Category Archives: health and wellness

BEDSIDE.

healing, health and wellness, love, social commentary, sociology, tributes, Uncategorized

 

When Andrew Rainbow isn’t conducting, arranging, playing piano, or directing the pit orchestra for the Erie Playhouse, Andrew Rainbow is a nurse – for a team of cardiologists. Decades running, Barb McCall, who raised two, strapping drummers, has been a nurse – in a hospital burn unit. My sister in law, Linda Barnes Scanzillo, mother to five wonderful sons and, herself raised in Nairobi the child of a missionary to Kenya, is a nurse – on a church campground. Jean Claar Bassett, wife to a mitochondrial disease researcher, is a nurse. My student, Allisandra, percussionist and budding cellist, is a nurse – in a hospital ICU. Nadine’s father, Jay Sherman, is a nurse – in critical cardio care. Marian’s husband, Kerry Byard, is a nurse. My boyfriend, who shall remain anonymous, is a nurse – in dialysis and ICU. These are RNs – registered, trained, and committed people.

Throughout my life, I have been known to challenge nurses, to make their lives difficult – asking obscure medical questions, behaving in an arrogant and sometimes defiant manner, me with my “patient-centered” approach to my own healthcare. When mom was dying, there were nurses assigned to her care who did not know how to operate the chemo infusion machines. These were those who, overworked and understaffed, challenged me – as I sat bedside for seven, 24 hour days with her.

There were also nurses, on my mother’s floor, who were assigned to run the entire wing alone – and, who still had time to talk with me and answer questions. There were nurses in the ER who monitored me during near-anaphylaxis allergic reactions. And, there were nurses who cared for my father in a loving and dedicated way, those who came to the house, and those who served him in both hospital and nursing home who, even with their mound of paperwork, had time to spend bedside. And, there were nurses who worked for Hospice, who traveled all the way into town from the outlying county to treat mom in the middle of the night.

For the past twenty five years in Erie County, PA there has been a shortage of nurses, particularly for bedside care. If you know anybody training to be one, currently working, or retired from the profession, please honor these this week. The medical profession, especially surgeons, would be nowhere and nothing without them, and sick people need them every day.

NATIONAL NURSES WEEK — MAY 6 – 13.

 

 

 

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo 5/9/17    littlebarefeetblog.com

 

Mrs. Diehl.

arts education, brain research, classical music, drama, grief, health and wellness, performance, psychology, sociology, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

*Author’s note: This piece was originally written on April 4, 2017, the day Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong died in prison.

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Erie, Pennsylvania has been straining, lately.

The Commonwealth is being alarmingly recalcitrant about sending sufficient funds all the way to its northwest corner, as if defying the entropic forces that pull all assets toward the valley is just too much effort, too much of a threat to the homeostasis of those driven to entrench an already archaic class war; as a result, the School District of the City of Erie is in total crisis – closing all but one of the public high schools, losing five thousand students with only the scent of enough loaves and fishes to feed those who remain.

Even the contingent of otherwise-safely retired teachers bite their nails, wondering if the time will come when somebody decides to dip into their rightful, guaranteed pensions, that portion of their salary which they deferred for twenty five to forty interminable years on the promise of that very guarantee.

Mrs. Agnes Diehl doesn’t have to think about any of this. She’s long been dead.

Her daughter, however, just passed away. Today Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong’s life ended in federal prison – her body succumbing to cancer, the disease which often overtakes those who are otherwise hopeless.

Marjorie, a troubled child taken in and adopted by the Diehl family, as accomplice to what would become the stuff of national tabloid news had managed to cap her life in Erie by participating in the most bizarre crime in the city’s history: the case of the “Pizza bomber.” Details of the morbid scenario, featured on DATELINE NBC this past Friday evening, included a frozen body, a bank robbery, and an innocent delivery man whose life came to an end in that bank parking lot in the blazing sun, the bomb strapped to his neck exploding in front of an entire flank of helpless law enforcement officers and medical personnel.

But, Mrs. Diehl had lived a generation before.

She first appeared at Lincoln Elementary School, as a substitute teacher. In those days, substitute teachers paid their dues, and those dues were sure to be rewarded; show up enough times to cover the random classroom, and the offer of a secure, full time position was assured.

It was customary, during the 1960’s, to begin the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance and a silent prayer. But, if the teacher played the piano, there would also be a song. And, this is why I loved Mrs. Diehl.

I first saw her seated at the upright grand piano against the wall, which ran parallel to the teacher’s desk in virtually every classroom at school. She wore perhaps a dark green Chanel styled suit – boxed jacket, small lapels, simple sheath skirt; on another day, a dark blue and black plaid shirtwaist, its full, pleated fabric draping the piano bench. Her lipstick was scarlet, and her hair raven black, classically curled around her ears and neck with the dramatic upward swoop over the forehead which marked a woman of real class who’d come of age in the 1940’s.

Well before any of us entered the room in the morning, Mrs. Diehl would already be playing that piano. Full on, with the grandest of gesture, her arms arching and diving from bass to treble, the strains of “America the Beautiful” resounded like a cross between a rousing march and a triumphant anthem. There was nothing, absolutely nothing rudimentary about this woman or the music she made, and the result was utterly infectious. Had we slept restlessly the night before, or endured the screechings of a “We Can Do It”, post-wartime mother frantic to get her children off to school so she could get to the machine shop without being late, the sound of Mrs. Diehl at the piano dispelled any and all angst of such a hyperventilating morning with one, windswept burst of song.

Furthermore, after we had stood to Pledge, to pray, to sing, and to dutifully be seated, Mrs. Diehl would continue to play. And, for myself, a budding young musical student already being chauffeured off to the Erie School of Music every Thursday at 4:00pm for my own piano lesson, I was deeply transfixed – listening, watching.

Several minutes would pass, as Mrs. Diehl, never once making eye contact with any of us, her countenance intently introverted by her voluminous musical mind, played song after song. She would become my first true model of performance, giving herself totally to the enterprise, instinctively knowing and manifesting the inherent value of the music itself.

Other cultures on this planet also know the intrinsic value of the musical art. They make certain to include music and music related activities in as much as 50% or more of their student curriculum. And, research scientists who devote their efforts to the study of the human mind and the brain which drives it are consistently putting out data in support of the multi-level value of music as both a discipline and art form. Now, there is enough evidence to defy all detractors; those who make music, and specifically those who play the piano, have some of the most highly developed brains on the human spectrum.

Mrs. Diehl may have been a superior musician, but she was also a woman of compassion. No one knows for sure how or why she adopted the girl who was called Marjorie. But, she did. Yet, just as every human is capable of both strength and profound weakness, of confident stride and defiant misstep, Marjorie made a rocky pattern out of her life and became submerged beyond the point of return.

Mrs. Diehl did not live to see the culmination of her daughter’s actions, a blessing indeed; diagnosed with mental illness, Marjorie very likely did not receive the benefit of music therapy in her lifetime and, in the end, even her mother could not alter the behavior potential of a starling child, though she had made the effort of a lifetime.

But, Mrs. Diehl did contribute to the nurture of hundreds and hundreds of Erie’s children, mentoring other teachers as well, and is remembered by many as a remarkable educator. She also left distinctive, inspiring musical renderings in the minds and hearts of everyone who entered her classroom.

Lest the community of Erie and those who view it from afar regard the story of Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong as a tragic stain, a moment of honor is due her mother, whose efforts painted an elegant, graceful picture of enduring nourishment. Perhaps her story, and those of Erie’s best teaching professionals, should be celebrated instead.

Our hometown could use just such recognition and encouragement.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo  4/4/17; updated 10/18       Thank you for your respect for those whose story this is.

littlebarefeetblog.com

Pittsburgh.

civic commentary, drama, greeting, health and wellness, slum culture, social commentary, sociology, Uncategorized, vacation destinations, , , , , , , 
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Tomorrow morning, unless a magical window of escape beckons before me otherwise, I am slated to appear in Pittsburgh, PA for a dentist appointment.

Along with its many and varied cultural offerings, Pittsburgh houses the national president of holistic dentistry. And, I have a hot root canal, poised to wreak its systemic havoc via the lymphatic channels of my unsuspecting body.

But, there is no havoc wreaked on the mind or body in breadth or scope quite like a trip to Pittsburgh.

The rest of the Commonwealth, at least at the northwest end, is easily accessible. The city where I live was laid out, port to its companion Great Lake, in a logical, “Philadelphia” style grid; everywhere we want or need to go is well within a solid ten minutes of commute in any direction. And, this is all accomplished simply by turning either right, or left, and proceeding in a straight line.

One wonders if the developers, who transformed Pittsburgh a couple decades ago from a smelly steel town into a hip and swanky hang for the wealthy and sophisticated, even cared if anybody ever came to visit.

The freeway lay as a driver approaches the metropolitan area is, simply put, foreboding. In an effort to escape the narrow streets and steep hills of its established neighborhoods, multiple steel reinforced layers of looping concrete envelope the entire landscape. Add to this an equal number of routes marked One Way, and you have a recipe for the Race to No Place. And, you get there in a far bigger hurry than you could possibly anticipate.

A couple years ago, I went my way down into that pit to search out a Steinway piano sale. The shop was situated on a narrow side avenue, across a bridge and between two hills that curved and diverged into infinity. The proprietor, a surgeon, was dispensing with all of his high end pianos because, he said, the location of the sales room drew few potential buyers and made deliveries difficult. Well, hello.

When I finally found the place, he was standing on the corner with his cell phone, directing me into the appropriate parking lot. Had the weather been pouring rain I would still be circling that block, two full years hence.

Historically, were the freight routes, bearing their loads of steel on large flatbeds, capable of being negotiated to and from the mills and refineries? If so, why are mere automated vehicles forced into this maze of intimidating, multi-lane, endlessly branching, suddenly exiting ramps and roller coasters?

There’s a trend in American civil engineering. Perhaps it receives its cue from the cardiac surgery industry. Take an existing ghetto, populated by the intractably impoverished, and build a cement bypass around it; take multiple slums, and build a whole tree of these. Get everybody to camp out at full speed for twenty nine minutes, just to be sure they never see how the other half lives, and hope they all arrive at your destination station without collateral damage.

I know one thing. No dental diversion will force me into a street marked Wrong Way, coasting to a stop just to stare balefully at the place where I am trying to go, its building fully visible from across the river. If the computerized voice on my GPS tracker can’t get me there, I’m not going.

And, Pittsburgh, you can bet that, next time, I’ll be inviting that dentist to move to Erie.

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© Ruth Ann Scanzillo    12/12/16        All rights those of the insulated resident of Northwestern PA content to live where there are eleven public beaches and total access to everything a human wants or needs, the author. Thank you for coming.

littlebarefeetblog.com