In part two of this episode, we’ll hear two more stories about adapting to a new normal. Our first story is from bestselling author and champion storyteller Matthew Dicks. When life becomes monotonous during quarantine, Matthew searches for a new experience.
In our second story, veterinarian Lauren Adelman struggles to connect with her patients' families due to her clinic’s COVID-19 restrictions.
Story Transcripts
Story 1: Matthew Dicks
Matthew Dicks on stage in less socially distanced times. Matthew is a 49-time Moth StorySLAM and 6-time GrandSLAM champion whose stories have been featured on The Moth Radio Hour and This American Life.
I'm standing at the end of my driveway. I'm staring at a text message on my phone, except it's not a text message from a human being. It's a text message from a machine. It's actually a text message from my phone to my phone.
It reads, “Warning: Possible thunderstorms in the area in 20 minutes.”
It comes from an app called MyRadar. It's an app that's used by golfers and cyclists and hikers, people who need to know when the weather is going to suddenly change. I have a complex relationship with this app based upon its inability to be certain about anything. Every forecast is attached to the word ‘possible’ meaning that I can sort of overlay my own interpretation on this forecast based upon what I need in a particular moment.
So if it's midnight and my wife and I are watching a horror movie and I get an alert that says ‘possible thunderstorm in the next 15 minutes’ I assume of course there's going to be a thunderstorm because if it starts to lightning and thunder, that will enhance our viewing pleasure.
But if I'm on the 17th hole of the golf course having the round of my life and the app warns me that a thunderstorm or a tornado might strike in the next three minutes, I assume that's possible. Probably not going to happen. I got to finish this round.
And up until this point in my life, the app and I have been copacetic, like it's always worked. It seems like whatever interpretation I decide to have, the universe seems to apply that interpretation and everything worked out well. And I need that to happen today. I need there to be no thunderstorms today.
Because today is Day 74 of the pandemic. It is day 74 of lockdown. It is Day 74 of the same four people living in the same house, staring at the same four walls, and I just can't take it anymore.
Every day is like the last day and nothing ever changes. Noon time rolls around and my children say, “Can we have lunch,” and I think, “Again? We’re going to do lunch again? I'm going to just make lunch every day now for you forever?”
Matthew Dicks, behind the wheel. Matthew is an award winning elementary school teacher, columnist, and internationally bestselling author of several novels, as well as the nonfiction title Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling.
I know that there were times before the coronavirus when I did make them lunch but there were also cafeteria workers and restaurant workers and relatives who would occasionally prepare a meal for these people, but it's just me every day. And the things they eat are always the same. It's chicken nuggets or grilled cheese. It's just lunch for the rest of my life with these people and I need something different.
I need there to be no thunderstorm today because today, now, I'm going on a bike ride. It is my one moment every day when I get to see new things in the world. And I don't need much. I can discover a previously undiscovered cul-de-sac three miles from my house and that is joyous. I will ride around that circle. I will stare at the house. I'll look at new flower beds. I'll look at their mailboxes. Anything to see something new.
A few weeks ago, I rode my bike behind the grocery store and I saw these four guys unloading a truck and I just stopped and watched. It’s better than anything that there was on Netflix because it was different than all the stuff I had been watching, so I just stared at these men doing their jobs.
A couple weeks ago I was riding behind my son's elementary school when I noticed on the far corner of the soccer field next to the porta-potty there were two cases of Coors Light stacked up against each other. And so I rode over to the porta-potty to figure out what the hell was going on.
As I got close, the door flew open and a man stepped out of the porta‑potty. He looked at me and he smiled and I smiled back, sort of that recognition that, “Oh, you exist. Like there are other people out here in the world.”
And we nodded each other and then he bent over, he picked up the cases of Coors Light and he just started walking down the path. It was nothing. It was just a man and a porta-potty and Coors Light, but in the land of coronavirus it was amazing.
The fateful porta potty.
I rode home. I told my wife about the porta-potty and the man and the Coors Light. I called my friends. It was like the most exciting thing that had happened to me in days. And so I need there to be no thunderstorms. I need this bike ride to work for me.
And it's sunny. There's not a cloud in the sky. The app is wrong. I'm going for my ride.
So I get on my bike and I head down my street. I turn right onto Main Street. And as I do, the horizon sort of opens up for me and I can see to the west. I can see thunderheads, dark, ominous clouds. The app has the forecast right but the timing wrong because they are way, way away. It's going to be a long time before this storm ever gets to me.
But just to sort of hedge my bets, when I get to the next intersection, I shift to the other side of the road. I decide to put 18 extra feet between me and the thunderstorm just in case something happens.
But it turns out the app was wrong. There was no thunderstorm in the next 20 minutes. It arrives in 16. When that thunderstorm arrives, it arrives as if it had been communicating with my app the whole time. The app was saying to the thunderstorm, “Look, I told this guy that you were coming and he ignored all of my warning so let him have it.”
Because this thunderstorm lets me have it. There is no tuft of wind and drizzle and light rain. It is just instantaneous hellscape. It is it is sheets of rain and thunder and legitimate lightning that lights up the sky. It is terrifying. It is one of the worst thunderstorms I've ever been in my life and I'm on a bike two miles from my house.
When I turn and I start to head for home, I can't even look up. The rain is coming down so hard I need to put my head down and hope I don't run into anything.
When I finally get home and I sort of stumble into the house, I go upstairs to take a shower. It doesn't really make any sense. I'm already soaked but somehow like getting the rain water off and replacing it with pipe water feels right.
So I open the shower, and when I'm done in the shower I step out and I realize something has changed. It's very strange. I walk into my bedroom, look out the window and the sky is blue again. The sun is out again. That thunderstorm is gone.
So I look at my phone again. I see that I have 30 minutes before I have to get back to work, so I call to my wife and I say I'm going to go finish my ride.
So I get back on my bike. I head out again. I'm about a mile from my house when the ice starts falling from the sky. It's crazy. Enormous, fist-sized chunks of ice start falling from the sky on top of me. The sky is blue. The sun is out. There is one black cloud in the sky. It is over my head and it is dumping ice onto the world, so much that the lawns are turning white. The cars on the road are starting to pull over because they can't drive through this hail.
I'm getting pelted so I dive beneath the pine tree. I hug the trunk of the tree and keep my head down to keep from getting hurt.
There's a woman with a with a stopped car sort of right across the lawn, maybe 20 feet from me. She rolls her window down and she shouts, “Are you okay?”
I say yes but I mean what would happen if I wasn't? I can't get in the car. We're in the middle of a pandemic. We're sort of all trapped together but alone.
So I hug this tree. I take my phone out again. I text my wife. I say, “Honey, you're not going to believe this. Now it's hailing.”
And she texts back and says, “No, I believe it because it's hailing here too.”
Post-storm sky.
It's 10 minutes under that tree as the ice falls from the sky when it finally ends and the world is like white. I decide this is enough. I'm going home. This is the end of my bike ride.
So I get back on my bike. I head down the street. I take a left up a hill to head home and I see at the top of the hill, stretching from horizon to horizon, a rainbow. This beautiful, colorful, amazing rainbow.
The next day I'm playing socially distant golf with my buddies, which is very easy for me based upon the way I play. They hit their ball far and straight and I am always off to the right and in the wood. I never come close to any of them. But when we finally get to that first green and we're putting, I tell my friend Jeff what happened yesterday. I tell him about the thunder and the lightning and the hail and then the rainbow.
And he says, “I get it. I get it.” He says, “The thunder and the lightning and the hail they all made the rainbow worth it, right?”
And I say, “No.” I say, “Rainbows suck.”
Rainbows are a dime a dozen. I have probably seen 500 rainbows over the course of my life, and forgotten almost all of them. But yesterday, while I was on my bike, in the middle of an otherwise sunny day, enormous chunks of ice fell from the sky and I dove under a pine tree to save my life.
And in the land of coronavirus, when days bleed into days and every day seems like the last, that hail storm was something. I got to have a day in my life that I will never forget for the rest of my life. And in the midst of this pandemic, those days are very hard to come by. Unless there has been illness or job loss or death, every day is just kind of like the last.
But on that day, I get to get hit by ice and hide under a pine tree and have a moment that was different than anything I had ever had before. And in the land of coronavirus, different, it turns out, is always better. Thank you.
Story 2: Lauren Adelman
I want to tell you about my patient Freya, an eight-year-old Great Dane whose kidney disease I had been treating for several months. Freya had already survived cancer and had been through at least two major surgeries before she even landed in my care.
Lauren Adelman currently practices as an internal medicine specialist at Canada West Veterinary Specialists in Vancouver. She has a special interest in endoscopic and minimally invasive procedures for dogs and cats.
Last year, Freya acutely decompensated. She wasn't eating, she could barely get up, and her dads brought her in to the hospital knowing that, after months of fighting, it was finally time to say goodbye.
When they arrived, they were taken to our dedicated comfort room. Picture a dimly-lit, private, quiet, cozy space with couches and blankets where the owners can spend their last remaining moments with their pet.
I went in and sat down on the ground next to them and went through the entire process of euthanasia. While I talked to them, I'm comforting them by holding their hands and tears are already filling my eyes. I tell them to take as much time as they need and that there's no rush. There's a phone inside the room they can use to call us when they're ready.
After about 45 minutes, I got the call. I went back in, I sat down next to them. I gave Freya the injections one after the other, listened to her heart which was no longer beating.
I put my stethoscope down and touched both of them, letting them know that she was gone. I cried with them knowing that I did the best thing I could for her but also sad that there wasn't more I could offer to keep her here longer.
I leaned forward and gave her a kiss, staying with her body while her owners left.
I've been through the same process with hundreds of other patients over the past eight years. Unfortunately death and euthanasia are an inherent part of my job as a veterinarian. Sometimes, hospitalized patients rapidly decline and pass naturally, but in the vast majority of cases, humane euthanasia is a decision that needs to be made.
I always tell my owners there's a reason we call it humane euthanasia and that's because it allows their pet to pass peacefully with as minimal suffering as possible. Sometimes it's the best thing we can do for our pets or, as most people consider them, our children.
I pride myself on being a compassionate veterinarian and I really think end of life is one of those areas where we as vets can make the most impact. Euthanasia is a deeply emotional experience that I feel so privileged to share with my clients.
Then the pandemic hit. As an essential worker, I continued with my day-to-day grind and although during the first couple weeks it was pretty quiet as people were staying home and scared, to be honest, since April there's been an exponential rise in the number of cases veterinarians are seeing. More and more people are adopting pets and are staying home with their animals. I'm overworked and exhausted.
We've also had to make changes and adapt like many other people. And one of the most significant changes we have taken is to not allow owners into the building. All my patients are handed over using a contact-free system at the door and any subsequent communication I do with them is either over the phone or on Zoom.
And I know you might be thinking, wow, that's every vet's dream. To deal with the animals and not the humans, right? And while sometimes I do admit this may be the case, the vast majority of the time, I honestly hate it.
Hands down the most challenging aspect of the pandemic for me has been how it affects the process of humane euthanasia. In May I had a five-month-old bulldog hospitalized named Leahy, and he had been hospitalized for the previous week for kidney failure secondary to a condition called renal dysplasia where the kidneys don't form properly.
Lauren was raised in Calgary, Alberta, where she completed her doctor of veterinary medicine degree before completing a residency in small animal internal medicine at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
I had never met the owner as this was a new case that had been transferred directly to me from the emergency service. I spoke to her at least twice a day for the week prior but never met her in person. She sounded young, maybe in her 20s or 30s like me, and was extremely committed to Leahy's care. If I ever suggested any diagnostic, she was always quick to consent.
I grew really attached to Leahy during the week he was hospitalized, giving him extra TLC knowing that his mom couldn't come visit him as we would normally allow. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to try and save him, Leahy could not overcome his illness. His kidney values continued to climb. He was nauseous, vomiting, refusing food and he was weak and lethargic. It was clear his quality of life was suffering and the only thing I could do to help him was to end his suffering.
The owner was obviously devastated but agreed that it was time. She arrived about an hour later with her boyfriend and another male friend. Because the comfort room is inside the hospital, we've created this temporary tent outside where euthanasias are now performed. It's located in this patch of grass in the back where we typically walk our dogs when they're hospitalized.
And we've done our best to make it as private as and comforting as possible. There's blankets, there's chairs in there, but at the end of the day, it's really just a sterile looking white tent outside that we have to use no matter what the weather is.
My assistant went out donned in full PPE. She went to meet them. She took them around back and she went over all the logistics, including care of remains and collected payment ahead of time.
When all this was done, I myself got into full PPE, and that included a gown, gloves, mask and goggles and I went to the ICU to pick up Leahy and walked him outside to the tent. This was the first time I was meeting his family and this was the first time they were seeing their dog in over a week.
I went inside noting that all three of them already had puffy eyes and the primary owner, the woman who I'd been talking to for the past week already had tears streaming down her face. She was sitting in one of the chairs and the other two men were standing.
I felt uncomfortable. I couldn't sit on the ground with them like I usually would. I couldn't hug her. I couldn't tell her how sorry I was. I stood in the middle of the tent, two meters away from them and explained the euthanasia process as I had so many times before.
Leahy was sitting on a metal gurney covered with blankets about halfway between us. We weren't even at eye level. It felt cold, like I was there to provide a service but not experience it with them.
Since there was no phone for them to call me inside the tent, time was limited. I told them I would give them a few minutes and would be waiting outside the tent when they were ready.
Lauren, with a patient.
I stood outside on the grass listening to their sobs and waited. I felt awkward, like I was invading their private moment, but couldn't walk away. It felt wrong not to give them all the time in the world to say goodbye. After about 10 minutes, they unzipped the tent and told me they were ready.
I went back inside. I could barely see a thing because my glasses were scratched to shit and kept fogging up. I grabbed the two syringes and we positioned Leahy so that I could give the injections without being too close to the owners. I began injecting the first and then the second syringe. I couldn't touch or comfort the owners as I normally would have. It felt sterile and it felt wrong.
I ripped off my glasses, which was technically against protocol, because at the very least I wanted to be able to look her in the eyes. She looked back. I told her she was making the right decision and it was going to be okay. We were helping him. I hope she took comfort in that.
After the euthanasia, I stepped back to create more distance between us. I could not hug them or hold their hands. They exited the tent and the female owner just fell to the ground and stopped. I told her how sorry I was and that she should know she did everything possible to save him and he was so lucky to have her as a mom, but my words didn't feel the same. I stayed in the tent with Leahy’s body and I waited until she had left the premise.
That night I went home and cried. I felt like I had failed as a veterinarian in my inability to comfort and support this family as I would usually do. This was not what I had signed up for. I knew I took the necessary precautions but that didn't make it any easier and it wasn't fair that this is what was expected of me right now.
Since this first experience, I have performed several more euthanasias in the tent. It's still not ideal but I have adapted. I use a face shield now instead of glasses, which are easier to see through and they don't fog up. I've grown accustomed to a new way of life as a veterinarian. I've realized that I'm doing the best I can given the circumstance and I really am still doing what matters most, which is providing my patients with the most humane passing possible and being there for the owners in the best way that I can.
If I've learned anything from this pandemic, it's how much I value the bond and relationship that I get to create with my owners. I may have gone into this profession for my love of animals, but I think at the end of the day, I love my owners too and I long for the day when I can hug them again.