The Summer of the Exchange Student

Here's something that most people I know don't know about me or my family ...

During the summer of 1984, in between my freshman and my sophomore years in high school, my family served as a host family for an exchange student.

Lots of people who have hosted an exchange student have probably had a great experience, one from which they greatly benefitted and something that they would recommend that someone else do as well.  Not so much in our case.

Corinne, with Mom and Nancy, in more clothes than I ever remember seeing her wear that summer

Our exchange student's name was Corinne.  She was from Nice, France; her father was a surgeon, and her family lived in a house on the French Riviera.

I have no idea how the match between her and my family was made by the exchange program agency.  It's possible they were desperate for placement families, or maybe they just used the exchange student's age and gender to pair the person with the family.  Suffice to say, though, that from Day One it was pretty obvious that the match wasn't a great one.

Corinne was between my sister Jennifer and me in age; one of the rules of the program was that the exchange student be given her own bedroom, and so Jennifer and I agreed to bunk together in my room during the summer and let Corinne have Jennifer's bedroom.  When Corinne got to our house, we excitedly showed her around, and she was silent.  No expression, no comments.  I thought it was a language barrier issue until later that day when she started saying things like, "OK, that's your room?" and "OK, you eat in your kitchen?" with a French accent and a condescending tone.  (Apparently someone had told her that Americans say "OK" a lot, and so she started off many of her sentences with that as a kick-off.) She went to bed really early that first night, which we thought might be because she was jet-lagged from the trip.  A week or so later, though, when she was still retreating to the bedroom pretty early on a nightly basis, we asked her if she was tired, and she said, "No, I'm just boring."  We laughed for a minute, until she clarified that she actually meant "bored."  Well ok, then.

The summertime weather in Corinne's hometown peaked out at about 80 degrees; the inside of our house was that same temperature because Dad was strict about the thermostat setting, and as usual the outside temperature in the entire state of Mississippi that summer was a hot, humid 99 degrees in the shade.  She came from a land of famous painters, sightseeing, and yachting; we had fun making pottery out of mud from our backyard, chopping the heads off water moccasins with a garden hoe, and canoeing in the lake behind our house.  She was used to fancy food and fine wine; in our neck of the woods, the menu consisted of Miller Lite for the adults and sweet tea for the kids to drink and something like beanie-weenies, grilled cheese sandwiches, or spaghetti to eat.

Some of the blaring differences in our lifestyles were actually kind of funny, although probably much more so to us than to her.  Our two dogs, who lived outside, often got ticks on them, especially during the summer months.  We thought nothing of pulling off a big, juicy tick we'd found on one of the dogs; the first time I did that in front of her, she was oddly fascinated - apparently she had never even seen a picture of a tick before.  Here's the really funny kicker to that: a week or so later, we went out to eat at a restaurant with a salad bar, and my dad put sunflower seeds on top of his salad.  When Corinne saw the sunflower seeds, her eyes got really big, and she asked in half amazement/half horror, "You put ticks on your salad?"

"You put ticks on your salad??"

One responsibility that came as part of having Corinne there that fell mostly on my mother's shoulders was policing the practices of grooming and decency of dress, both of which were obviously different in our house than what Corinne was used to.  Mom figured out that the best way to address the problem was to make a blanket announcement to my sisters, Corinne, and me.  My sisters and I had to bite the insides of our cheeks to keep from smiling or laughing whenever Mom said things like, "All girls in the house must shower tonight ... be sure to shave your legs and use soap in the shower and put on deodorant afterwards."  The first time Mom told us to get our swimsuits on to go to the pool at the Tennis Club, Corinne emerged from the bedroom wearing a string bikini that consisted of about one square inch of material in total.  "Girls, let's all wear t-shirts over our swim suits so we don't get sunburned," Mom called out, quick with the reaction.  "OK, I'm used to sun all over," Corinne informed her.  "It's a strict rule at the club," Mom told her and handed her a t-shirt.

My family went to Biloxi, Mississippi, where my dad attended a business convention during the first week in August every year when I was growing up, and we did that year too, with Corinne in tow.  I remember the expression on Corinne's face when she first saw the beach there; I guess the Redneck Riviera didn't quite compare to the French one.  We had a blast, though, like we always did; we swam for probably at least ten hours a day there.  We were thrilled that the hotel where we stayed had a bar in the swimming pool, and Dad let us charge two Shirley Temples each per day to the hotel room.  By that time in the summer, Corinne had for some reason gravitated towards Nancy, who was about five years younger than she was, rather than towards Jennifer or me; Nancy entertained herself during that entire trip by pretending she could speak French and then telling Corinne to answer her back in "real French."  Quite entertaining, for us at least.

Don't get me wrong; we had fun that summer with Corinne there.  It's just that there's wasn't much, if any, of an exchange going on between her and us; pretty much all we learned about her country or her was that we were very different.  I wonder what she said about her experience as an exchange student when she went home; people probably thought she was exaggerating or fabricating when she told them about how we tanned on the roof of our house, drank water straight out of the hose, and ran around barefooted in the backyard all summer.  All in all, I guess it was an educational experience for her, although almost certainly nothing like the way she or her parents had intended for it to be, and for us, at least, it has provided many laughs over the years when we've thought back to the Summer of the Exchange Student.

Not So Much

I like to think of myself as a bit of a maverick of sorts, someone who is capable of being a badass, a person who could pick up a car to rescue somebody in an extreme situation, a person who would go all out to help someone who needed help.  I wonder if most people think that about themselves or if that's just me.   

Yesterday I had two opportunities to do something to help another person, and I don't think I could have predicted either time what my reaction ended up being.  

The first situation happened just after I'd gotten to the dog park with two of my dogs.  There's a basketball court over to one side of the fenced in off-leash area where dogs are allowed to run free while their owners supervise.  Probably because it was chilly and overcast outside, nobody else was in the fenced area when I got there, and, as I stood there watching my dogs do their initial sniff-and-discovery routine, I noticed a group of about a dozen teenagers standing in a disorganized-looking circle on the court.  A few of them were yelling, but I couldn't hear them enough to tell what they were saying.  The only girl in the group had a little video camera and appeared to be filming some sort of action.  I was curious about what she was doing, and so I walked a few yards over in the fenced in area so that I could have a clearer view of what they were looking at.  

It was a boy, on the ground, being punched by another boy who was on top of him.  I started to be able to make out the words that were being shouted by the kids who were watching; it was the usual jeering and goading associated with a brawl.  Just a second after I recognized what was going on, the boy on the ground scrambled to his feet and took off running towards the entrance of the fenced area.  As he ran past on the other side of the fence from where I was, I said, "Are you ok?"  Without breaking his stride, he quickly glanced in my direction, brought his hand up to wipe the blood and tears from his face, and quietly said, "Yeah."  I watched him run past to the opposite side of dog park and into the little concrete block building where the restrooms were.  

And then I saw two of the other teenagers break away from the group on the court and start walking towards the bathroom.  One of them was clenching and unclenching his fists.  

I already had my cell phone in my hand; I sometimes take pictures of my dogs playing at the dog park so I usually have it at-the-ready when I'm there.  As the boys walked across the parking lot, I dialed 9-1-1 and told the operator what I'd seen and that I was afraid the boys were going to follow the kid that had been beaten up into the bathroom and corner him.  

I considered using my teacher-voice and telling the boys to leave him alone.  I considered following them.  I considered taking my dogs back to my car and driving over to right in front of the little building and sitting on the horn to create a distraction.  But I didn't do any of those things.  I just stood there trying to calculate all the possible outcomes from each of my possible reactions; I was telling myself that the police would get there any second and that it didn't make sense for me to get so involved that I would be putting myself in danger.  

Luckily, I live in a town with a generally quick-response law enforcement reaction time, and as I stood there watching the boys approach the bathroom, a police car pulled up in the parking lot.  The officer saw me standing at the fence and rolled down his window.  I told him where the kids were, and he quickly drove his car over to the concrete building, parked, and swung open the entrance door to the bathroom, which the two boys had walked right past when they'd seen the officer's car approaching.  A minute later, the officer came out with the injured boy, who'd evidently cleaned himself up and had blood-tinged toilet paper stuffed up both of his nostrils.  Neither of them looked in my direction as they walked towards one of the little houses that was just across the street from the park to what I guessed what the boy's house.  

A minute later, a woman with a dog parked her car and came into the fenced area with her dog.  I told her what had happened and we talked about how glad we were that it hadn't been worse as we watched our dogs sniff and then chase each other around.

I was feeling pretty cowardly later as I considered my lack of real reaction, though, after I'd left the park.  I'm not sure what I wished I'd done; I know that I was realistically limited in what I could have/should have done.  But it still feels like I'm letting myself off the hook too easily, and it still sucks to realize that not one iota of badassness came forth from within me when it was needed. 

The second thing happened at the grocery store, which is where my bruised ego and I went after we dropped the dogs off at my house.  I did my shopping, waited in line, and was getting checked out, when a bag boy (I feel like that term isn't P.C. especially when said "boy" is actually a man older than I am, but I'm at a loss as to what other wording to use here.) came over and started sacking my groceries. He turned to the older guy (bag boy?) who'd been sacking and said, "I'm supposed to take over for you since it's your turn to go on break."  The old guy said, "OK. Did they tell you I have to go on break now or just that I could if I needed to?"  Before the first guy could answer, the checker said, "He doesn't know; he wouldn't know" in what I thought was a very condescending tone of voice.  I should add to this that the slightly younger sacker, whom I've seen in the store many times over the years, appears to have some sort of developmental disability; I, of course, don't know his diagnosis, but it's apparent that he has some special needs.  That said, though, OF COURSE he didn't deserve to be treated as if he were incompetent or anything else, for that matter.

If you know me, or maybe even if you don't, you can probably see where I'm going with this.  For some reason - maybe he hadn't heard her, or maybe, like me, he just couldn't believe the way she's said that - the older guy said, "What?" and the checker repeated her rude, inappropriate statement as if the younger checker couldn't hear her.  Just like at the park an hour earlier, a few different scenarios played out in my head over the course of the next few seconds.  The checker continued to scan things, and the stuff was piling up at the far end of the conveyer belt as the two bag boys just stood there, apparently waiting for someone else to say something.  "That's not very nice," I finally said to the checker, who didn't look up from scanning as she casually said, "Huh?"  "That's not nice; it's very disrespectful and rude to assume that you know what someone else knows or would know," I said, louder this time, and when she looked up I could see that she knew then what I was referring to.  She looked from me to the younger sacker and said, "I'm sorry; I don't know why I said that."  "Oh, that's ok," the guy said, with as much genuineness as I'd ever heard in a voice before.

And with that, I was left wonder as I paid for the groceries and rolled the cart towards my car in the parking lot: Was the younger sacker offended by what the checker had said? Was she really sorry?  Did she realize that what she had said to him was wrong?  Was the older guy just going to stand there and do nothing?  I guess it didn't matter, but in any case I was glad this time that I'd stood up for somebody - far from a badass move, but better than nothing, I guess.

                                               Not so much, I guess ...

Part 36 - ICU 2.0

Continued from Part 35

After a day of ups and downs, the oncologist made his final rounds before the three-day holiday weekend late in the afternoon.  He delivered a pep talk to Dad, who as usual “faked” how he was feeling in front of the doctor (“Doing great, Doc!”), and then the doctor asked us to step out into the hall with him.  I tagged along, and my sister stayed in the room with Dad. 

“I’ve heard from the nurses that he’s mentioned dying a few times,” the oncologist said, “and I just want to be sure before I leave for the weekend that you want the chart to reflect that you want ‘heroic measures’ to be taken should anything drastic happen.”  

Wow, I thought, as I looked at my mom in shock.  OF COURSE we want HEROIC MEASURES, I thought; we want a MIRACLE - we want him to be healthy again!  We want someone to be a hero the way Dad is to us, and if that takes ‘heroic measures,’ then so be it!

“What do YOU think?” Mom asked the doctor.

“At this point, I think he is still recovering from the infection, and I expect him to respond to the treatment for that, after which we can press on with the treatment for the cancer,” he said.  “So I would say we do not want a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate order] in place at this point, but I want to be sure you agree.”

“Yes, we agree,” Mom told him.  “We need more time.”  

Exactly, I thought, and we said goodbye to the oncologist and went back into Dad’s room.  

That evening, the night nurse (unfortunately not Meredith, who had the night off) administered two units of whole blood to Dad; as per the protocol, she gave him IV Benedryl beforehand, and as a result Dad slept soundly for the first part of the transfusion.  After that, though, he was very restless and talkative, although most of what he said was “mumbly,“ as we noted in the Notebook.  He had just gotten back to sleep at 3:45 a.m. when a phlebotomist (whom I referred to in the Notebook at “The Blood Bitch”) burst into the room, abruptly flipped on the ceiling light, and announced loudly that she needed to take blood.  As Dad stirred in the bed, I jumped up, turned the lights back off, and told B.B. that, unless the order had been specifically written for blood to be drawn at that exact time, she needed to come back later.  She retreated and returned again at 7 a.m.

The rest of that day, which was Christmas Eve Day, was a whirlwind of activity, disappointment, and stress for us.  We had quite a string of visitors that morning, and Dad seemed to get more disoriented and more distressed with each person who entered the room.  Shortly after the nurses’ change of shift, the stand-in-oncologist Dr. M came in to introduce himself.  He said that Dad would be getting a transfusion of platelets that day and that he was increasing the insulin dosage due to the increasing blood sugar numbers that had been noted over the past 24 hours.  

Next was a visit from the Physical Therapist, who tried to help Dad turn onto his side in the bed.  It seemed like every movement was not only exhausting but also excruciatingly painful for him, and, after a couple of minutes of listening to and watching Dad groan and grimace in pain, she said, “I want to get him sitting up at the edge of the bed again, but I’m concerned that doing so will agitate him for several hours.”  Looking at the anguish on Dad’s face, Mom asked the P.T. to come back later, and the P.T. agreed to check back that afternoon.

Next through our revolving door was a volunteer with a therapy dog.  Like the rest of my family, Dad loved animals, but he seemed totally disinterested in interacting with this dog, even turning his head away when the volunteer asked if he wanted to pet the dog.  “Thank you anyway, but I really just want to see my own dogs and my cat,” he told her.  

Things continued to spiral downward, with Dad becoming more miserable and with his condition becoming more perilous as the day progressed.  When the nurse started to give Dad a sponge bath, he yelled, “I know you don’t mean to, but you’re really hurting me!  Can’t I please just skip this?”  A little while later, in preparation for the platelet transfusion, she brought in the Benedryl, and two minutes later Dad was snoozing, even sleeping through a shot of 15 units of insulin, which, due to the alarmingly high blood sugar reading, was much larger than the 6 units he had been getting.

Not long after the platelets had been administered, Dad’s blood pressure and blood sugar levels started climbing so rapidly that the decision was made by the stand-in oncologist to transfer him to the ICU.  “There’s just way too much going on with him,” the nurse commented, and, terrified, we agreed.  As the arrangements were being made for the transfer, Dad started hallucinating; he seemed less in pain and more confused and in his own world, which frightened us even more.

Because of the skeletal holiday staffing, the Neuro-ICU was closed, and Dad was assigned to the Cardiac-ICU, or the “CCU.”  When we got the word that we were moving, we hurriedly gathered up our belongings, and Mom pushed a cart with our stuff on it as I speed-walked alongside Dad in the bed, which was rolled down several long hallways by the nurse and a transport aide.  I was worried that the movement of the bed would hurt Dad, but instead he called out “Whee!” each time the bed was rolled across a bump on the floor along the way.  

As soon as we got to the little glassed-in room on the unit, Dad was taken back out for another CT scan ordered by the oncologist due of his worsening condition.  As per the results of the scan a few days before, again no signs of bleeding or inflammation in the brain were seen, which seemed like good news but - with the improvement of his blood count - instead left everyone wondering as to what was going on and what should be done next.  

Up next … Part 37 – The Fight