The Power of One Phone Call

[kyburg]

theferrett posted an entry yesterday about having good timing when placing a call. I remarked that there were the calls that were pure magic, but couldn't go into it at the time.

He prodded. He caught me with more than fifteen minutes to devote to the subject. Here's the response:

Now is semi-good; I'm not at work yet and I can spare more than five minutes to write something decent on the subject.

I can think of three times one phone call was true magic - and if I hadn't made that call, life would not have been the same. Likely, much worse.

(Checks date on Ferrett's LJ) - you're only nine years younger than me. You can remember rotary dial phones. A time before pagers, cell phones, answering machines, 24 hour anythings, etc. When a long-distance call was Really Something. You might not remember when the first transatlantic cables were laid and touted by General Telephone (I do), or when satellites really began to take over placing calls across long distances. I've never forgotten, so every time I place a call overseas at work, it still holds a measure of "gee whiz!" each time I do it and it works. Wow.

I'm from the generation whose fandom ran on the mail service. The U.S. Mail. Twelve - or was it fifteen - cents a letter. Came at noon six days a week. When I finally got the gumption up and tried to find the phone numbers for my pen pals, I was amazed and delighted that I could - and back then, it was free. Back then, you had to know the area code. Back then, Southern California only had two. Back then, you dialed that area code and spoke to someone who lived there. Could comment on the weather. Magic.

When people complain about the internet, their email or the like - I have to just smile, shake my head and keep my mouth shut. Being a trekkie in the 70's was uphill in a blizzard backwards by comparison. You couldn't possibly use the phone - it was too expensive. Don't even think about it. One knew people who did use the phone that much - and oh, you never heard from them again once the first bill arrived. Computers? Oh, the big casting company has a Univac, but it only does the billing - and even that was printed and stuffed into envelopes.

I arrived on the scene just in time to help name the first space shuttle Enterprise. Some years later, I finished high school and entered the community college near home to begin my degree in broadcasting - radio/TV/film. Since they didn't have that degree to offer, I enrolled as a dual drama/journalism major because it would allow me to write. One of my first classes was a speech class - which was just about anything but. Psycho-social skills 101 - how to get up in front of a group and say something. How to keep your head clear and happy. How to ask for what you want out of life and get it without feeling guilty or being an asshole. Think assertiveness training. And then the teacher wanted us to find people who would be willing to talk to the class about what they did for a living - a quick and dirty mentoring session.

"Go call someone and see what they say."

Everyone I was interested in was in Los Angeles, where the television stations were. I was in Hemet. And over the weekend, I was watching channel 5 KTLA (this was before the WB) and saw Tom Hatten hosting the Family Film Festival like he'd always had for years upon years, and introducing another old anime title nobody had seen outside of his program since the even earlier 60's. Tom was one of those folks who could discuss Popeye to the nth degree, animation in general both domestic and international with a smile and an entreaty to ignore the poor dubbing job and watch the film. Well, he certainly liked to talk about what he knew....

So I called the station Monday to see if I could talk to him about my school project. He wasn't in - but they took a message for me.

Okay, fine. Fat chance.

He called back. My first call from someone my Mother didn't know for me. I can still see her face as she handed me the phone. "Who's that strange guy calling my daughter?!"

He was wonderful to me. He would love to come speak at my school. He talked a little about how he had begun his career, and yes it had included college just like I was doing. I kept it short, and had my instructor take it from there. The scheduling never really came together - but the class got a field trip into Los Angeles to tour KTLA's facilities where he worked. Something that never would have been considered at all - had I not made that one phone call. It would be the first time I'd ever seen a soundstage.

My entire involvement with the Quantum Leap production office began on a bet with a friend of mine - she was certain they would love to hear from me, just because I was in Switzerland and so far from home. This is much, much later of course - 1991. I knew how to get the phone number, even if the internet was still mostly relegated to subscription services like CompuServe, Prodigy and GEnie. Gathering a handfull of 5-franc coins (and that's a fistfull - those things are the size of a buttermilk biscuit and twice as thick as a quarter) and trundled out to the pay phone. The person who answered was Harriet Margulies, and a finer friend I've rarely come across. I hadn't realized how homesick I was - but the moment it was known, it was soothed away. Harriet was a New Yorker who had spent most of her adult life in Hollywood working for Universal Studios. She made a pilgrimage to New York every year for two weeks to recharge, she said. And she was about to go back then - but when you come home for the holidays, call me - and we'll have lunch.

And we did. We would have lunches a lot the year I returned - we even met for lunch the day of the riots in April of 1992, I'll never forget it. We had lunch and chatter until Cliff became so ill, I couldn't find something positive to tell Harriet when I called her. And then she went to Paramount, then into semi-retirement.

I should try calling her again someday and see if I get through. That first trip into the studio, I brought everyone in the office some chocolate from Switzerland - some minis for the girls in the office, some bars for the set (sets have at least 50 people on them working at any one time, most of them beefy burritos of manhood moving things from place to place), and I remember I'd brought Scott Bakula a lucky marizpan horseshoe, some Swiss recycling news for Dean Stockwell. Dean's stuff got put into an inter-office envelope, but Harriet decided I needed to visit the set. If I wanted. Suuure. By then, I'd worked in the business shooting commercials and had worked with Bob Hope, Frankie Lane, Herschel Bernardi - sets were a no biggie. If you would like, Harriett....

I got to meet Scott while he was wearing a dress, folks. And got some of the best advice I've ever received. The Golden Globes were the next week, and damn if he didn't win.

One phone call.

But the one that I use as my bench isn't so glamourous.

It's 1997. Cliff has been disabled for almost three years. He's on dialysis, has lost his right leg above the knee and now the heel on his left foot has become infected and won't heal. He's been in long-term acute care at a facility just a few miles from home called Vencor where they take him to another hospital for hyperbaric oxygen treatments during the day. It's the only way to get to those treaments - and Cliff has gotten too unstable to leave at home alone. He's just too sick.

But Vencor turned out to be the worst placement I'd ever deal with. They were unfamiliar with peritoneal dialysis, and how to manage the patients. They had to call in nephrologists from other hospitals - and thankfully, this included a lady I'd already dealt with and we liked a lot. Dr. Oy' (OOey) Conception was a little Filipino lady about half my size - maaaaybe she was 4'11" - I'd have to ask her to take the heels off. No more than 10 years older than me. GENKI.

Cliff caught MRSA in that facility. He was so frightened at night they would have someone sit with him bedside to keep him from having nightmares and disturbing the other patients. The one time I left town on a trip, thinking everything would be okay, they changed his dialysis orders and increased the volumes. When I called to check on him at 10:30 PM, I could hear him screaming in the background. Needless to say, I took apart the whole staff. And sadly, I did it often - but they just didn't know what to do with him. They all wanted me to take him home and let him die. Or amputate that leg and get it over with.

The MRSA finally sent him to Loma Linda, the biggest facility in the area from a HBO session. He was now too sick for the long-term acute care facility Vencor. And I began to look for another place to send him once he was "cleaned up" enough to go down a level in care. There really wasn't a concern he wouldn't - properly supported, Cliff was about indestructable - but finding that support was the crux of the whole matter.

Vencor had become the only game in town, but I was NOT going to send him back there. When I went there to pick up his things after he was sent to Loma Linda (beds were unstandably scarce, you understand), I found soiled clothes in his room...in his room...that hadn't been removed for I don't know how long. I had them thrown away...but even then, they balked at it. Poopy clothes. No fucking way was anyone I knew going back there.

Getting to the end of my rope (keep in mind, I'm working full time an hour away from home in downtown Los Angeles at this time), I finally sat down and called Dr. Oy' to return a call she had placed to me about Cliff's care. And unloaded.

"Vencor? Why is he going back to Vencor?" she asked. She knew about them - oh, she did. "No, no, no - don't worry. He's not going back there."

There was a new facility mentioned to me called Heritage in Rancho, just a little further away from home than Vencor - but they didn't have space. They hadn't opened both of their wings yet. And I told her they had refused my husband. God, I love Dr. Oy to this day.

"He's NOT going back to Vencor. Don't worry. I'll take care of it." Think spitting, hissing, wildcat. She was mad.

Not an hour later, I got the call from Heritage. "We would LOVE to have your husband, no don't worry about a thing, it's all been arranged...."

Dr. Oy' owned Heritage Hospital. She, and three of her colleagues. I'd had no idea.

Heritage was wonderful. Heritage had some of the best gerontologists I'd ever met. The rooms were clean, well lit and had lovely views out the windows. The food was terrible, but I brought dinner nearly every night from the Green Burrito - and they never complained. Matter of fact, they encouraged it. Heritage got Cliff to his HBO appointments, kept the infections under control and even if the doctors didn't all agree on whether that leg could be saved, they didn't scare Cliff into nightmares that they were going to do what they wanted while he slept. That leg healed and he was transferred to Cedars-Sinai for a skin graft to finish the job. Cliff would die later that year, but he would die with his leg still attached to him, completely healed.

And they knew everything there was about diabetics, peritoneal dialysis and wound care. There was always a white-chocolate macadamia cookie waiting for me when I got there at night, often fresh from the oven. I slept nights. Cliff got better.

All for one phone call.

Vencor closed, by the way. I think Heritage may have had some restructuring since then, but it's still open and handling patients.

And I never...EVER...doubt the power of one phone call.

Comments

[theferrett.livejournal.com]

Amazing.

Thank you.

[elfwench.livejournal.com]

Wow! This is absolutely amazing. Food for thought for this phone phobic here.

Your tale of Cliff brought me to tears, and I'm amazed by the life you've had. I feel honored that you are on my friends list. You truly are a special soul. {{HUGS}}

[creativecstasy.livejournal.com]

wow.

[forestcats.livejournal.com]

Oy just yesterday asked mycroftca to take on the general medicine practice for her hospitalized patients.

Heritage has been closed for several years now. The details behind that could inspire many nightmares. It was a political move by Medicare to doggedly go after their billing until they could push them out of business. A new group has purchased the physical plant and opened up Angels a couple months ago but its apparently more like the Vencor of your experience. The Vencor facility was sold to another long term company that has turned it around a great deal. They are now called Kindred. There is a vast gaping need for long term care facilities but Medicare doensn't want to pay for them so private insurers follow that lead.

[not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com]

thank you for sharing those wonderful stories.

I too believe in the magical power of one phone call. Sometimes, that phone call is the difference between tragedy and hope.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

You know her? Confirm or deny my description, please!

That's a real shame, but no surprise either. Heritage was yet another facility before her group took it and turned it around - looks like the revolving door is in good use these days.

Ontario Christian Home has built their own acute-care facility - over on Mountain Avenue, and it's now open. And likely, full up. Long-term acute care is the real nightmare of "nursing homes." These are patients too sick for home care, or there is nobody to provide it or pay for it. And they can stay there for years, most of the time on the bare edge of sentience.

Medicare. Just about useless for this kind of care - and MediCal being the only resort after that, just as bad - when they pay. I was so glad I had that PPO plan - othewise, Heritage would have been out a bundle. I doubt seriously anyone else in the house even knew plans like it existed.

An acute facility called Kindred. That's .. kinda scary, if you think about it.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I'm still amazed some days I still have it in me. But then again, I always do my best work when I know I have an audience - and a spec to write to.

Thank YOU.

[forestcats.livejournal.com]

Yep she is just a wee one, its a wonder that she can pull down the charts on her own. I tower over her and will look for a chair so that I'm not looking down on her and talk face to face.

The new addition to OCH if full but only a handful of docs use that facility. Nice physical plan but still just a warehouse.

PPO is the only way to go. HMOs will deny care until its caused so much harm that its fatal. Kaiser has raised in my experience but it truly depends on the moment.

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

You did good. One phone call made the all the difference in his comfort.

I admire you, you know that? :)

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

"Full but only a few use it."

Gah, you wonder what would happen if more doctors did, don't you?

Oh to have been able to buy the insurance we needed...the incredible patchwork I dealt with still boggles my mind. In the end, only the workmans comp covered everything - after a judgment passed nearly a year after he died.

Kaiser still blows me out of the water when they will allow plans to be sold that don't provide nursing home care, even when Kaiser facilities have to be used when a referral is made. Once in, you can't leave the system, yanno. But the plan my employer at the time provided, didn't cover it. The rider specifically denied that kind of coverage - point blank. Good thing I read those bastids.

But as Jim works for one now, I've got a better POV on them as a system. Depends on the moment - oh yes, indeed. EVERYTHING depends on the moment.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

After taking it on the chin this week and having to remove someone from my friends list over similar material - this week has been baggage city.

That's high praise, and I deeply appreciate it.

Just remind me of this day the next time someone tells me to shut my damn trap, okay?

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I sure hope you're feeling more like yourself - have you ever had so much as a CAT scan when you're feeling wonky?

[auntiesiannan.livejournal.com]

If it must be said, SAY IT. Always. Don't live a life full of "what if I had...?"s.

[ms-hecubus.livejournal.com]

I loved this entry. Interesting, well written and it gave me something to think about. Thank you!

[elfwench.livejournal.com]

Thanks. All they found the last time was a cyst, but I had to wait three months before they did the MRI so I wasn't symptomatic by the time it came time for it. So who knows? Unfortunately, I'm without insurance. More and more places are using temp employees and having them as permanent temps rather than hiring after 60 or 90 days, and that is the situation we are in now.

[zoethe.livejournal.com]

This was incredibly generous. Thank you.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Errrg. I suspected something transient.

Hey, you do what you gotta do. You ought to see what I spend on insurance in a month - it's scary. But oh, have I learned my lesson or what?

With all the stress you've been under, I'd suspect something more vascular, and hence, more troublesome - when was the last time your BP was checked?

[elbales]

I'll second zoethe. Incredibly generous. Thank you for sharing your stories.