I've felt silent the last week. A combination of shell shock recovery from last weekend, the slow bubbling anger and frustration of life on hemodialysis, and the redundancy of similar events happening on similar days in similar ways. The last one isn't at all bad. In fact, some of those redundant events are quite satisfying, but hardly seem worth talking about at length. I raid a couple days a week. I hang out with Raseny some other nights. There's acupuncture, and Voodoo donuts, and exploring comic book shops and crappy over priced taquerias. But see, now I've told you about it and it only took a sentence. It hardly seems worth writing an entry about.
However, there was one cool thing I wanted to get down in some more permanent form. It's even something cool that happened at dialysis which is something I hardly ever to get write about. Some of you may remember around when I first moved to Portland the dialysis unit I was at did something special for Halloween. For those that don't remember that "something special" was to make little cut out ghosts, write the names of all the patients in the unit, and then tape them up on the walls. It was disturbingly awesomely morbid and creepy. I still wish I'd remember to grab my little ghost before they took them down.
Anyway, the intent seemed to be to involve the patients in the unit. To help make them feel comfortable... or something. Like they belonged there, or at least recognized. At that unit their hearts might have been in the right place, but clearly their heads were not.
Davita, the company who owns the dialysis unit I go to now, is apparently trying to do something similar. They sent out some kind of memo asking their employees to make a wall devoted to the patients and staff of each unit. The wall is supposed to contain names, a little background info, and a picture of the patients, the techs, the nurses, the manager of the unit - everyone. It's purpose is to help everyone feel they know each other a little better, and to make the strange, alien environment of a dialysis unit more comfortable to those of us who sleep there for a few hours every other day.
I found out about this about 2 weeks ago when Lyndsie (yes, I know her name now) walked over to my chair smiling and excited to tell me about her brilliant idea. Apparently I was the first patient to hear about the plan because I inspired her little artistic expression of corporate moral building. The plan? She found a HUGE mural/poster of the solar system, and each of the patients/staff would get their own planet named after them surrounded by stars with the little biographical snippets we submitted. You know, because my name is a constellation... so she thought of space. I'm so totally inspiring, I don't even have to try. I just have to be there and my name does the work for me.
Since I was the inspiration for all this I had my choice of which planet I wanted to be mine. Everyone else would have to wait. I filled out the paperwork, and wrote down a few of my favorite things (Seven Samurai, They Might Be Giants, Blade Runner, A Stranger in a Strange Land). The photograph I passed on. I haven't felt very photogenic lately. However I couldn't decide on a planet. There I was face to face with a conundrum the narrator Fight Club would understand - Which planet best defines me as a person?
In the end the answer came as a joke. I chose the sun.
And they agreed to it.
So now, on the wall of the dialysis unit I go to 3 days a week, 4 1/2 hours a day, there is a 10' x 15' mural of the solar system. On 8 of the 9 planets there is a picture of an old white guy, or an old black man, or a 20-something dialysis tech, or a 50-something nurse, or one of the 4 other people who took part in this little project, with 4 or 5 bright silver stars around each planet with some info on it. If you follow the trail of stars (because Lyndsie actually set up the stars to lead from one planet to the next) all the way to the left you will see the sun taking up the entire left side, and the name ORION in huge gold letters stamped on it.
And that's how I found something to smile about when I go to dialysis.
In the end no one chose the planet Earth. It sits there amidst the pictures and the stars unclaimed. Apparently none of us who find ourselves in that building, either by necessities biological or economic, think this world is ours.
However, there was one cool thing I wanted to get down in some more permanent form. It's even something cool that happened at dialysis which is something I hardly ever to get write about. Some of you may remember around when I first moved to Portland the dialysis unit I was at did something special for Halloween. For those that don't remember that "something special" was to make little cut out ghosts, write the names of all the patients in the unit, and then tape them up on the walls. It was disturbingly awesomely morbid and creepy. I still wish I'd remember to grab my little ghost before they took them down.
Anyway, the intent seemed to be to involve the patients in the unit. To help make them feel comfortable... or something. Like they belonged there, or at least recognized. At that unit their hearts might have been in the right place, but clearly their heads were not.
Davita, the company who owns the dialysis unit I go to now, is apparently trying to do something similar. They sent out some kind of memo asking their employees to make a wall devoted to the patients and staff of each unit. The wall is supposed to contain names, a little background info, and a picture of the patients, the techs, the nurses, the manager of the unit - everyone. It's purpose is to help everyone feel they know each other a little better, and to make the strange, alien environment of a dialysis unit more comfortable to those of us who sleep there for a few hours every other day.
I found out about this about 2 weeks ago when Lyndsie (yes, I know her name now) walked over to my chair smiling and excited to tell me about her brilliant idea. Apparently I was the first patient to hear about the plan because I inspired her little artistic expression of corporate moral building. The plan? She found a HUGE mural/poster of the solar system, and each of the patients/staff would get their own planet named after them surrounded by stars with the little biographical snippets we submitted. You know, because my name is a constellation... so she thought of space. I'm so totally inspiring, I don't even have to try. I just have to be there and my name does the work for me.
Since I was the inspiration for all this I had my choice of which planet I wanted to be mine. Everyone else would have to wait. I filled out the paperwork, and wrote down a few of my favorite things (Seven Samurai, They Might Be Giants, Blade Runner, A Stranger in a Strange Land). The photograph I passed on. I haven't felt very photogenic lately. However I couldn't decide on a planet. There I was face to face with a conundrum the narrator Fight Club would understand - Which planet best defines me as a person?
In the end the answer came as a joke. I chose the sun.
And they agreed to it.
So now, on the wall of the dialysis unit I go to 3 days a week, 4 1/2 hours a day, there is a 10' x 15' mural of the solar system. On 8 of the 9 planets there is a picture of an old white guy, or an old black man, or a 20-something dialysis tech, or a 50-something nurse, or one of the 4 other people who took part in this little project, with 4 or 5 bright silver stars around each planet with some info on it. If you follow the trail of stars (because Lyndsie actually set up the stars to lead from one planet to the next) all the way to the left you will see the sun taking up the entire left side, and the name ORION in huge gold letters stamped on it.
And that's how I found something to smile about when I go to dialysis.
In the end no one chose the planet Earth. It sits there amidst the pictures and the stars unclaimed. Apparently none of us who find ourselves in that building, either by necessities biological or economic, think this world is ours.
You're the greatest Orion!