In general, I have no beef with growing older. In fact, I'm really enjoying the heck out of it. Each decade is better than the previous, and I look forward to every day. However, there is one giant caveat to growing older: losing friends.
Last week the world lost a pretty unique and amazing human named Georgeann. I met Georgeann a very long time ago at Arizona State, in 1983. She played trombone, I played bassoon. The trombones sat right behind the bassoon section, and we entertained each other through tedious orchestra rehearsals while the conductor completely ignored anything sitting beyond the string sections. She was my roommate at the Aspen Music Festival in 1984, and three of us spent the nine weeks laughing ourselves silly when we weren't in rehearsals.
But there was a lot more to George than fun times. When I met her, she explained that she had no spleen, so had to be careful about staying healthy. It had been removed in her early twenties due to some sort of immune system disorder. Since the spleen is a major component of the immune system, there were certain things she had to be especially careful about. She wasn't particularly concerned about it and didn't let it control her life, it was just something to be aware of.
Life went on. I moved to Boston, she and Barry built a locksmithing business in Chicago, she gave up trombone and learned to play the cello, and eventually had a little girl, Kati. She even volunteered at a children's hospital, on top of everything else.
Thanksgiving weekend of 1995, after a shift at the hospital, Georgeann went home and went to bed, feeling like she had the flu. Barry came home early from the shop to look after little Kati, who was only a few months old. Georgeann fell asleep for a few hours. Some time in the night, she got up to go to the bathroom. Only she couldn't walk. Her hands and feet were very, very cold. She woke up Barry, who had the presence of mind to literally carry her and the baby down to the car and go to the nearest hospital.
Luck was still with them, as someone in the emergency room recognized what was going on. Georgeann had picked up the same strep bug that killed Jim Henson (creator of the Muppets) in a matter of hours. The only treatment is to throw multiple combinations of antibiotics at it and hope something works in time. I don't know the details, but at some point her heart stopped, she was in a coma, and went into septic shock. The survival rate for septic shock is somewhere around 40%. It was lower 18 years ago when this happened. Somehow, she survived all of this.
After a couple of weeks of inaccurate second-hand information, I finally flew to Chicago to see her. The first words out of her mouth were, "Carla! I'm alive! What happened to my hands and feet could have happened to my brain! They tell me I'm going to be able to hold my daughter!" She had dry gangrene in all of her digits and both feet, starting above the ankles. All were a dark purple color. Her fingers were so shriveled they looked like claws -- the fingernails were huge on her poor sticks of fingers. Her feet were bloated like a kiddie balloon with toes. The infection had sent all of her coagulants to her extremities, and had been literally killing her from the outside in. It was quite a shock to see, but her enthusiasm for living quickly made it just part of who she was. That was how she handled it.
I was there for three days, and lost track of how many times she exclaimed, "Carla! I'm alive!" She was very eager to get the feet amputated and get started on recovery. She had already been prepped more than once, only to get down to surgery and spike a fever and wake up back in her room with the dead feet still attached. She was scheduled to try again the day after I left. Typical of Georgeann, she said, "I know they're holding me back, and I'm ready to have them gone, but ya know, it's gonna be a little strange to look down and see them gone." Sheesh. I had to laugh at her and say, "Georgeann! It's going to be more than a 'little strange', it's going to be effing weird!" We had a good laugh.
Even after her feet were amputated, it took another couple of months before she could start learning to walk again, because they were trying to salvage as much of her hands as possible. She endured many debriding sessions and bided her time until they removed her fingers. She was left with no knuckles, and half a thumb joint in one hand. After surgery, she held up her hands and said, "I have Muppet hands!" She learned to walk, celebrated Kati's first birthday right there in the hospital, and she was discharged eight months after going to bed to sleep off a flu.
A few years later she and Barry adopted a boy from Russia. By this time she was driving again (still like a bat out of hell), walking around 2.5 miles a day (same gait as before), raising the kids, working with Barry at the security shop, riding a stationary bike 30 minutes a day, etc. While she still needed help with some things, she was amazingly self-sufficient, and never let on how exhausting or frustrating it all had to be. She didn't let it define who she was or what she did. She was very annoyed at having to wear pants with elastic waistbands, however.
In the last few years of her life, she discovered her passion in horseback riding. She bought a horse and trained for dressage competitions. All with no feet and no hands to speak of. Her dream was to ride in a competition herself, and I think she would have done that very soon had things gone her way. I can't even imagine how hard it is to ride a horse when you can't use your feet and ankles to hold on or communicate with the horse - she was using only her upper legs and her core simply to stay upright. Amazing.
I have a short list of people that truly motivate and inspire me when things are getting hard in an endurance event and it's slipping into a sufferfest. George was, and will always be, one of those people. When my feet hurt, I am happy to have feet and happy to have the ability to feel pain. I think of how hard Georgeann had to work to do anything at all, and that usually stops the pity party before it can get started. Every visit with her was a laugh-fest, whether we were making fun of Pia Zadora, telling stories, or making plans to get totally plowed, visit Graceland, and see how long it took to get kicked out. I will miss the emails forwarding links of potential Darwin-award winners in the news, accompanied by some hilariously sarcastic remark.
Georgeann died in the hospital, choking on her breakfast. She had been sick off and on for the past year, with what appeared to be respiratory issues and perhaps congestive heart failure. We all attributed this to her compromised immune system, and figured she probably had a lot of damage from the original illness 18 years ago. This time, she'd been in the hospital a couple of weeks, was very weak, and was having difficulty sitting up straight. It's a mystery to us as to why she was left alone to eat in this condition.
What none of us knew was that earlier in the week, they had done a bone marrow biopsy, and found multiple myeloma. Her husband didn't even know about this finding until after she died. We think she may have found out the day before, but never had the chance to talk to anyone about it. She was planning to go to rehab the following Monday for three days, then go home (she died on a Saturday). We don't know details, but the implications are that the cancer was bad enough that she was not going to survive it. It certainly looks like one of the more nasty forms to get, without a very hopeful prognosis.
So. How to respond to this. Be upset that she died choking, likely knowing she was dying, due to what can only be viewed as neglect? Or be grateful that she didn't have to suffer the indignities of chemo, radiation, and likely horrible bone pain for an extended period of time? While sad and shocked that we had to lose her the way we lost her, I choose to be grateful, while a little angry and disgusted with the hospital. I'm so glad she didn't have to hurt or be sick anymore. She fought so hard and for so long that she had to be tired of it. I know she wasn't quite ready to go, but her future was grim.
Georgeann, thank you for all the smiles, all the tears from laughing so hard, all the inspiration and motivation. You have no idea how many people admired you for your strength and refusal to sit back and give up. You will always be my muse.
