Dodging the Death Shot
By Susan Jane Terry
It was an ordinary day, not unlike any other ordinary day. It was ordinary, that is, until I tried to get out of bed that morning.
My right leg was numb and refused to move. I called Kaiser. It was sciatica, not that serious, but serious enough that I couldn’t walk with one leg. I needed a cortisone shot. The Kaiser advice nurse and everyone going forward would tell me that Kaiser’s official policy was to wait 10 days.
Wait 10 days for a simple shot that could relieve the problem immediately? Insane. It certainly wasn’t a reasonable policy but since everyone stuck to it, it stayed.
Ah, but what occurred over those 10 days would be like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. The White Rabbit and the Cheshire Cat would fit in comfortably. Very little else would make sense. My problem was how to get around while I waited 10 days. My other problem was a tiny apartment with a ton of stairs. And a walker too wide to use. Kaiser sent a trio of physical therapists who asked questions and made promises. They were there to help, they insisted, so please call anytime. I did. I left a message. I didn’t get a call back.
But I did get a knock on the door. It was Monte Rio’s Chief of Volunteer Fire Department, Steve Baxman, just about one minute before the room filled with paramedics. I was dumbstruck. They were taking me to the hospital, like it or not. Kaiser Permanente had called and they were following orders. The sheriff arrived to insure they got their gal.
I was admitted to the hospital where it was crystal clear they couldn’t help me. After several days complaining about needing that cortisone shot, a tall, well-groomed somebody, who must have been important, told me they were moving me to rehab, where not only could they help me but I would be deliriously happy.
“It’s just like summer camp for adults. You’ll love it,” he assured me.
I wasn’t.
It didn’t matter.
The paramedics were taking me to Apple Valley Rehabilitation. I was deep in a panic attack as they wheeled me into a room with four beds and four TVs on four different channels. They rolled me into the furthest bed from the window, the closest one to the door.
They had taken me to a nursing home. A nursing home! Where people came to die. I was appalled.
I decided to escape.
Now, as I said, the problem was my leg that wouldn’t work. But I could slither like a snake right down from that bed and out of this dreadful place, panic or no panic. There was a nice hotel next door and if I could just slither out, I would be safe.
Trying to stay under the radar, I slithered down from the hospital bed on my stomach until I reached the floor. Checking to see that no one had “made” me, I shifted my weight from side-to-side and gained enough momentum to get out of the room. From there, it would be clear sailing, a straight shot to the back door. I could taste freedom as I slithered to the left of the door. I was gaining traction and momentum along with the thrill of independence.
But no.
Busted two feet into the hallway. Freedom would not be mine today. I pitched such a fit that they gave me a private room. Seriously. I was moving up anyway. They told me that someone would be in the next bed in a few days. For now, I could enjoy some quiet and privacy.
An impossibility, as they were remodeling the place day and night and the noise was deafening. I complained and I got a pair of ear plugs.
Since I couldn’t walk, I wasn’t going anywhere so I resigned to tuning it out. Meanwhile, someone would come every morning and haul me into painful physical therapy. I told them it wouldn’t work. I told them I just needed a cortisone shot. They didn’t hear me, so every day they tortured me for another 45 minutes. I thought this whole thing was some kind of crazy Rube Goldberg experiment, so completely ridiculous and convoluted, when it could have been solved with a simple injection.
A few, long, loud and painful days later, paramedics brought me a roommate. Theresa French was old and annoying. She couldn’t hear or see well so she just hollered a lot when she wanted attention. When her family visited, Theresa would howl for an hour. I hated her. I complained to the general manager again. I told him she wouldn’t shut up and it was making me nuts.
Wasn’t it enough to have drilling and hammering all day? Now I had to listen to Theresa?
After giving me my second set of ear plugs, he said, “Don’t worry. We have ways to deal with these things.”
He might have been trying to soothe me. It didn’t. I told him I was going to tell the family. He said, “They already know.”
Now I was scared. What was he talking about? It seemed so sinister. And not only did he not deal with it, she kept it up. Especially when the whole French family filled the room for an hour. Her screams just got louder and longer. I hated her.
Then one day two jovial ladies came in the room, talking loudly and saying her name. They pulled the curtain and didn’t stay long. After they left, Theresa went right to sleep. That was when the real noise started. That old lady could snore louder than she could holler. I complained one more time but this time nobody came. No nurses, no one, not even a family member. Theresa just lay there for days, snoring like a truck driver.
In the midst of this Kafkaesque drama, I felt another panic attack coming. Now, this was really a crazy place. For some insane reason, the nurses wouldn’t medicate me so I called 911 and the paramedics hauled me to the nearest hospital where the doctor gave me an injection of Clonazepan and shook his head at the lunacy of Apple Valley not to treat me. The panic subsiding, I felt a little better until the paramedics wheeled me back into my room.
I didn’t hear anything.
The snoring had stopped. It was eerily quiet. Not wanting to discover what I suspected, I got hold of my walker and wheeled over to her bed. Theresa was cold and stiff.
I freaked. For sure, this place was killing patients and I was surely next. I called 911 and told them they killed my roommate and someone had to investigate before others died, too. “Hurry!” I said. Of course, no one came. No one called back. Eventually, a couple of workers bagged Theresa up and wheeled her away. I was alone again and terrified, certain that this was a killing place. I was getting the hell out of there, no matter what. Against doctor’s orders, I called someone to pick me up. If she didn’t hurry, I was going to slither.
Then I remembered where I was: in a nursing home where people come to die. The two jovial women who came a few days ago were hospice workers. Unbeknownst to me, they had delivered the “death shot,” a routine overdose of morphine and Ativan. It had taken four days for Theresa to pass. Four days she slept and snored, all alone. No more family visits. Even the nurses and aides stopped checking on her.
The family had tired of Theresa. Maybe she was as loud and annoying at home as she was in rehab. Maybe not. But the family had arranged to kill her before she became any more annoying. Like putting down a dog, they just put Theresa down.
This was prior to Governor Brown recent signing of the Right to Die Act, allowing terminally ill patients to have physician-assisted euthanasia. Nurses say they routinely administer the death shot and withhold treatment. The patient is never consulted.
Medicare likes this arrangement. It’s “cost effective.” But are we getting lost in the cost-analysis? Families decide when enough is enough, when they have tired of caring for a loved one, as they had with Theresa. It is considered natural to put our pets down when they age and fail in an effort to be humane. On any ordinary day in any ordinary town, this happens. But how humane is it to end someone’s life just because they’ve become a bother?
