Amanda Reilly CWA 2010

Creative Writing Award Winner - 2010

Class of 2010

Amanda Reilly ‘11 is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a BA in Psychology and a Master of Education. Amanda spent thirteen years as a mental health school counselor. A member of Sigma Theta Tau International, Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Golden Key National Honor Society, she has received numerous academic awards. She is enrolled in the Family Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner program and a recipient of YSN’s Elizabeth N. Robb Scholarship.

Transcript of the reading:

Sharp Lines

I had walked by your room many times in the previous weeks as I negotiated my way to other patients, the med room, the computer station. Without light or movement, I wrongly assumed your room was empty. But, curled up in the dark, moaning and shading your eyes as greeting, you were there. At least, part of you was.

A playful character with an eye for fashion, the best dressed in your class. You were an honors student heading into your senior year. Your wish for “clean sharp lines” made you a weekly regular at the barbershop where you also scored bootlegged DVDs. You had a girlfriend, but “nothing serious” you were clear to add. You enjoyed the occasional game of beer pong, you admitted, but you eschewed experimentation with drugs. “You don’t know what that shit is gonna do,” you explained, without irony.

I was told the course of treatment for your leukemia should have been relatively straightforward, by which I’m sure no one meant to say easy, even if that’s how it sounded. Chemo insisted you change your style. “Smooth as a baby’s bottom,” you said as you ran your hand from your forehead to the back of your neck. You had no idea you would lose more than your hair. And the pancreatitis and rare pancreatic cysts that followed chemo, hurt more you imagined, than if each hair had been ripped out one-by-one.

Even medicated, you never rated your agony below 8 out of 10. Could you really be getting such little relief? It was hard to interpret your clock watching, your repeated requests to get your Dilaudid “just a few minutes early,” and then earlier still. You became very interested in how your pain medications would be administered and the rate at which the pump would be set. You started to ‘stack’ medications, a bad sign I was told. Had you unwittingly become an addict? Did you simply want some small measure of control in your life after losing so much? Less and less willing to talk about anything other than your pain and how it would be managed, you retreated further into the dark and refused to get out of bed, sedated and hurting.

You were clearly uncomfortable and deteriorating quickly, as were your caretakers. The questions of what to do and how much to believe divided the staff, no one able to negotiate your plan of care without emotion. “He’s having symptoms of withdrawal, not pain,” said one who had clearly decided. “But he says he’s in pain and we’re ethically bound to treat it,” said another. Could the pain meds be used as a carrot to get you out of bed? “It’s the only way to motivate him,” the first nurse argued. “But if he’s truly in pain, it’s cruel to insist he brush his teeth before you’ll give him his PRN Dilaudid,” countered another. The debate raged.

Each day I asked how you were feeling, you answered with the same moan and shake of your shorn head. “Not good?” I tried to clarify. “The pain,” your only answer in what was becoming a familiar call and response. We went on like this for days until, after the usual vital sign drill, and the daily argument about how much sunlight to let through the partly opened window shade, I sat…and waited. Somehow this unexpected gesture caught your attention, your gaze curious. “I don’t think it’s good for you to sit here in the dark by yourself all day,” I explained, still sitting. “Suit yourself,” your eyes said, before the next moan escaped your lips. Silence. Moan. Silence. It went on like that for a while. “Do you have any pictures of you with hair?” I asked, not much expecting you to engage with me and worried it was the wrong question. But you opened your eyes, seeming puzzled. “Help me sit up and get my phone,” you ordered, making evident the pain of your movement. Half way up, your stare suddenly unseeing, I wondered if you had once again become lost in your body. You startled as I prompted, “Do you have any pictures?”

Surprisingly, this was the question you hadn’t known you wanted to be asked. Apparently you were tired of answering the same well-meaning questions, dressed in white coats and colored scrubs. It turns out you needed to remember the you before the pain, in order to consider anything beyond your next dose. Because I asked, you told me about before. And I started to see the shape of the large wound no physical exam would reveal.

Had we created an addict? Had you been asking us to medicate more than your physical pain? No answers were written in the clean sharp lines of your former life. Still. I thought we might find the answers together…if we could keep talking about before…and then eventually, after.