Why I shan't be purchasing a cat

 

For the last five weeks in the Intensive Care Unit there has been a man fighting for his life after being scratched by a cat. 

There are occasions you come across situations where you feel compelled to ask: what happened to this person? The modus operandi of the HSA (Hospital Service Assistant - formerly known as Orderlies) is: don't ask. I generally don't. But there are occasions where you spend a bit of time with a patient and their nurse; there's a moment of down time and it seems okay to ask the question. In this particular circumstance it was: cat scratch. The guy had every conceivable tube coming out of him, was jaundiced and pretty much in a terrible state: I figured he had had an aneurysm. It all seemed a bit too much for an aneurysm, but what do I know. Cat scratch. He was in his late 40s. 

So he died this morning. 

I only ever spoke to him once where he responded. I spoke directly to him and he nodded at me. That was a nice moment as prior to that he was always in a coma. But then he went back into the coma. 

Another HSA and I were returning from a previous job this morning, when a nurse grabbed us explaining she needed our assistance as the wife of the man who had just  passed had collapsed in front of the lifts, and we needed to get her into a wheelchair. We succeeded in doing this and I was then asked to take his wife down to Triage as she was not doing okay. So a couple of nurses, her brother in law, and I, took the lift from the 4th floor to the ground floor. We must have been a sight, as the door lifts would open and people would look, back away and  offer to take the next lift. 

The nurse kept speaking to her, getting her to focus on breathing. But her grief kept unfurling and choking her. As I wheeled her down to Triage with her brother in law in tow I could feel her despair shimmering black in front of me. The abyss of loss of a partner of twenty years. 

Once in triage they discovered that her heart rate was really high and so we had to rush her into the emergency room. 

I returned upstairs to Intensive Care with her brother in law. 

Returning to the ward a nurse asked if I was free to give her some help. Turned out she needed some assistance while she prepared the body of the husband who had passed away. Thus, I helped roll his body gently while the nurse cleaned and prepared him for wrapping in a shroud to be taken downstairs. 

I'm writing this because I don't want to forget the privilege of this moment.  To witness the bond a couple shared. To take the living and the dead on their separate journeys for just that moment. I looked at his face. His stubble. I felt like he might speak. Pushing her wheelchair, standing behind her, looking at her hair, her hands I was scared she might die. 

There is a deep power to life that we look away from in our escape into the daily fantasy of Netflix and TikTok. It's there in the silence and in the breeze. It's in the importance of a face, the etched stories both of the living and the dead. Both beautiful and profound. 

A particularly intense moment of care

 

I don't understand what I'm looking at when I see all the tubes attached to a patient. Sometimes there's wires coming out of their head. In fact while I was training in ICU an HSA (Hospital Service Assistant - otherwise formerly known as an orderly) pointed to a frail copper wire running out of a patient's head and off somewhere to a machine, claiming that, "...if you knock that, and it comes out, they die." It certainly gave me pause for thought, as we were about to 'roll' the patient. 

The patients in the intensive care unit often are heavily sedated or in comas, they don't move. That's bad. Because human tissue, when constantly subjected to the linen on a bed, can get badly damaged and develop into bed sores.  While in training we were treated to a Powerpoint that illustrated the journey of a bed sore and wow. I know in 70s people would create a similar looking thing involving a loaf of bread with the middle cut out and the centre filled with dip.  

While patients are turned nurses carefully examine their backs and buttocks for any tell tale signs that abrasions are beginning to occur. The way we do the turn is to begin by performing a roll. This is done strictly under the guidance of the nurse, who will count us in so we can perform the task in unison. If I'm to take the upper torso I will place my right hand under their should (when they're on their back) and my left hand slightly above their waist and then draw them over. If I am taking the legs, it's a lot simpler, I take them just above their knee and draw their knee over the other knee, which causes the body to turn pretty easily. The only drawback with this position is if there is a code brown. As the title suggests, it's an allusion. This can be astonishing. Everything seems orderly and calm. You roll and then a wave of super aged parmesan headbutts your olfactory. Every so often I have seen a nurse flinch at what gets discovered.  I'm think of doing a blog entry about the many occasions of liquid shit. 

We are required to take patients down for CT Scans or MRis, and this is a pretty big deal. We assist a little with the prep but nurses, anaesthetists and sometimes doctors do the serious stuff (namely in an effort to safeguard against every possible scenarios where things might go wrong) if the patient is intubated (tube in the neck or own the throat) two Orderlies are required, the bed is in neutral (ICU beds have a drive motor so they can be driven pretty effortlessly), one takes the head of the bed and the other walks backward guiding the heavily weighted bed that has a huge tray carrying a variety of heavy devices like monitors and suction. The whole thing is a bit of a show stopper when we move through the hospital. 

Today, like every other day we proceeded to the lifts. Three nurses, the anaesthetist and the other orderly were crammed in beside the patient while I stood at the head of the bed as I was driving the thing. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but we entered the lift on the fourth floor with the aim of travelling to the ground floor. We got as far as the first floor and suddenly found we were heading back up to the fifth floor. 

In the course of this we jibed the orderly for pushing the wrong button, made light of the situation and generally prepared ourselves for the chaos of when the doors opened as we had to move quickly to our destination. Suddenly the lift jolted to a violent stop,  causing the bed to launch ever so slightly off the ground. The tray with all the equipment bounced, threatening to catapult everything heavy onto the patient. Everyone made an involuntary noise. I think mine was 'whoa'. And then, silence. The orderly declared into the silence that the lift was stuck, however this wasn't normal 'stuck'. Every Wednesday they do some sort of power grid reset in the hospital and the lifts are known to go dark, stop, but then resume. This occasion, our alarmed acquaintance pointed out, was very different. He pressed the emergency button. An alarm sounded. Over and over. Eventually we heard what we thought was a voice. The orderly calmly explained that this was an emergency, that we had a patient from the intensive care unit trapped in the lift and we urgently required assistance. The voice, very faintly said something again. This time we worked out that the voice couldn't understand what we were saying. Complicated by the fact we could not understand what she was saying. Eventually the nurse had a crack at calling out. Silence. Followed by the crushing question: what is the nature of your call. Very loudly I asserted as simply as possible the situation. She finally understood.  

The nurse ascertained the amount of oxygen we had for the patient and a bunch of other stuff that the anaesthetist had in enormous syringes. We really didn't have much to worry about. Although I actually didn't have a clue what was up with the patient and I quietly figured that being stuck in a lift under the circumstances wasn't ideal. Meanwhile the other nurse managed to pry the door open whereupon we learnt that we were roughly a foot off the ground floor. We could get out but any attempt to drive the patient out of the lift would definitely put us on the front page of a number of national newspapers. People stopped and chatted with us. Made the odd joke. In fact one orderly walked past, spotted me and said: "Of course". The nurse fought the door bravely for a while but ultimately the lift won and slowly swallowed us all up again. 

After ten minutes had passed, in the confined stuffiness the speaker came alive again. The person asked: are you still there? Incredulously we replied that we absolutely were. She seemed surprised that we hadn't just left and that the word 'trapped' may in fact mean, 'had briefly paused'. We also discovered that she had actually done nothing about the situation. Off she went again. 

More minutes passed. 

Finally she came back to explain that she hadn't been able to contact anyone. At this point the nurse got the number for the senior engineer from one of the nurses who had come to our aid, whom she phoned, and who explained that no one had contacted him. 

More time passed. We had hit the twenty minute mark. The patient was assessed, notes were taken. Everyone remained calm. Suddenly the door flew open, like, WRENCHED. It was Julian with bright orange gloves. There is too much to say about Julian and I don't want to digress, other than to say that there are very few people in this life that are heroes to me; but Julian is a hero and I admire him greatly. So the doors fly open. The heavy lift doors. No warning just CRUNCH. And Julian is standing there checking everyone is okay. Then he's gone. But the doors stay open. 

The site engineer appears. It's hit thirty minutes. He wears disappointment on his face and upon recalling all of this I remember being struck by his expression. Did we all have to be in the lift, he asked? The nurse went through each person's role. Yes. We were all required. Disappointment. The engineer explains that they'd reset the system three times to no avail and so the lift company has been contacted. Everyone groans at the very real prospect that this is going to take a long time. We now needed to contemplate the very real prospect that we were going to have to get the patient out of the lift another way. I quietly suggest to the other orderly that maybe there's a ramp or something someone can find onsite - I mean, we've got plenty of time to send people out to find out. Or even hastily construct one. That was a joke, that last bit, but he had told me to be quiet, giving me the sense that he thought what I was saying was absurd. 

Julian then appeared with a ramp.

A ramp. Aluminium. Absurdly big. It looked like a styrofoam prop. Let me assure everyone, it was not. 

He placed it on the ground before the lift. It's a little too high. But then Julian stands on it and it is actually the perfect fit. I wonder about the line of people in wheelchairs starting to form outside in the rain, wondering where their ramp got to. 

Then he tells us to put the bed in neutral and (with the help of him and another awesome Orderly who, I owe for saving my bacon on another occasion) push the bed out of the lift. 

It works perfectly. 

We sail past the engineer. I can't read the expression on the engineer's face. I thought he would be cheered, happy that tragedy had been avoided. But he looked as though he thought we were all naughty. It looks like disappointment. Like, we wasted his time. Although he always had that expression. Right from the get go he looked disappointed. 

Mrs Davis: Why I can't recommend this show, but still do.

Mrs. Davis, as a TV show, is hard to recommend because when I look around at the different things on offer, what people seem to ultimately want (or what the studios have decided people ultimately want) is formulaic generic shows that I reinforce our desires; wishes for wealth, the desire for fame, the need to have that middle class security, and Mrs Davis does not provide you with that. 

 

What I love about Mrs Davies is that it takes wild swings at really relevant topics but it does not spoon feed you. You're going to have to do some research; to do some thinking about each episode by considering the images used in each episode, and then stepping back at the end of it all and asking yourself how  it all fits together. 

 

There are certain images that allude to theological ideas that I've not seen done before in this way. Putting all that to one side, the performances by Betty Gilpin, Jake McDorman, Chris Diamantopous and Andy McQueen are just fantastic. I found myself really moved by a lot of what was going on but at the same time what you are looking at is just absurd. 

 

The religious ideas in the TV show are going to really upset people because they're just so left field from what we're familiar with but. Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez,  as the writers of the show, are conceptualising notions of religion without attempting to address any specifics in religion. It’s important for people to watch the show and go with the ideas being suggested, asking what is it that we're ultimately wrestling with and what is going on between the various characters, while at the back of your mind consider how universal ideas are addressed in this show.

 

I think one of the main themes is our relationship to technology and the show future casts what it will be like when AI becomes all pervasive. However, I also suspect that the show is a critique of humanity's relationship with religion. At the bottom of it all is the unquestioning adherence religion and technology, and the drive in people to be satisfied in order to be satisfied, not taking any risks or initiative but to pursue gratification. I think if someone approaches religion as a cure all it leads to disappointment. Modern capitalistic sensibilities are at odds with deep historical truths that are conveyed in religion. As modern people we approach religion in the same way as we approach self help; this need to ‘get fixed’ (fixed according to whose?). The show parodies that idea. 

 

I don't recommend the show without reservation. People are going to get offended at the religious stuff in the show.  If people can look past the depictions into the iconography of what's going on and consider what is being represented. There’s  important exchanges between characters that are full of emotion but what they're talking about is just really stupid. There's a brilliant moment in the show where there is a conversation in which one of the characters says “This is all just so dumb:”.

 

 I watched a lot of this show thinking this is so dumb and so strange however I'm deeply moved. Having seen a couple of Lindelof’s shows, in particular The Leftovers and The Watchmen (and as a caveat I've never seen Lost, but my understanding  was it became a bit of a disaster and I think Linden off learned some important lessons about not having a conclusion before you start writing). There is some really clean coherent ideas explored in Watchmen and The Leftovers about spirituality, about family, about how we how we identify in particular ways.  Watchmen hit the media simply because it addressed the Tulsa race massacre that occurred in 1921, which had largely been forgotten by popular culture and this show brought it back to the forefront again. Such a spectacular address of profound issues through comic book characters. When it Comes to Mrs Davis,  the writers weren't restrained in their wild ideas, and so there's these  endlessly brilliant sequences. It’s going to annoy the hell out of people and if people make it past the first episode, be prepared to have to reflect on what it all means.

The Rise Of Gen Easy

 

I bumped into a former Philosophy student. He works at Bunnings during extended breaks from his University course. He was studying Education, but transferred across to Food guidance - I can’t think what it’s called right now. Dietician stuff. We spoke for a while and I ranted about the need for education to bloody wake up and begin to transition into the 21st Century - one in which AI is most definitely going to make a hell of a lot of people unemployed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - provided we think about developing a society of hamlets where people are self sustaining and celebrate living instead of making money. Because as stupid as that sounds friends - it’s the future.

Reading Ken Robinson’s book Creative Schools - written in 2016 -it’s always upsetting to read common sense, and then look at the landscape that’s just…a bunch of glassy eyed politicians beholden to Big Corporations that could give a damn about the Common Good and would rather make generations worth of money during their time in power. 

I was disappointed that even (insert name here), our local representative, wouldn't take very seriously the interference taking place from Silicon Valley where every student needed to bring their own laptop to school (mandatory at a local public High School)- whereupon they are not educated to use it. A fact that one of the providers of said laptops actually expressed dismay and frustration over. Students are even encouraged to get a $150 stylus and there is absolutely no occasion to use it. 

I’m not even addressing the central crisis of education. Namely that it caters to less than 20% of the population.

Here’s a line from an article entitled “Top of the WA Class: Private Schools dominate rankings again”

“Education authorities this year refused to release details of the median ATAR achieved by students in each school, which previously formed the basis of school rankings in WA. 

After 15 years of releasing an annual league table, the school Curriculum and Standards Authority decided it would no longer compile a top 50 list based on median rank scores, because of concerns that some schools were counseling students out of ATAR subjects to improve their ranking.” (13 January 2023) 

Then in the comments section Tony Buti (that's whose photo heads this rant) the new education minister… wonders aloud about the concerning decline in students not doing ATAR, because they worry it’s too hard. 

That’s right. 

It’s their fault for being lazy. Something The West Australian picks up on in Saturdays paper: Rise of Gen Easy. target audience: BOOMERS and people with a reading age of 8. But hey, these people vote so it matters what they're reading.

Nothing to do with the fact that the West Australian Newspaper has been dutifully carrying out execution orders by publishing a Top Fifty school list - where schools actively move students around the board in order to bolster their performance - and then crow about it when they appear to do well. 

But let me get this straight (public or private - but my giddy aunt, the money thrown down by parents going to private schools!!!!) - parents are paying all this money to give their children an education and admin are quietly removing them if they are not guaranteed of getting above a C grade. No one had the courage to stand up to the system. Ultimately parents would peruse the West Australian in order to go shopping around for the best results. So they unwittingly only have themselves to blame. Stupid citizens being duped by Neo Liberal Politicians who only care about producing Lawyers and Doctors.

And we’re not even talking about the fact that in years 7 through to 10 students are encouraged to bring their own device and then, in Year 11 they’re expected to begin writing academic pieces of writing with little experience. I wonder why all those students are choosing not to do ATAR? 

AND THAT’s not even mentioning streaming in Year 5, 7  and 9 - all with the aim to farm students out to General Pathway classes - their sights firmly set on Tafe - and good luck when you get to tafe because the standards as far as writing and information processing are fairly high. Go inquire about how many students drop out of courses at Tafe (spoiler: it’s about 50%). 

Okay. Incoherent rant over.