Into the Family Business

Some people grow up in a house full of musicians and grow into great musicians themselves. Athletes beget athletes and many offspring go into the family business, whether it's owning gas stations, or selling plumbing parts wholesale.* I grew up in a virtual infirmary. As a diabetic, my Mom's monitoring of her health was paramount. We all were acutely aware that she was a couple missed insulin shots away from a meeting with the guy with the scythe. As she aged, the medical dimension of our lives became more complex and by the time she passed away in 2000, the infirmary was virtual no more. Her oxygen saturation dropped to the point where she required oxygen. My father ran nightly peritoneal dialysis treatments, which made it ironic that he eventually spent ten years on dialysis himself. Last, Mom's cardiac bypass surgery had resulted in blindness when she had strokes during the operation that atrophied her optic nerves.

There are certainly people who might have developed an aversion to the medical industrial complex after such exposure. I, on the other hand, became increasingly fascinated whenever I witnessed my parents' treatment in hospitals. After her bypass surgery, Mom stayed unconscious for several days. In her room in the cardiac intensive care unit, she seemed to be the engine driving the machines around her, as if the computers in The Matrix were prototyping their designs.

As his kidney disease developed, my father starting racking up medical frequent flyer miles as well. Shortly before he moved to California, I flew back to Springfield, MA to be with him when a surgeon formed the first fistula in his arm (a tough merging of veins designed to keep them from collapsing from the large needles necessary for dialysis). Once he moved to California, my sister Marilyn became the primary witness to his care, becoming its overseer as his medical conditions worsened and compounded with each other. In the several years before his death, I flew to see him, both in the hospital and out. Each time I marveled, as I did with my Mom, how medical advances granted him additional years. Dad squeezed an extra ten years out of body that kept trying to throw in the towel. Unlike my Mom, he got to know all of his grandchildren and see both of his sons happily married. (Mom was at Marilyn's wedding, a true gift for everyone present, despite the difficulties in travel she encountered due to her medical tribulations.)

Everywhere, there were nurses. I saw them work way more than I saw doctors. Nurses had jobs that combined acute technical dexterity with tasks as mundane as weekly housekeeping. They moved with purpose and efficiency. I marveled at their ability to do things I thought myself utterly incapable of. Little did I know, but my fascination with their work nurtured a growing, though unconscious, urge to join them.

* I always thought that if my family had a crest, our motto would be, "I can get that for you wholesale." Three of my grandmother's siblings (or their spouses) started businesses that still exist. I know offspring still run at least two.