Things We Simply Don't Discuss

After two foodless months, an unspeakable delicacy.

“The dashboard ‘check engine’ light turned itself off.  We can probably go another couple of months without a new muffler.”  This is a prime example of things we do not ever, ever say aloud at my house.  

We do not say “Sixty percent of the election returns are in; it looks like our candidate is going to win!”  If we say these things, if we form the air in our mouths into the shapes of these particular consonants and vowels, there’s a chance the heavens will hear our optimism.  There’s a chance that — just to swat at our hubris — the second shoe will drop.

So here are some things we’re definitely not saying this week about Jim:

• We’re not talking about the man’s “swallow test.”  We’re not saying that he passed it.  We’re not saying that even hospital lasagna tastes in-freaking-credible after two months of gruel through a feeding tube.

• We’re not saying that after two biopsies, his heart shows no sign of rejection.

• We’re not saying that the last of the drainage tubes has been removed.

• We’re not talking about the laps he’s walking around the hospital floor, relying a little less each day on a walker.

• And under no circumstances are we claiming — I mean, we are definitely, absolutely not repeating the doctors’ prediction that Jim will be home in the next couple of days.

painting by Jim Southerland

If we were going to say anything it all, we might remind folks that Jim has an exhibit at the Seven Sisters Gallery in Black Mountain until January 25.  We might say that, had events in Durham gone another way, few people reading could afford the artwork that can now be had at astonishingly reasonable rates.  Get down to Cherry Street, folks, and take home a piece of Jim.  Your living room wall will thank you.

300 Christmas Cards

Jim Southerland in 2013

Don’t hold your breath.  There’s no dramatic progress to report from Durham.  Unless waiting is dramatic.  And it’s not.  I want to tell you that a team of doctors has a decisive plan for returning Jim to the mountain cove he adores.  I want to tell you there’s a prescribed schedule of procedures and therapies that aims to return him to the Montreat art classroom.

Instead, Jim’s daily regimen expresses a fuzzier, more boring reality.  Nurses wake him.  They roll him onto his left side.  Then onto his right.  They check the path of fluids through a macrame of tubes.

For breakfast, they feed him a thick liquid.  Through a tube.  A thick liquid.  Not solid food.  Not water.  “That’s one of the things I miss most,” Jim told me.  “I just want to pull a big glass of water from the tap in my own kitchen and drink it all.”  But speech pathologists (experts in swallowing) fear Jim’s throat might not know what to do with water.  It might go to his stomach (that would be a good thing) or it might go to his lungs (that would be a bad thing).  Water in the lungs would increases his chances of pneumonia, a complication that would exacerbate every other problem he has.  So for now eating’s going to be a gluey slur of protein and vitamins.

Again nurses check the tubes.  Some of the checking is done by an internal camera.  Occasionally, the camera spots a leak of blood around the pumps in Jim’s chest.

And then there is the part of the day that Jim dreads: the walk.  There’s an irony in Jim’s foreboding.  Hardly a month ago, walking with his dog, Yo-Yo, around Lake Tomahawk ranked among his favorite activities.  Now, even 70 feet to the nurses’ station demands the entire day’s energy.  Maybe Jim doesn’t actually curse his physical therapist, but he certainly attempts negotiation.

Later, when he collapses from exhaustion, technicians look for some uptick in his kidney function.  But there isn’t any.  There hasn’t been any for weeks.  That’s troubling.  Renal improvements would make him a better candidate for transplant.  Being younger would also increase his chances, but the clock seems only to work in one direction.

A laptop lets him check his e-mail (so keep those cards and letters coming, boys and girls).  Occasionally, he Skypes with a close friend.  Then he’ll try to sleep.  But if you’ve ever spent time in a hospital yourself, you know how perpetually active that world can be.  I’m told a considerable number of hospital patients actually suffer from sleep deprivation.

This is where I’m supposed to conclude with a look forward.  This is where I’m supposed to tell you what the doctors are waiting for.  Or what his family’s next decision might be.  Wouldn’t it be nice if I could do that?

Instead, I’ll remind you that Christmas cards are a lovely thing.  And some cards feel more important than others.  And, maybe, if you were an art teacher, you’d really appreciate receiving one that was especially well-designed.

So far, over 1000 friends have visited this webpage.  Please consider being one of 300 to send him a Christmas card.  That's the goal.  300 Christmas cards.  Let one of them be yours.

Jim Southerland

10 Duke Medicine Circle

7 West, Room 10

Durham, NC  27710