Twilight Insights in the ER

When a local corporate hospital merged their Women’s and Children’s wings, they took the opportunity to integrate the arts into both the facility design and the wellness program. This is big news in my circles. Arts and healthcare collaborators are reaching a tipping point based on five decades of practice and lab research.

My fall reading recommendation — Your Brain on Art — is a primer for everyone interested in the neuroscience behind creativity.

Dad ended up in this new hospital wing for no reason having to do with women and children. Rather, he was overflow from the regular hospital, recently discharged from an ill-informed ER experience. The culprit, me. A common UTI developing in him caught me off-guard.

He’s 88, and I’m his last born child. At 52, my professional role shifted this year from CEO to stay-at-home daughter.

On that Friday morning, I was already up early working from temporary housing, a residence hotel where Dad and I had been staying. A few weeks earlier, the roof blew off his Tempe townhome in a catastrophic weather event. Insurance moved us both down the road, and a long way from anything we knew as normal. 

I quickly settled into working from home at the hotel. When Dad’s pain crisis began, I was tucked into the grungy lounge chair contemplating the day ahead and the tennis court view from the bedroom window. Sensing I might be here awhile, I set up my own tiny C-suite.

He called my name from the other room, Anne! 

He never does this.

Stepping through the doorway into the kitchenette, Dad was doubled over in 7-level pain, unable to sit, stand, or lay down comfortably. What he described as a belly ache turned out to be an acute urinary infection combined with equipment malfunction. The mental fog resulting from serious dehydration left him only barely conscious with few words or corporeal capacities to help himself.

He was out of it the day before, but this was different. Symptoms were sudden and the pressure seemed unbearable. This was my first serious pain event with Dad. I was a novice against his medical dilemma. At the time, my strength was to be a daughter fiercely determined to help him.

That morning, I also received what would become scores of emotionally-criminal emails from work. I won’t repeat, except to say that toxifying my work climate over the next 90 days was both aim and effect. One nasty email began with, Sorry about your dad, but…

I took Dad straight to the ER and stayed overnight through the weekend. The bullying emails poured in as I watched him sleep and receive fluids, passing the hours by the alarms and alerts of his heart, lung, and blood monitors. Middle of the night intrusions built up a grief-filled gratitude for the nurses, CNAs, lab attendants, food service workers, and cleaning staff who walked through the door. Each greeted my father by name and did hard work gently.

I noticed something else, too. The mood lighting I’d set for Dad had an effect on his caregivers. They mentioned how nice the mellow music sounded. Shoulders dropped and personalities emerged. I chatted to warm the room and translated as Dad struggled to communicate through accents and cultures. All but one of his caregivers were mid-career women of color, speakers of multiple languages beyond English. 

They know what I’m doing helps Dad. As practitioners, it isn’t hard to put the arts and healthcare combinations together. An integrative environment with multiple medical, social, and neuroaesthetic tools benefits him — and it helps caregivers, support pros, and families, too. Only an industrialist would try to pull it apart.

I admire nurses, along with archivists, crossing guards, and the plant stand lady down the street. Saving the last of anything old, technical direction at critical moments, and a sense of how sustainable communities grow over time. As with nursing, humane service is the motivation and integrative care is the point.

The life-supporting collaborations in my Dad’s hospital room provided a courageous contrast to the D-league political actors exhausting themselves on my work screen. I noticed what I did for Dad out of love (and humble ignorance) and what countless professional caregivers do everyday. 

Versus… this?

I know abuse. You cut it loose. I understood, as anyone who has been derisively sneered at knows. They don’t disagree, they hate me. 

I lost that job. No newsflash there. My creative response at the time. 

Thankfully, Dad recovered, and I’ve learned even more about eldercare this year. My career was damaged and my story transformed. Revealed to me in dim hospital light – where creative practice is valued and where it is not.