Episode 63
No Brain Space Because Kidney Poitier Is Stealing It All
This is what happens when your brain runs out of RAM.
Hi, I'm Lauren Howard (you can call me L2) and this is my podcast Different, Not Broken - which is about exactly that.
My mom is in the hospital. Again.
My kids are at camp for the first time ever.
My co-worker Vanessa's grandmother fell.
Kyle's eye is still a thing.
And I have exactly zero bandwidth left for anything — including, apparently, remembering that not everyone knows my mom's transplanted kidney's nickname.
The nephrologist found out the hard way. He's fine. Kidney Poitier is fine. I am questionable.
In this episode, I tell you about the nurse who pretended she needed help from my mom — a former phlebotomist — just to get her brain working and make her feel useful in that hospital bed.
I ugly-cried a little on the inside.
Then I talk about the moment my filter completely abandoned me mid-conversation with a medical professional.
And then Alison brings us a Small Talk question from Opal in Georgia, who's been close with her best friend for 26 years and is starting to feel like she gives more than she gets.
Brain full. Filter gone. Heart kind of full, too. Let's get into it.
New episodes every Wednesday. Find them all at differentnobrokenpodcast.com.
Transcript
So last week, Kyle had his eye thing
Speaker:that was like over two weeks. My kid got a bug bite on her face
Speaker:that got infected. And it was like half of her face and she looked like
Speaker:half a chipmunk. My mom came home from her trip and basically
Speaker:almost immediately went to the emergency room. Cause she was sick as a dog.
Speaker:And then I left the emergency room after they transferred her to another
Speaker:hospital and was back less than 12 hours later
Speaker:with Nessie. That was another experience altogether.
Speaker:And then my mom's been in the hospital the whole time. Ness was out of
Speaker:work for five days for
Speaker:just basically being a woman. Bullshit like that. She came back to
Speaker:work yesterday. Last night her grandmother fell. She lives with her
Speaker:grandmother, broke her leg, which is the other leg from the one
Speaker:she broke a year or two ago. Oh, and my kids are in camp this
Speaker:week. My kids who do not leave my house, they leave my house. But like,
Speaker:only with us, who have never been away from us, literally ever
Speaker:unsupervised. Unless it's by like Kyle's mom or
Speaker:Vanessa. That's it. They're in camp this week. So not only am I like running
Speaker:back and forth to the hospital, which is 30 minutes away, I also
Speaker:have to have my kids to camp by 8am, which is not a problem.
Speaker:And then somebody has to pick them up at 3:30 every day. So this is
Speaker:three. Three things I have to do every
Speaker:day. Three things that I have to like, keep in my brain that
Speaker:I have to find time to do every day. And if I have one thing,
Speaker:I'm useless the whole day. So poor Vanessa last
Speaker:night texted me and was like, my grandmother fell. And I did the appropriate thing.
Speaker:I did the right thing. And I was like, oh, no, that's not good. What
Speaker:does she need? And she told me. And then after that I was like,
Speaker:but she's at the hospital. And she's like, yeah, the ambulance is coming to get
Speaker:her. And I was like, cool. Your family's there? Yeah, everybody's here. You guys have
Speaker:everything you need? Yeah. Cool. Turn off. Brain is full.
Speaker:No space. We have no space. And then this morning, Kyle was like, have you
Speaker:heard from Vanessa? And I was like, maybe. She probably texted me. He was
Speaker:like, did you want to check? And I was like, maybe. And then he took
Speaker:over from there because he was like, you're not going to process any of this
Speaker:information, are you? And I was like, nope, nope, Nothing. Nope.
Speaker:So both fortunately and unfortunately, I say fortunately, not that I want my
Speaker:mother to be in the hospital, but fortunately, in that this is where she needs
Speaker:to. To be right now. She's sick. I'm glad that we were able to get
Speaker:her into the right place to get well.
Speaker:Obviously, nobody wants to be in the hospital, but it's definitely where she needs to
Speaker:be right now. So, unfortunately, she is sick.
Speaker:Fortunately, she has access to good medical care and is in a hospital
Speaker:where they are taking great care of her. Whenever she gets sick, she gets
Speaker:admitted to the transplant unit at
Speaker:the hospital where she had her transplant
Speaker:done. Not that she is currently having any trouble with
Speaker:that organ. It's actually Knockwood doing really
Speaker:well. But once you've had a transplant, they treat everything
Speaker:as secondary to the transplant. So she got
Speaker:admitted to transplant unit, and she's been there,
Speaker:I don't know, a couple days now, maybe four. Four days. You're supposed
Speaker:to lose track of time and space when you're in the hospital.
Speaker:I, however, am not in the hospital and have no sense
Speaker:of time and space. She's been there sometime between, like, three days and a
Speaker:year, let's put it that way. It's somewhere in there. I'm not entirely sure where.
Speaker:I went up to see her the other day, and she has this nasty cough.
Speaker:And so, like, I feel bad making her talk.
Speaker:And so I, like, find things to do while I'm there. I
Speaker:just, like, scroll my phone or, I don't know, tidy up things around her
Speaker:room. Because it really is just very difficult for her to talk.
Speaker:She got a little frustrated with me the other day. Cause she's like, you come
Speaker:up here and you don't even talk to me. And I'm like, talk. And she
Speaker:started coughing, and I was like,
Speaker:you see what. You see that? Do you see that? Sometimes I know what I'm
Speaker:doing also. I don't want to talk to anybody anyway.
Speaker:Especially when you're on a transplant unit, they have nurses that come in all the
Speaker:time. They have all sorts of people who come in and check a bunch of
Speaker:things. They check your weight constantly because they're worried about fluid retention,
Speaker:whatever. And so the nurse comes in and
Speaker:she needed more labs done. And my mom
Speaker:has just horrifically bad veins, horrible
Speaker:veins. And she only has one arm that you can pull labs out of, because
Speaker:the other arm has, I think, has her dialysis port
Speaker:in it. And she doesn't use it anymore. But you can't pull
Speaker:labs from it anymore. Or you can't pull labs from that arm because there's no
Speaker:access. It's just like a whole thing. Every time she has to get blood drawn
Speaker:It's a whole ass thing. So this nurse comes in, though,
Speaker:and she's doing all of the things that she has to do, which is so
Speaker:many things. And she says to my mom,
Speaker:somebody told me that you were a phlebotomist. And my mom's like,
Speaker:well, yeah. And to be clear, she was a phlebotomist
Speaker:50 years ago. Approximately. Pretty close to 50 years
Speaker:ago. She has not worked as a phlebotomist, at least during my
Speaker:entire life and probably for 10 years before
Speaker:that. 50 years. That's terrifying. But 50 fucking
Speaker:years. She looks at her and says, somebody told me that you were a
Speaker:phlebotomist. And my mom says, yeah. And she goes,
Speaker:I'm really bad with tricky veins. Can you show
Speaker:me? She's like, can you talk me through? Because I also know you pretty bad
Speaker:veins. And she's. It's just. I'm just not very good at it. Can
Speaker:you show me? And my mom was like, yeah, I can show you. She's like,
Speaker:do you want me to draw it on myself? And she goes, no, I want
Speaker:to do it, but just, like, talk me through it. So my mom
Speaker:goes, okay, I can do that. And so she walks over to my mom,
Speaker:doesn't give her any of the materials, but she's like, I'm just going to pretend
Speaker:like I don't know what I'm doing, and I want you to tell me exactly
Speaker:where to start and, like, how to find the vein, how to identify it before
Speaker:sticking, and then what I do after. My mom walked her through the whole thing
Speaker:took probably 15 minutes of just, like, talking. My mom was, like,
Speaker:super engaged the whole time. My mom is sharp, but very
Speaker:clearly feels sick, and so she's foggier than she normally is. I just want to
Speaker:be clear about something. This woman probably takes labs 20
Speaker:times a day. She does not need help from my mother.
Speaker:She did not need help from my mother at all. She
Speaker:knows how to take labs. She knows how to draw them. She is
Speaker:fine with tricky veins. When you have trouble finding the vein,
Speaker:you call the rn, because the RN knows how to do it. The
Speaker:RN is good at it. I think my mom was, like, just sick
Speaker:enough that she didn't realize what was happening, which
Speaker:is that this woman was just trying to get her
Speaker:engaged and make sure that her brain was still working and that she was able
Speaker:to show her how to do something. And I just sat there the
Speaker:whole time, just, like, marveling. Who thinks of that? Who
Speaker:thinks of. I'm gonna have this woman teach Me
Speaker:how to do something that is so far ingrained in her
Speaker:brain wrinkles just to get her brain working, just so that she
Speaker:has some sort of stimulation so she's not staring at the TV
Speaker:for 23 hours a day between naps so that
Speaker:she's engaged and feels just a tiny bit better
Speaker:about this whole shit ass situation. After
Speaker:she was done, she, like, made eye contact with me. And she didn't really
Speaker:wink, but she, like, might as well have winked. And I was like, I see
Speaker:you. I see you. All that to say we do not
Speaker:deserve nurses. We do not deserve nurses. Who
Speaker:thinks of that? Who is like, I'm gonna
Speaker:have this woman teach me how to do something I've done
Speaker:27 times today because it will make her day the
Speaker:tiniest bit better because it will make her feel competent and
Speaker:capable. And like, there is something on the other side of
Speaker:this very long hospitalization. Who thinks of that? Who
Speaker:thinks of that? We do not deserve nurses. We need
Speaker:7,000 people who are more like nurses
Speaker:and more. Probably more like 7 million people. Not 7,000, maybe even
Speaker:7 billion. A lot of people. A lot of people who are that cool. We
Speaker:need more people who are that cool. I can't do dates. I can't do numbers.
Speaker:I can't do time. Can't do any of it right now. But I know we
Speaker:need more do that. But, yeah, we do not deserve
Speaker:nurses. Do you ever, like, forget what it's like to be around normal people
Speaker:and then say something that either makes sense to you or that you
Speaker:think is objectively funny? And forget that
Speaker:this person does not probably understand your sense of
Speaker:humor at baseline, and then it comes out of your mouth and you're like,
Speaker:oops, probably shouldn't have let that one out into the world
Speaker:without qualification. That's a blast.
Speaker:And like, you guys know I don't like the term normal
Speaker:because I don't think normal exists, but there is kind of like a
Speaker:baseline for things that are socially acceptable to say, and this is
Speaker:probably not any of them. I had a moment yesterday where
Speaker:my mom's nephrologist called me,
Speaker:and it's not her normal nephrologist. It's her hospitalist nephrologist, because she's in the
Speaker:hospital right now. So he called me to talk about her kidney things, because anytime
Speaker:she's hospitalized, the first thing we have to worry about is the kidney, because she
Speaker:went and got this extra kidney a couple years ago, and it's like a big
Speaker:thing that we have to worry about anyway. So it's like a whole ass thing.
Speaker:And so he called me to basically give me the update. Cuz it's just, it's
Speaker:impossible to be at the hospital enough to catch all of the doctors. She, she
Speaker:has so many doctors right now. She has a
Speaker:nephrologist, she has a pulmonologist, she has an infectious disease doctor,
Speaker:she has an endocrinologist, she has a cardiologist.
Speaker:She's like just a hospitalist, which is internal medicine. There's just so many freaking doctors
Speaker:and it's impossible to catch all of them. I said to the nurse, like when
Speaker:doctors come through, they need to call me because she's not a
Speaker:reliable historian and I want to
Speaker:make sure they're doing shit correctly. And I also need to threaten them
Speaker:personally. And by threaten them I mean if you don't figure
Speaker:out what's going on, I'm not bringing her home, which is a personal threat.
Speaker:They take it as a threat, let's put it that way. I don't actually threaten
Speaker:them. I would never actually threaten a doctor, but however, I would threaten them
Speaker:with having to take my mother home with them. And they would be like, oh
Speaker:God, no. So he calls me and he's like, hey, hey,
Speaker:just wanna let you know, her kidney studies are fine.
Speaker:Creatinine looks good. Everything seems to be working right. We're working a
Speaker:little bit on her anti rejection meds. Cause I think from being sick they
Speaker:got a little wonky. But he's like, everything looks fine. And me
Speaker:being me replied to him, oh, so kidney Poitier
Speaker:is fine. The pause, it was the pregnantest
Speaker:of pauses as he processed what I just
Speaker:said, said to him. And he goes, did you just call her
Speaker:transplanted kidney? And I said, yep, yeah, I did.
Speaker:I did that. Yeah. I'm just gonna, I'll be over, I'll be over here
Speaker:if you need. I'm just gonna. That came out of my mouth. Yeah. And to
Speaker:be fair, when she got called, then they said they had a
Speaker:kidney for her and she was rushing into the hospital, it was like mid Covid.
Speaker:So I didn't go with her and I was just like, okay, tell kidney
Speaker:Poitier that he better get his shit together. And since then, that has been the
Speaker:kidney's name. It is what we call it. She got an
Speaker:extra kidney and we named it because of course, you name it. I
Speaker:forgot that this is like a professional person who
Speaker:probably does his best to keep a straight face most of the
Speaker:time when he's working and talking about very serious
Speaker:things and I just flew out of my mouth,
Speaker:as if he knew the context. I guess he technically
Speaker:does know the context because he
Speaker:knows that she got herself a new kidney. So after he
Speaker:processed what I said and my response to it, he did start laughing, and
Speaker:I felt better. I was just like, man, the pipe between my brain
Speaker:and my mouth seems to be closed. Maybe it's
Speaker:not closed. Maybe it's open. There's a filter that's supposed to be there that has
Speaker:gotten knocked off or something because it just flew right out.
Speaker:No context. Didn't tell him that's what we call it.
Speaker:Just addressed her extra kidney
Speaker:as Kidney Poitier to a complete stranger who took
Speaker:it like a champ. So anyway, have you ever done that?
Speaker:Have you ever just, like, said something in front of somebody who had
Speaker:no context, forgetting that it was gonna sound
Speaker:unhinged, and then realized how unhinged it
Speaker:sounded? And if so, welcome to the club, and
Speaker:we've been waiting for you. So we have a small talk question
Speaker:from Opal in Georgia. Opal asks. My oldest
Speaker:friend and I have been close since we were nine years old.
Speaker:26 years. And lately, when I hang up after our calls, I
Speaker:feel tired instead of full. Like I gave something, but
Speaker:nothing came back. She's not a bad person. There's no
Speaker:big falling out, no betrayal. We've just become very
Speaker:different people. And I think I've been maintaining the friendship out of
Speaker:loyalty to who we used to be rather than who we
Speaker:actually are. Now I feel an enormous amount of guilt even
Speaker:admitting this, like acknowledging it means I'm ungrateful for the history
Speaker:or disloyal to a girl who was my whole world at 9 years
Speaker:old. How do you let something good fade gracefully? Or
Speaker:do you. Is there a way to say something honest without blowing it all up?
Speaker:So people evolve beyond each other. And it also doesn't
Speaker:mean that not being in the same place now means you're never gonna be in
Speaker:the same place again. So I think that's really important to keep in mind,
Speaker:is that you're talking past each other now. You're in two different
Speaker:places, and you need different things out of a friendship, and that's okay. That's
Speaker:the evolution. That's growth. That's all of it. And this person's been in your life
Speaker:forever, and that doesn't mean they're not going to be in your life tomorrow, even
Speaker:if today is not the right time, or you need them in a different capacity
Speaker:that you needed them before. I don't think it needs to be A
Speaker:big thing. I think you can just make different choices.
Speaker:I think if you're going to cut off contact, which it doesn't sound like you're
Speaker:going to, that should be a conversation, because ghosting people is really
Speaker:hard. I had that happen to me in a friendship, and it really wrecked me
Speaker:for a long time. This was somebody I was, like, inseparably close with. And just
Speaker:one day, I think realistically we had grown apart,
Speaker:and one day we just were miles apart, and I realized we hadn't
Speaker:talked in a long time. And I thought it was just accidental. And then
Speaker:it turned out to not at all be accidental. And so don't do that to
Speaker:somebody, especially somebody who is
Speaker:invested in you and your success and your life and has been a huge part
Speaker:of your life. But it's okay to just take some time and space
Speaker:and pause and reassess and give yourself an opportunity to
Speaker:miss somebody. That's a hard conversation to have because they may not
Speaker:understand. Telling somebody that you need space, an
Speaker:indefinite or an imprecise amount of space,
Speaker:is a weird conversation to have, but you can take it for yourself. If
Speaker:they ask, just say, like, things are really busy right now, and I just. I
Speaker:don't have a lot to give. And so the level
Speaker:that I'm engaging at is where I am right now. And it doesn't mean I
Speaker:don't love you. It just means this is where my life is right now. If
Speaker:you have the type of relationship where you can have that kind of conversation
Speaker:with them and just say, like, it feels like we're in different places and I
Speaker:need a little bit of time and space, that's fine, too.
Speaker:But I don't think it has to be a production. I also think it's probably
Speaker:shorter lived than you realize. And then there's also the part, like, it sounds like
Speaker:your friend might be going through something that is making them focused
Speaker:on one thing that maybe is not something that you feel attached to
Speaker:or feel like you want to be engaged with. And that might be a conversation,
Speaker:too. Hey, we're talking about this one thing all the time. I'm
Speaker:concerned that it's affecting you in a way that is not the way
Speaker:it typically affects you. Is there something going on? Do we. Do you need help?
Speaker:Do you need something? But it's also okay to just, like,
Speaker:pause and answer less and
Speaker:protect your peace. You don't owe anybody an explanation for why you're
Speaker:taking space. You can give it to them. They will often
Speaker:misunderstand and take it very personally when it Sounds like it's not personal at all.
Speaker:It's just what it is. And so protect your
Speaker:peace, take your space, give it a short timeline for
Speaker:two weeks. I'm really not going to engage too much. Maybe it can coincide with
Speaker:something that you have going on that would realistically keep you busy for two weeks.
Speaker:That's totally fine. And maybe you find out after those
Speaker:two weeks, there's not anything you miss and it was a good
Speaker:break and you continue it. I don't know. But you don't owe
Speaker:anybody an explanation for why you're choosing to protect your piece, why
Speaker:you are choosing to prioritize yourself. And as long as you have done everything
Speaker:to make sure that this person is okay, that they have what they need, that
Speaker:you're not throwing them to the wolves in a time that they
Speaker:clearly have a need and there is a way to meet, it doesn't
Speaker:mean that you have to throw yourself to the wolves to fix whatever their problem
Speaker:is. But don't leave somebody suffering without
Speaker:pointing out or without doing whatever you can reasonably
Speaker:to try to help. But beyond that,
Speaker:your peace is your own. And if something doesn't feel right, it's not right. And
Speaker:you can come back to it in a month or a year
Speaker:or 10 years and get right back where you
Speaker:started or where you left off. Because that's how a lot of
Speaker:friendships work. And that's just okay. That's just the reality of it. You're
Speaker:allowed to evolve past people, but you also just need to need a break.
Speaker:Oh, I think one week we should have a small talk where the question is,
Speaker:like, really super long, and my answer is just no,
Speaker:that's it. I think it'd be really funny. I think that'd
Speaker:be really funny. You could just be like, should I trust
Speaker:RFK Jr. With my medical records? No. Next question.
Speaker:You give me so much credit for having any fucking idea what I've
Speaker:said previously. Like, I listen to my episodes
Speaker:not because I like listening to myself, but because otherwise
Speaker:I have no idea what's on them. And people will
Speaker:text me and be like, oh, my God, this resource was so
Speaker:helpful. And I'm like, did we talk? Was there? I
Speaker:don't. What? Your podcast. I have a
Speaker:podcast. Oh, is it Wednesday? Oh, that's new and
Speaker:different.
