Category: 2018

Reprint from the Economist

A beautifully written tribute.

https://www.economist.com/obituary/2018/06/02/lini-puthussery-died-of-the-nipah-virus-on-may-21st

Treating a mystery 

Lini Puthussery, a nurse in Kerala, died of the Nipah virus on May 21st, aged 28

WHEN the patient was admitted at the end of April, Lini Puthussery was starting her night shift. He was a young man of 26, bearded, and with his hair fashionably swept back from his forehead. His name was Mohamed Sadiq, from Changaroth panchayat. The symptoms were fever and difficulty breathing, which struck her as unusual, even then. But her job was to care for him, so she gave him fluids and paracetamol, changed his sweaty clothes and sheets, and sat up with him all night long.

She had been working seven months on contract at the Perambra Taluk hospital, in the countryside outside Kozhikode (once Calicut). The place had been upgraded from a community health centre a decade ago, but was still short of doctors and specialists. Difficult cases had to go to Kozhikode, 50km away. Not many people filled the beds, but every day 1,000 or so queued at the outpatient counter or at the pharmacy. The noisy crowd still milled there when she arrived for night shifts.

The journey from her home village of Chempanoda by bus was slow but beautiful, across fresh-flowing rivers, through groves of areca-nut and rubber trees and past wooded hills. The Western Ghats towered to the east and, in the evenings, took the light of the sun. The place was not quite paradise, because from time to time farmers gathered outside the village office to protest when their land was misclassified as protected forest and their claims to ownership were rebuffed. In 2017 a farmer hanged himself there. Yet apart from those things it was a quiet, green place, with her parents, aunts and cousins all close by.

As a daily-wage nurse, she worked flexible hours. That suited her, because she had her two small boys, five-year-old Rithul and two-year-old Sidharth, to look after. Her husband, Sajeesh, had been away for five years, working as an accountant for a small firm in Bahrain. He returned a few times a year, and they spoke every day on the phone. Many Keralans worked in the Gulf. It was more lucrative than staying at home, and meant in Lini’s case that they could afford their one-storey brick house, with a small terraced garden, looking over open pasture. They took proud pictures of themselves outside it.

Sajeesh had tried to get a family visa, but Lini hadn’t wanted to go unless she could get a nursing job there first. She loved her work too much. Nonetheless she kept dreaming of the Gulf as a magical place, telling Rithul all the time that if he studied well, he could go there like his father. And she would not have minded more money. In her spare time she was busy improving her knowledge, to be eligible for a permanent government nursing job. She had filled a large black hard-bound book with neatly underlined entries in English, rather than her native Malayalam, on diseases and their treatments. Her notes, however, did not seem to cover what Sadiq had.

She and her colleagues called it “the mystery disease”. In a few days he had died of it. She cried a lot, not out of fear, but because she had taken such complete care of him. The story came out slowly. Sadiq had gone to clean a disused well with his elder brother Saliah. Their parents had just bought a new house and the brothers, who also worked in the Gulf, had come back to help. The well was deep, and as they went down into it they disturbed so many bats that they gave up the job in horror.

Those bats were the clue. They had either infected the water, or had bitten and infected the mangoes that grew round it. On May 21st officials from the Health Department, the Forestry Department, the Regional Diagnostic Laboratory and the Animal Husbandry Department caught a bat for testing and sealed the well with nets. By then, Saliah and his aunt Mariumma were dead too: not of Japanese encephalitis or some strain of malaria, as the doctors kept guessing, but (it turned out) of Nipah virus, which had appeared only once before in India. It was fatal in 70% of cases.

For the virus to spread between humans, contact had to be intensive and direct. That was exactly what Lini, with her tireless nursing, had provided. On May 16th she felt feverish, but insisted to Sajeesh that she would go to work because “lots of patients are there”, as always. When she grew worse, she checked herself into a hospital in Kozhikode and asked to be quarantined. Sajeesh flew back from Bahrain to find her barely conscious. She left him a note, partly in Malayalam and partly in English, which he folded away inside the cover of his phone.

Sajeeshetta, am almost on the way. I don’t think I will be able to see you again. Sorry. Please take good care of our children. Poor Kunju [Sidharth], please take him to the Gulf with you. Don’t stay single like our father. Plz. With lots of love, Umma

By the end of May the outbreak was not yet contained. At the hospital in Perambra, Lini’s colleagues now wore protective coats, gloves and masks. Their patients, however, had fled from the waiting rooms and even from their beds. In Changaroth panchayat half the houses were left empty. On social media, rumours still swirled. Nipah had not spread from bats. It had come in with migrants. Perhaps—some said—it had even come in from Lini’s wonderland of possibility and opportunity, across the Arabian Sea.

Take your dog to work day

We didn’t really have a “take your dog to work day” today. But I’ve noticed that occasionally people will have dog with them at work. It’s not like you can just bring your dogs all the time whenever you feel like it. But I think it’s tolerated in situations like if they have a vet appointment and it doesn’t make sense to drive all the way down to Albuquerque and back again (it’s more than an hour each way).

So I figured I’d give it a try.

After all, if the big cone wasn’t enough to clue people in that this wasn’t an ordinary situation, the two big gaping red holes in her head would.

I figured worse case scenario my boss would ask me to take her home. Turned out he was quite supportive.

Of course it helped that Rosie is the calmest dog I’ve ever known.

She never made a sound. Most people didn’t even realize she was there.

Carpe Mañana

LOL! I saw this bumper sticker today. This is so me. I so need this bumper sticker!

I’m sure that for most people this joke means “put it off until tomorrow” instead of  the popular “carpe diem” (seize the day) i.e., advocating a more laid back approach to life.
But what resonated for me is literally “seize tomorrow”, like, yes, seize it! Because isn’t that what I’m always trying to do? Always planning way ahead, strategizing about things that are still way in the future, always playing the long game. I am constantly plotting to seize tomorrow.
By the way, most of you probably know the center symbol is the Zia sun symbol. Zia are a branch of the Native American Pueblo, and the symbol is used on the New Mexico state flag.

Rosie is sick

We think she’s going to be ok. She has a large abscess on her head. She went to the emergency vet last night, where they lacerated it, performed a saline rinse, and gave her antibiotics and pain killers. I’ll take her to my vet in Santa Fe on Monday morning for a follow-up.

She hasn’t eaten well all week, but we didn’t think too much of it at first, because she often loses her appetite. When I got to Placitas on Friday night, I looked her over, in particular her belly, but couldn’t see anything wrong. By Saturday morning I thought she might have an ear infection, and I gave her ear drops. I went to give her more ear drops on Saturday night and that’s when I discovered her head was swollen and her right eye was pushed shut. It felt like there was water under her skin.

We took her right away to a 24-hour emergency vet in Albuquerque. The freeway was closed in one section, so it took awhile to get to Albuquerque. Finally we arrived, filled out the paperwork, and waited and waited. After half an hour went by and no one had even glanced at her yet, I asked about the wait time. They said another hour. So I started calling around. The other well-known vet, on the same street, also reported an hour wait. That vet suggested we call a third emergency vet I had never heard of, in a sketchier part of town. The third vet said they could take her right in, so we drove over there. By that time it had been well over two hours and it was late in the evening.

The new vet took her back to examine her immediately. They said they would need to sedate her, but promised to go light with the sedation, given her age and the fact that she was very lethargic already. She is also very patient with procedures and rarely wiggles or even shows pain. The procedure took less than half an hour, and she was never all the way under.

She looks terrible. They shaved half her head, and they want the abscess to continue to drain. So yeah. Open head wound. Also it’s still swollen and misshapen. I’ve got some really gory close-up photos that I won’t post. Here’s one from a distance.

The careful categorization of books

When John and Monica packed up the Calle la Paz rental and moved everything to the Placitas Homesteads house at Christmas, they took the time to carefully catalog the location of the books. They took photos of all the shelves, and marked each box by the shelf number.

Which is a good thing, because 6 months later, our books are still in boxes. And every once in awhile, I want to find one. I could just unpack all of the books, but first we have to buy or build shelves. John doesn’t want me buying just any old thing and he hasn’t had time to do it himself. It’s not very close to the top of the priority list.

Ah, just what I was looking for. I need some escapism reading about now. Costa Rica! John and I are talking about going to Costa Rica sometime in the next year to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.

I started to read and highlight the book. And it just sounded so hard. Passports, red vs. orange taxis, where not to do your currency exchange, pay your departure tax when you arrive, watch out for all the different kinds of scams, you need a 4WD to get to the tourist places outside of San Jose, don’t try to drive at all in San Jose, and it’s not safe to take a bus at night…

I need a one-page guidebook, with a big glossy photo and four words: “Beach here. You sit.”

 

 

Art and mud in the desert

John and I had a “meaningful conversation” recently about making sure we spend quality time together on the weekends. Following that conversation, we had good intentions to do some fun things this weekend. For example, there’s a new art gallery at “Homesteads Village” which is a small set of retail buildings where our road meets the highway. It consists of a corner store, two cafés and a hair salon. And an art gallery that changes hands and reopens every year or two.

John and I have purchased art from local artists before, so we are on the VIP list and were invited to a private opening reception. We went last night but only stayed a few minutes. It’s a tiny gallery and it was crowded. There’s one artist in particular that I would like to buy a piece of her work. I’ve seen her work before, but never more than a few pieces in one place. And the gallery also only had a couple of things by her. I’m sorry I missed the studio tour last month. I don’t think I was feeling well. In hindsight, I should have gone at least just to her studio, even though I didn’t feel like touring around. I think the studio tour is only once a year. I’ll have to put it on my list for next year.

We also hope to go to the arts and crafts fair in Albuquerque this weekend. We’ve gone several times in the past and always enjoy it. John saw in the local news that this year is the last year it will be held. Apparently it’s always been subsidized and the budget was cut. So I hope we manage to go. It’s the last one!

Here’s the snag. We’ve got a big water leak at the Placitas house. Luckily the leak is outside, not in the house. But John is going on another business trip this week, and he understandably wants to get it fixed before he leaves. So that’s what we’re doing today instead of the arts and crafts fair.

It all started when he heard the well pump running in the middle of the night on Thursday night. The pump should only turn on when water is running. At first he figured he had an evaporative cooler leak. Then he saw dampness along the bottom of the fence.

The meter box was full of water. Here he is, with a little electric pump, pumping it out. Kira thinks he’s in a good position to play fetch. Uh – maybe not.

Here’s all the water he pumped out of the meter box.

Here’s the box, all pumped out. (Wrong place to put your ball, Kira.)

He had a plumber out yesterday and they replaced the inner ball valve, but that didn’t fix the problem. The pump ran all last night and the meter box filled back up with water again. So this morning he started digging, looking for the leak.

It’s somewhere here.

He says he’s digging me that swimming pool I’ve always wanted. It’s hot today too. Good day to be hanging out by the pool.

Instead of hiring the new handyman (whom we haven’t actually used yet, so we don’t know if he’s any good), John hired a reputable plumbing company. (After doing all the digging himself, in the heat.)

Here’s what the plumbing company just installed. Can you see that little tiny, tiny black 90 degree elbow? The entire water supply to the house is supposed to go through there. I’m not a plumber, but common sense is telling me that is not big enough.

It’s not looking like we’re going to make it to the Albuquerque arts and crafts fair today, but look at John’s muddy shirt – there’s my artwork for today!

A masterpiece. The simple yet rich colors, the subtly, the tension between the blurred dust and the crisp outlines of the still-intact splatters, brings life and vitality to the overall arc of the story, insuring enduring impact long after the viewer has headed back indoors with a sigh.

Cheering us up

I think we all need cheered up after those miserable last couple of posts. And I’ve got another post in progress, about more issues at the Placitas house, that I’ll post today too. Always issues! So meanwhile, let’s take a breather.

Here’s my boss (in the red hat) playing water guns with my coworker’s children in the park:

Here he is drying off in the New Mexico sun, lol. In the background you can see two coworkers having a very long discussion. About what, I don’t know, but they are both on the team that is struggling a bit right now with team cohesion (among other things). Hopefully this retreat was helpful.

He’s impossible to see, but there’s a coworker of mine up in that tree. He’s in the center of the photo. See, even New Mexico is sometimes green.

Speaking of green, here’s my backyard after we had some actual real rain a week or so ago. It left everything completely wet! In some parts of the country you take that for granted. It rains, things are wet. Around here it’ll rain and you’ll go outside and everything’s still dry. How is that even possible? This time there was so much rain overnight that things were still soggy in the morning. Like it should be.

In other cute and cheery topics, Laura sent me these photos of pig races, lol, they are adorable:

My friend Tracey sent me these rodeo photos that same weekend. It’s too funny, I have a good friend and a daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area and do I get photos of sophisticated cultural events? No, I get rodeo pictures from both of them. I guess because the sophisticated cultural events are too ordinary to be remarkable.

Speaking of local culture, look at all the organic Asian sauces I discovered at Sprouts Market!

Speaking of retail opportunities, for those of you who are familiar with the San Francisco Outlet Mall in Livermore, get a load of the Santa Fe Outlet Mall:

Yes, it is open! For those of you unfamiliar with the San Francisco outlet mall, it is a terrifying, thronging mass of humanity. Busloads of tourists pour out of San Francisco and drive all the way to Livermore to spend enormous amounts of money at the outlet mall (I often wonder if they know what they’re getting into, it’s a very long bus trip). When we lived in Livermore, we lived very near that mall. One time we accidentally turned into the mall parking lot on a weekend afternoon and it took us an an entire hour of gridlock before we could get back out of there! Thousands of parked cars and busses cover acres and acres of pavement and nearby fields, and all the driving lanes in the parking lots are completely bumper to bumper with people simply idling, waiting for someone, somewhere to pull out of their parking spot and attempt to go home. Talk about taking a wrong turn!

Meanwhile, one day after work a week or so ago, I decided to stop by the Santa Fe outlet mall, which is less than a mile from my house. I’ve never been there since I’ve moved to Santa Fe, even though it’s very close by. I went into the Loft, which a coworker had recommended. There were as many sales people as there were shoppers (a total of about two of each). It was a very relaxing shopping experience, and I got several cute summer items at less than half price.

Ignore the wrinkles, that’s just from being crammed into my bag for the weekend trip down to Placitas. They just need a moment in a hot dryer.

And, a snake. What, you don’t find snakes to be cheerful? Yeah, maybe not. But I figured this would be a good spot for it because I don’t have enough to say about it to make it its own post. So, yep, a snake. Probably a bull snake. Harmless. Useful. They eat mice. Yay!

It’s not been easy

Once again it has not been an easy week. Last time I posted, early on Wednesday morning, I was hanging around at home waiting for my migraine medication to kick in so I could go to work. Usually the meds work fine and I can continue with my day (not feeling great, but able to get my work done at least).

On Wednesday morning I was having a little bit of trouble wrestling control of the migraine, and by the time I figured I had it handled, I ended up going in to work a little late. But then a few hours later it just got away from me.

It’s only a few times a year that I completely lose control of a migraine, but it’s just hell when it happens. The nausea hit suddenly at 1:00 and I realized I had to get home immediately. This is why it’s so important that I not have a commute. By chance, I-25 south was closed due to a bad wreck that same afternoon. But my Santa Fe townhome is only 15 minutes away, no freeway required, so I was able to get home in time.

I gave John a call so he knew what was going on. He called every couple hours for the rest of the day to make sure I could still answer the phone. And it was all I could do to answer the phone. But if I didn’t answer, he would have driven up to Santa Fe, and there’s no point for that. I don’t need anything when I have a migraine, I just need to be in a safe place to wait it out.

When it gets really bad I can’t talk right – my speech gets vague and disoriented and slurred. I can hardly move and stumble around with poor motor control. And I don’t see well. And the misery I can’t even describe. It’s severe pain and nausea, but it’s more than that. It feels like you’re dying, and you definitely wish you could die (don’t worry, I’m never suicidal, it’s not like that). It’s just a feat of endurance that’s the hardest thing I do in life. Except I don’t actually do anything. I just lay there, half out of my mind, and wait for it to be over. They realize nowadays that a migraine is a type of seizure, a low, slow seizure. And there’s certainly stuff going on in the brain that isn’t explained by just pain and nausea. It peaked about 8 PM, and by about 10:30 I was mostly ok.

The next couple of days I just had a regular headache, you know, the type people take aspirin for. And I sort of felt like I had been hit by a truck. Totally wiped. But I went to work and got some stuff done.

My department actually had a retreat in a local park on Thursday. My headache was pretty bad, but tolerable. If I had been feeling better, I would have done a better job of networking with the other teams. But mostly I just sat with Roz. That’s my new coworker I think I’ve mentioned, who is Laura’s age and reminds me a lot of Laura. And of myself at that age.

Her first name doesn’t fit her. Her last name is beautiful, (which I won’t mention here in a public blog), although it’s not her original last name (long story). But her first name should be something more dignified. Although she is also tough. And scrappy 🙂

Roz knows a lot about chronic health issues. It was nice to have someone who just understands and isn’t afraid of it. Most people who don’t really understand, can’t be with it in a courageous way. They just want me to be better. Which is a type of caring, but it puts pressure on me to be better, when it’s not actually in my control. It sets me up to fail.

Work gone wild and taming the house

I’m home sick with a migraine this morning, and I think I just need to sit and write for a little while. It’s been very stressful. Everything is probably going to be ok, but there’s far too much going on.

At work one of the managers, whose team works with my team, made a series of personnel-related mistakes recently, and the consequences have been affecting me and my team. I’ve been worried that either she, or one of her employees, or both, could be let go.

Then last week a well-liked senior manager lost his son to an undisclosed illness. This pretty much shattered everyone.

Then toward the end of last week, we were all abruptly told to leave early, at 4:30 PM. No one had any idea what was going on, but due to an accidental “reply all”, we knew that HR was involved. Uh-oh. Who’s getting fired? The next morning we found out that a completely different manager, not the one I was worried about, was let go. I have no idea why we needed to vacate the building for that, because she wasn’t even there – she had been out on leave for a month (I had assumed it was for medical reasons). I really didn’t see this coming. I didn’t even know there were any issues. I have no idea why she was let go. As you can imagine, everyone is on edge.

Then John and I had a difficult weekend. We are trying to do way, way too much. After the fiasco with a very inept contractor last summer, John has been wanting to do all his own remodel work. Not only is he wanting to be the general contractor himself, he’s wanting to do all the drilling and hammering himself. It’s understandable, but unfortunately, it’s not a realistic solution. He spends 50 hours a week at work, and then he works all weekend. We are miserable, and the house is miserable to live in with everything undone and our possessions still in boxes, and progress painfully slow.

We own several houses, we manage our rentals ourselves, we both have full-time jobs in different cities, I run a small side business, and we simply have to employ a good handyman/contractor. Or sell the house as-is and take the loss and buy something modest that doesn’t need so much work. John cannot do it all by himself – we are working ourselves to death. Plus, if John has any hopes of me ever coming around to liking that house of his, this is not the right strategy. I currently HATE that house.

I asked a well-recommended contractor to come over on Sunday and he seemed competent. He does both indoor and outdoor work. I’m going to have him start with a few things in Santa Fe, and if his crew does that well, I want him to tackle the Placitas house next. John says he wants to work along side him, and I’m like, no. Absolutely not. No. Too many cooks in the kitchen, plus, we need our weekends for other things. For us. That house has become larger than life.

Sci-fi lady lives on

My new home security system talks. I call her the sci-fi lady because of her weird voice. But that’s not the problem. The problem is she talks – at random times. Like when I’m on the phone in middle of a coaching session. Or worse yet, in middle of the night. About stupid things – apparently there is a bracket loose somewhere and she needs to tell me this at 4:17 AM. “Warning. Hallway. Warning. Smoke detector bracket loose.” How does the manufacturer of this modern marvel think this is somehow ok? In middle of the night?

So I turned the system off. But the next night, the sc-fi lady was still talking! Even though I had turned her off. She talks when off! So I was up and crashing around at 4 AM, trying to find the right plug to pull (she’s hidden in a cabinet behind a TV).  But then I wondered, if I unplugged her, would that would set the alarm off? Have you ever heard a house alarm go off? OMG.

I figured if I was going to end up standing in the front yard with my fingers in my ears apologizing profusely to angry neighbors, it would maybe be better if it were light out. Even better if I were dressed. Maybe even some coffee in my system. Maybe early morning is just not a good time for all that to happen.

So after work I called John for moral support, took a deep breath, sent up a quick prayer – and unplugged her. She glowed an angry red. She has a battery backup. She’s still alive! Now she’s going to guilt-trip me about her low batteries all night. “Warning. Batteries low. Please plug into electric outlet. Warning. Batteries low.”

So I took out her batteries, which required secret knowledge and a screwdriver. Now she’s laying in pieces on my dining room table.

John and I were joking – what if she’s still talking tonight? “Kristina. Why’d you remove my batteries? Kristina. Don’t you like me? I was only trying to be helpful. Kristina.”