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ok, so saturday night ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
glaucon and i went to see enchanted, that new disney anti-princess flick. it was sweet and funny...just as you'd expect. my purpose here is not to review the movie, but to explain something weird that happened to me during it.
the princess giselle (played by amy adams) did something, made some facial expression, and suddenly she looked exactly like my sister anne. anne has been dead for 22 years--she died of meningitis (bacterial--the pathogen was streptococcus pneumoniae) when she was 29. the movie is set in NYC, and anne had just moved to NYC when she died. she lived on prospect park west in brooklyn, and she died a few blocks away at brooklyn methodist hospital; she was a sportswriter for the associated press, and had just gotten transferred to their rockefeller center office where she covered gymnastics and figure skating.
oh. i just realized.....wow, i'm a dope. the anniversary of her death is right now. that's why i felt weepy, drained, and homesick all weekend, and why i was thinking about her and actually "seeing" her in that ridiculous movie the other night.
something like this happens every year. i have a melancholy few days at the end of november or the beginning of december, i'm all in a funk, feeling weepy and homesick, and it never occurs to me to look at the fucking calendar. instead, i wonder and wonder and wonder what is wrong with me.......and then something will happen to make me fully conscious. i find it very weird that, even after all these years, i don't do the calendar math automatically. i practically have to be hit on the head before i realize, before i remember. i saw that movie saturday night, it reminded me specifically of my sister anne, and still i didn't work out the equation until just now. am i really that out of touch with my own thoughts and feelings?
here's the timeline (for the curious who don't already know the story): on november 15th, 1985 (a friday), my sister had surgery to clear a fungal infection from her sinuses. that evening, she started showing signs of meningitis, but her surgeon's answering service either didn't recognize the symptoms that anne's boyfriend, tony, was reporting to them, or they completely ignored the seriousness of those symptoms. in any case, they repeatedly refused to contact the surgeon, who was on a golf outing on long island. they also repeatedly reassured tony that anne's symptoms--which included a crushing headache, back spasms, and nausea/vomiting (these are classic meningitis symptoms, especially when clustered together and when increasing rapidly in severity)--were "normal postoperative symptoms." on sunday morning, november 17th, anne collapsed in her bathtub, comatose, and was rushed to the nearest hospital. by the following wednesday, she was showing "disappointing" levels of brain activity. my father, my sisters, my brother, and i all decided to drive out to NYC to be with her and hopefully help to encourage her to hang in there and wake up. (my mother was already there--she had arrived sunday late morning to relieve tony, only to get a page at the airport followed by a phone call in which tony told her to "get a cab and come straight to the hospital.") we got there on saturday. that evening we met with a neurologist, who told us she was brain dead. her EEG was flat-lined, and she had no gag reflex, which meant she didn't even have brainstem activity anymore. this was a week after her surgery. that's how bad it is to have bacterial meningitis.* at that time, the state of new york didn't have a brain death law, so we didn't have the option of "pulling the plug." we had to wait. when a person's brain dies, their body no longer regulates blood pressure properly, so the doctors have to administer drugs to regulate it artificially, and they have to keep adjusting the dosages to keep things steady. my parents decided to instruct the doctors to stop adjusting the dosages, and to just let nature take its course. anne was finally pronounced dead on november 30th, and her funeral was on december 5th. we all stayed there until november 27th, when my siblings and i decided to drive back to grand rapids to start funeral preparations. my parents stayed with anne. we left early the next morning, which was thanksgiving day...we ate our thanksgiving dinner at a howard johnson's oasis along the turnpike...and late that night we got to our aunt helen's house in detroit, where we had some of her thanksgiving leftovers and spent the night. i remember where i was when my mom called to tell me that anne had died. i was sitting on the floor of my bedroom at my parents' house in grand rapids, by myself. she was 29. i was 18.
and that's the "nutshell" version of a much longer and more complicated network of stories. we are approaching the time when she will have been dead as long as.....and then longer than.....she was alive. this is the first time it even occurred to me that this would happen.
anyway, i was going to say that i couldn't for the life of me figure out why the princess giselle, a hyper-feminine cartoon princess come to life, reminded me of my sister. anne was not a princess. she had her prissinesses, but she was very focused on her career, very driven, and very much a feminist (in that yuppy, '80's sort of way). the one thing she shared with giselle, i guess, was a mary tyler moore-esque optimism, and an absolute love for new york city, despite the bumps and bruises it delivered to her when she initially got there a few months before her death. i remember when she was in college, she dreamed of living in new york city. two good things to take away from her far-too-young death: she was living her dream, working her dream job. on the day of her surgery, she had just gotten back from covering the world gymnastics championships in montreal. and...this is the second thing...her credit cards were maxed. those companies never collected on that debt.
*i case you're wondering, "why didn't they give her antibiotics?" well...she was allergic to both penicillin and sulfa drugs. penicillin is the drug of choice to treat a pneumococcal infection. because of her allergy, they had been using other antibiotics, but they were obviously not working. we knew her prognosis was bad when, on wednesday (the same day she showed "disappointing" levels of brain activity), they decided to try giving her IV penicillin anyway. they pumped her full of steroids first, to try to stave off any allergic reaction...but her blood pressure bottomed out as soon as the first CC of penicillin hit her bloodstream. they had to stop giving the drug or she would have died within a couple of minutes.
glaucon and i went to see enchanted, that new disney anti-princess flick. it was sweet and funny...just as you'd expect. my purpose here is not to review the movie, but to explain something weird that happened to me during it.the princess giselle (played by amy adams) did something, made some facial expression, and suddenly she looked exactly like my sister anne. anne has been dead for 22 years--she died of meningitis (bacterial--the pathogen was streptococcus pneumoniae) when she was 29. the movie is set in NYC, and anne had just moved to NYC when she died. she lived on prospect park west in brooklyn, and she died a few blocks away at brooklyn methodist hospital; she was a sportswriter for the associated press, and had just gotten transferred to their rockefeller center office where she covered gymnastics and figure skating.
oh. i just realized.....wow, i'm a dope. the anniversary of her death is right now. that's why i felt weepy, drained, and homesick all weekend, and why i was thinking about her and actually "seeing" her in that ridiculous movie the other night.
something like this happens every year. i have a melancholy few days at the end of november or the beginning of december, i'm all in a funk, feeling weepy and homesick, and it never occurs to me to look at the fucking calendar. instead, i wonder and wonder and wonder what is wrong with me.......and then something will happen to make me fully conscious. i find it very weird that, even after all these years, i don't do the calendar math automatically. i practically have to be hit on the head before i realize, before i remember. i saw that movie saturday night, it reminded me specifically of my sister anne, and still i didn't work out the equation until just now. am i really that out of touch with my own thoughts and feelings?
here's the timeline (for the curious who don't already know the story): on november 15th, 1985 (a friday), my sister had surgery to clear a fungal infection from her sinuses. that evening, she started showing signs of meningitis, but her surgeon's answering service either didn't recognize the symptoms that anne's boyfriend, tony, was reporting to them, or they completely ignored the seriousness of those symptoms. in any case, they repeatedly refused to contact the surgeon, who was on a golf outing on long island. they also repeatedly reassured tony that anne's symptoms--which included a crushing headache, back spasms, and nausea/vomiting (these are classic meningitis symptoms, especially when clustered together and when increasing rapidly in severity)--were "normal postoperative symptoms." on sunday morning, november 17th, anne collapsed in her bathtub, comatose, and was rushed to the nearest hospital. by the following wednesday, she was showing "disappointing" levels of brain activity. my father, my sisters, my brother, and i all decided to drive out to NYC to be with her and hopefully help to encourage her to hang in there and wake up. (my mother was already there--she had arrived sunday late morning to relieve tony, only to get a page at the airport followed by a phone call in which tony told her to "get a cab and come straight to the hospital.") we got there on saturday. that evening we met with a neurologist, who told us she was brain dead. her EEG was flat-lined, and she had no gag reflex, which meant she didn't even have brainstem activity anymore. this was a week after her surgery. that's how bad it is to have bacterial meningitis.* at that time, the state of new york didn't have a brain death law, so we didn't have the option of "pulling the plug." we had to wait. when a person's brain dies, their body no longer regulates blood pressure properly, so the doctors have to administer drugs to regulate it artificially, and they have to keep adjusting the dosages to keep things steady. my parents decided to instruct the doctors to stop adjusting the dosages, and to just let nature take its course. anne was finally pronounced dead on november 30th, and her funeral was on december 5th. we all stayed there until november 27th, when my siblings and i decided to drive back to grand rapids to start funeral preparations. my parents stayed with anne. we left early the next morning, which was thanksgiving day...we ate our thanksgiving dinner at a howard johnson's oasis along the turnpike...and late that night we got to our aunt helen's house in detroit, where we had some of her thanksgiving leftovers and spent the night. i remember where i was when my mom called to tell me that anne had died. i was sitting on the floor of my bedroom at my parents' house in grand rapids, by myself. she was 29. i was 18.
and that's the "nutshell" version of a much longer and more complicated network of stories. we are approaching the time when she will have been dead as long as.....and then longer than.....she was alive. this is the first time it even occurred to me that this would happen.
anyway, i was going to say that i couldn't for the life of me figure out why the princess giselle, a hyper-feminine cartoon princess come to life, reminded me of my sister. anne was not a princess. she had her prissinesses, but she was very focused on her career, very driven, and very much a feminist (in that yuppy, '80's sort of way). the one thing she shared with giselle, i guess, was a mary tyler moore-esque optimism, and an absolute love for new york city, despite the bumps and bruises it delivered to her when she initially got there a few months before her death. i remember when she was in college, she dreamed of living in new york city. two good things to take away from her far-too-young death: she was living her dream, working her dream job. on the day of her surgery, she had just gotten back from covering the world gymnastics championships in montreal. and...this is the second thing...her credit cards were maxed. those companies never collected on that debt.
*i case you're wondering, "why didn't they give her antibiotics?" well...she was allergic to both penicillin and sulfa drugs. penicillin is the drug of choice to treat a pneumococcal infection. because of her allergy, they had been using other antibiotics, but they were obviously not working. we knew her prognosis was bad when, on wednesday (the same day she showed "disappointing" levels of brain activity), they decided to try giving her IV penicillin anyway. they pumped her full of steroids first, to try to stave off any allergic reaction...but her blood pressure bottomed out as soon as the first CC of penicillin hit her bloodstream. they had to stop giving the drug or she would have died within a couple of minutes.
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