It Might Get Messy

Thinking back over my life, just what, I inquire, has been my proudest accomplishment as a parent? The answer is simple and clear: raised 3 children and never visited a theme park. This is a real conversation stopper at parties—people seem to equate this ellipsis [correct word?] with child abuse. We get almost as many shocked looks as we used to get in supermarkets when one of the kids was jealous of another and we would tell said child that we loved child B more than child A so child A might as well clam up.

However. Just because I didn’t drag the kids around expensive real estate populated by actors in talking rodent suits doesn’t mean I didn’t work in such an establishment in my younger days.

Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat in West Milford, New Jersey (you got there by making a left onto the park access drive just before the A&W root beer stand at the “Y” on the Greenwood Lake Road) was an odd (and ultimately unsuccessful) enterprise in which happy vacationers drove through a series of enclosures holding a variety of showy exotic wildlife in a carefully manicured version of the Upland Hardwood Forest that used to cover this landscape [1]. 

I learned a lot while I worked there. For instance, if you carried a garden rake when you walked past the pen holding the baby white rhinoceroses (is that really the plural of rhinoceros? Looks awful clumsy…), they would squeal with pleasure and run to you to get their backs scratched as hard as you could scrape the sharp metal across their very thick hide. I also learned that dromedary camels are generally unpleasant and are likely to bite at the slightest…or even no…provocation. And that electrified fences and massive guard dogs are insufficient constraints to hold a couple dozen baboons under any circumstances.

Anyway. My job had nothing to do with the livestock. I was the Chief Garbage Man for one summer (the opening year, in fact), in charge of a crew tasked with keeping the trash cans empty and the rest rooms clean. Neither of which was as simple as it sounds. It turns out the park designers grossly underspecified the number of both needed to handle the daily visitor load. It took us a while to sort out tricks to keep things at least moderately sanitary. And, in fact, women’s sanitary products were our most difficult challenge. The primary rest room in the cantonment area (snack bar, souvenir stand, etc.) tended to accumulate them in heaps unless we could get staff in every half hour or so. Which we seldom did.

Despite technical difficulties, it wasn’t a bad summer job. Certainly beat packing books for shipment or loading and unloading trucks in the warehouses jammed along Route 3 in Totowa. My last day of work, a bunch of us hung out long after the park closed, drinking Mateus Rose (cheap Portuguese sweet wine, for those of you too young to remember the cute little rotund bottle) and imitating the animal sounds for most of the night. All things considered, I’m still surprised that we didn’t attempt to enter the lion enclosure or tease the baboons into a homicidal rage.

WARNING: WHAT FOLLOWS IS REALISTICALLY HONEST AND THEREFORE DISGUSTING. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.

And why, I hear you inquiring, am I regaling you with summer job tales here in this cancer diary? Because having a lingering, chronic, terminal illness comes with a tremendous waste-management challenge. One that makes snowdrifts of blood-splotched feminine hygiene products look antiseptically sanitary in comparison. For one thing, both the disease (cancer of the cells that make up the mucous membranes of my lungs and pleural cavity) and its treatments (destructively massive doses of radiation and barely sublethal concentrations of chemotherapy drugs) cause constant “weeping” of mucous that has to be mopped up with paper towels and discarded somewhere the dog can’t dig them out. Then there is the episodic bleeding, which is a similar, if more colorful, problem. And these bodily exudates invariably reach more than paper towels. Clothes, for example. And bedding. Stuff that has to be washed more or less frequently. 

Then there is the issue of various liquids needed to survive. Surrounding my sick bed are tables holding liquid food, beakers of water, bottles of Gatorade, and cans of decaf coke, all begging to be knocked over onto the floor or (more traumatically) carpet. Plus, toileting is an issue. When the chemotherapy toxins rendered me unable to walk steadily enough to reach the bathroom overnight, I had to use hospital-style bed urinals. Which also need to be emptied frequently. And then there are the inner workings of the tracheostomy hardware. These little tubes fill with mucous over time, and need to be changed out. I keep a dish of half water/half hydrogen peroxide handy, and swap out four of the cannulae as needed. When the fourth gets too clogged to allow breathing, the entire enterprise has to be hauled to the sink for cleaning and refilling. 

Anyway, you get the picture. Cancer is not only “not pretty” in a metaphorical sense, it is quite literally not pretty. It is also, by the intricate nature of its logistical demands (i.e., feeding, cleaning), inherently harder on the caregiver than the victim. Cathy has been uncomplainingly handling my mess for years now. And we finally got a nurse, but it turns out she’s not here to help out with general sickness items. She actually adds to it. She showed Cathy how to access my medical port so that I can be given intravenous fluids at home instead of at the hospital 40 minutes away. 

So there you have it. Cancer is icky. Perhaps not unexpectedly so. I suppose it could be worse. As indeed it could have been at Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat. Several elephants were among the animal collection. I have a feeling that cleaning up after them would make changing garbage bags seem like a dream vacation. 

References

[1] Interesting information and reminiscences at http://weirdnj.com/stories/abandoned/jungle-habitat/