Science Marches On

As readers of this blog know, I had this wonderful friend named Carolyn in my life for around twenty years. The first ten were mostly joyous, though there were times when we seemed to mutually agree the relationship was over and I, at least, went off to be with someone else. Then we'd be back together. Then we wouldn't be. The last ten were as joyous as a relationship can be when one party is battling cancer and the other — me, in this case — tries to be as supportive as humanly possible while becoming increasingly certain the battle is not winnable.

For most of the last five, that battle was darn near a 24/7 struggle for Carolyn. As a close observer and participant, I vacillated — sometimes in the same burst of thought — between admiration for her tenacity and sadness because I knew how it would end.

The beginning of that end came one evening in April of 2016 when she was having a serious problem breathing. I took her via ambulance into an emergency room where we got her immediate short-term relief via some sort of respirator but had to wait close to six hours for a doctor who knew more about what else should be done for her.

During that period, she went to sleep — or maybe they induced it, I'm not sure — and I plunged into my iPad. If you're ever going to have to spend a lot of your life in waiting rooms and medical offices, get yourself an iPad or something comparable. I can't always get a decent Wi-Fi signal but I always have plenty of books to read via the Kindle app and games to play. I got to be so good at Sudoku that I should probably give up writing and spend my time trying to hustle suckers into playing it against me for money.

And if I do remain a writer…well, sometimes, I can write something on my iPad while waiting or even post on my blog so I don't resent waiting time so much. On more than a few occasions, I was able to use it to find a phone number or some other necessary information that would help Carolyn. I was really glad I had it and I still make a point to always have it fully-charged and to keep a portable charger fully-charged, as well.

For no visible reason the other day, I got to thinking of how technology had made her last years better. I don't mean the medical technology, which obviously helped a lot. I mean things like my iPad and her cell phone and the Amazon Echo I got her for the room she lived in for the last year-or-so in an Assisted Living facility. I expect that Amazon or some company will soon bring out one of those designed for hospital rooms or nursing homes. It will play music on voice command or summon help or phone people or whatever a confined-to-bed person needs. Carolyn's kept her company when I couldn't and it would have been difficult for her to tune in a radio.

One day when I was at the Assisted Living place, Carolyn and I heard faint cries of "Help, help!" We ran to investigate and found that two doors down from her room, a very sweet but frail elderly woman had fallen. Her room had pull-cords — one by the bed, one in the bathroom — that she could use to summon aid but she'd fallen nowhere near either.

I had learned helping my mother when she fell that in this situation, you shouldn't try to help someone to their feet. They'll probably be too wobbly and shaken for that. Instead, you place a chair — preferably a good, solid one — behind them and get them up and into that, which is what Carolyn and I did. I'm sure within minutes, someone from the nursing staff would have happened by, heard the lady's cries and done what we did, but we can all imagine a scenario when that might not have been in time. An Echo-like device that was continuously monitoring the room could have brought help almost immediately.

And yet another thing that helped was that we have services like GrubHub and DoorDash and other folks who deliver meals from restaurants. Carolyn found the food at the Assisted Living place far from delicious and also far from what she thought she should be eating. We got her a mini-refrigerator for her room and either I or my assistant John would bring her meals. When one of us couldn't get over there, Carolyn would call and tell me what she wanted and I'd order it online for her either from my home computer or my iPhone or iPad.

A nice thing about those services is that you pay (and even tip) via credit card so the recipient doesn't have to hassle with cash or cards or gratuities or anything. I could specify that her order should be delivered to the front desk of the nursing home.

But before I placed it, I'd phone whoever was at the front desk and tell them, "I'm ordering Thai food for Carolyn. Would you be on the alert for it and get it to her when it arrives? And by the way, would you like some egg rolls or pad thai? I'll pay for it." The desk folks almost always declined but they all appreciated the offer and would make sure Carolyn got her dinner.

There were other ways that being online helped — ordering prescription refills, making medical appointments, just being reachable — but I'll close with one story, not about technology helping Carolyn but about it helping my mother, who passed away in October of 2012…

My mother loved cats. She had several in her home over the years but when the last one died, she decided it would be the last one. She had too many physical problems and spent too much of her life in the hospital to take proper care of another feline. It was something she missed dearly.

As you may know, I feed feral cats in my backyard and I currently have two clients. Lydia, who's been around for more than a decade, is almost always out there. Sylvia has been coming around for almost as long to join her most evenings for dinner. For years, I had one we called The Stranger Cat who was adorable and friendly and who loved to be petted. The Stranger Cat almost never left my yard. When the gardener or the pool guy came around, The S.C. would grudgingly trudge over to a neighbor's yard and wait impatiently until they were gone. Then once they were outta there, he'd immediately return to his chosen place to lie in the sun that day and give me stares that said, "Why are you letting those people into my yard?"

Sometimes when I took my mother in for doctor appointments, we'd stop at my house on the way back to hers. Physical limitations prevented her from coming into my house — it would have been too rough on her — but I'd pull into the garage and she'd stay in the car while I went and got the Stranger Cat. She would pet him and hold him on her lap for a few minutes and it would cheer her greatly because he was so affectionate as long as you weren't a gardener or pool guy.

When the Stranger Cat died in May of 2012, I didn't tell my mother because…well, why? She didn't need any more sadness in her life. Occasionally, she'd ask me how he was doing and I'd lie and say he was fine. By this point, she was unlikely to ever be well enough to be taken to my garage to pet him.

A month before she left us, she was in a nursing home in Torrance and I was spending time with her one evening. She asked me about the Stranger Cat and I said he was doing well and he missed her and I'd take her by soon to see him, even though I knew that wouldn't happen. This was the biggest lie I ever told my mother and the only time I got away with it. She said she'd love to see him and I did what I could. I showed her a few photos I had of him on my iPad.

A bit later, I was out in the hall talking to Carolyn, who was at my house with her friend Annie. She mentioned that she'd just fed Lydia and Sylvia, and I had a sudden, fiendish idea. Sylvia looks very much like the Stranger Cat and is almost surely a younger relative of his…

The Stranger Cat and Sylvia. I could tell them apart in person but not in this photo.

Carolyn's cell phone was an old flip-phone that she loved and refused to upgrade. It would not work for my scheme but fortunately, Annie had a more modern phone and was willing to help. We set up a Facetime call between Annie's phone in my yard and my iPad which I was holding in my mother's room. Annie had her phone trained on Sylvia but we didn't tell my mother it was Sylvia. I told her she was watching the Stranger Cat live from my home.

Even if her eyes had been good, I don't think she could have seen the difference. By then, they were so bad, I could probably have had Annie aim her camera at Carolyn or even Sergio and my mother would not have known she was not looking at a live video of the Stranger Cat dining. It made her very happy so it made me very happy and Carolyn, as well. I had the sense even Sylvia liked it, though perhaps not as much as the Mixed Grill she was eating.

As any decent scholar of film history knows, after Shemp Howard died from a heart attack, four Three Stooges comedies were filmed with a stand-in pretending to be him. He has been referred to as Fake Shemp and it's obvious Donald Trump stole the whole concept of Fake News from this. Thanks to modern-day technology, we were able to create Fake Stranger Cat…and for a very good cause.