Keepers

In my family, nuclear and extended, I am the keeper of medical histories and protocols and records. My files are full of lab results and advanced directives and living wills that are not my own. I know who had what surgery when, and what for. I know when the last colonoscopy was (and bone density and mammogram and eye exam and dental appointment and skin cancer screening). I know whose blood pressure has been up (and by how much) and whose weight has been down. I know whose grandmothers had colon cancer and who needs a screening. I know which relatives, long gone now, had heart disease and cancer, diabetes and depression. I know which treatments helped and which did not.

I am the keeper of knowledge about diseases and syndromes and hereditary disorders.

I know which insurance and Medicare supplemental plans are carried by whom and I keep photos of their cards in my phone. I manage the patient portals and translate lab results and call with reassurances and appointment reminders — including what time I will pick them up. I know when my step-father was first diagnosed with dementia and ulcerative colitis and the markers of advancement for both. I know a lot about medications for all sorts of things and I know when to request adjustments. I know the small signs that signal a depression is getting worse or Alzheimer’s irritation is increasing. I watch for foot and leg swelling in my mother — in the beginning stages of congestive heart failure — after years of working with doctors to manage the swelling in her mother’s feet and legs.

I know when it’s time to call the doctor/visit urgent care/go to the ER, and when to wait it out. I know a lot about bone marrow transplants and apheresis and subluxed joints and dysautonomia and gastroparesis. I’m understand Sjogren’s and Reynaud’s and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes. I know about long-term wound care and what UTIs do to the elderly. I know who’s due for a pneumonia vaccine.

I am well acquainted with the outsized cost of health insurance in the U.S. and it’s cruel denials of treatments and meds. I know what it’s like to wait in ER hallways with someone severely injured all night long because there are no rooms available. I can navigate a hospital like nobody’s business.

I have filled out so many forms at other people’s doctors appointments that when I do go to the doctor myself, I always write the wrong birthday — I write my children’s or my grandmother’s, or my mother’s or . . . it goes on and on, like a mother with so many children, she runs through all of their names before landing on the right one.

I know what qualifies someone for hospice and what doesn’t. I know how to administer the Dilaudid they give you (with a little dropper onto the tongue) though I’ve never had to actually do it.

As someone who has had more blood drawn than I would like and who has stood witness to more blood draws than I would like, still . . . still, I always have to look away as the needle pierces the veins and the blood begins its departure.

I know what it looks like when someone’s body is shutting down at the end. And I want to look away — but it feels important and holy to bear witness to a life leaving. So I keep my eyes and my heart open, even if I can’t open my eyes to blood leaving veins.

My mother and my grandmother were nurses. My daughter is an EMT and a phlebotomist, yet I cannot look at needles going in. I turn my head from wounds, even as I clean them, and close my eyes when there are graphic injuries or post-mortems shown on TV. I have taken people to get stitches but get weak in the knees if I even glance at it being done. I fainted at the sight of the x-ray when my husband lost two of his fingers in a snow blower accident. I never looked at his hand until it was healed.

But I keep the records, the dates, the procedures, the medication lists — in my mind and in my files, because someone has to. In sickness and in health isn’t just the stuff of marriage. It’s the stuff of life. It’s the stuff of illness and suffering and dying, which, of course, is also the stuff of life.

And it’s the stuff of love.

I am obviously not the only one. There are many keepers and there have been throughout all of time. Keepers of stories and lore, keepers of genealogy, keepers of history, keepers of secrets, keepers of people . . .

I’m wondering, what do you keep and for whom?

xo,
Beth