Her Beautiful Brain by Ann Hedreen

Author:Ann Hedreen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2014-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

Gero Psych

Dan, the nurse’s aide with the braid down his back, is from Great Falls. Dr. Sorensen’s family is from Anaconda. Everyone at the Seattle Geropsychiatric Center seems to have a Montana connection, whether or not that means anything to Mom. Could she feel something comforting, something Montanan, in Dan’s ropy forearms as he ties her restraints? Does she see the smokestacks of Anaconda in Dr. Sorensen’s eyes, as he holds his tiny flashlight up to hers, chattering about how his grandpa was a copper miner, just like her dad? Is there anything left of Montana, somewhere deep inside her, underneath the spring avalanche of tangles, the winter whiteout of plaques?

I hope so. I hope there are bits of Montana stuck in odd places in her brain, places where she can hide out so that she doesn’t have to always be where her body is: in this dayroom jammed with wheelchairs full of sagging, ragdoll people like her. People who started out in places like Butte, Montana and lived lives and had jobs and raised children, never knowing that their destination was this River Styx of a wing of a sprawling hospital in sprawling North Seattle, a carelessly built neighborhood at its sodden worst at this darkest, dreariest time of the year, when the Christmas trees lie lifeless on the curbs next to packing boxes disintegrating in the rain in front of ramblers put up in a hurry fifty years ago that look like they too might cave in at any moment.

What has happened to Mom’s brain, what brought her to this joyless place, is not unlike what has happened to her Montana hometown. In its prime, Mom’s brain balanced teaching junior high English to refugees, raising six children, dating a widower with three kids of his own. In its prime, Butte was laced with firmly planked, interconnecting tunnels humming with human activity, rich with copper ore. Now, Butte is gouged open, scraped clean, dominated by a giant pit full of toxic wastewater that kills every doomed bird that tries to land on its oily surface, just as the plaques and tangles in Mom’s brain kill every thought that dares to fly from one neuron to the next. There might be a fluttering of recognition—the taste of chocolate pudding, a daughter’s voice, sunlight striping through the blinds—but rarely enough lift-off to form a sound, let alone an airborne word.

The constant misfiring wears her down; when she drops off to sleep her chest goes up and down like an injured robin’s. But it also makes her frustrated, furious, and even if she can’t string a sentence together, she can get that rage to her muscles. And that is why she’s here. Seattle Gero Psych is the fourth world of dementia care, where they take the hopeless, helpless patients that no one else will take: patients who are a danger to others or to themselves.

That would be our mom, on both counts.

A week ago, on her second night in the Fairview Terrace—the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.