of her long term use of anti-psychotic medications. Not much to do for that. She knows that but she just had to ask again.
We sang a couple of songs - she led me with the words - I am so spaced out I can't tell you what we sang. But it was what we used to do at the old clinic. She has a nice voice and she knows the words. We just socialized and I did a couple of lab tests and billed Medicare and Medicaid for bipolar disorder and earache. It's hard to get reimbursement for singing although it was clearly the most therapeutic part of the visit. And the fact that I know her so well - her icky husband, her sister, her long list of medical problems.
And I couldn't help but think of my dear daughter and what her future might have looked like if she had ever agreed to join the "system." Take the drugs. Suffer the side effects. LIke this woman, Daniele was developing significant physical problems too - a diabetic in the making. Chronic pain from hypermobility of all her joints. Her God-damned fistula that was what really put her over the edge - two failed surgeries in 2009. Chronic boils in a bad part of the anatomy for a single young woman.
And I think and cry and cry and cry that maybe she was right to give us the slip. No fix. No fix. No fix.
Love, Rachel
PS If you missed the funeral go to http://danielefinley.blogspot.com/
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