Multilinguicious

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The United States may be a melting pot, but with this new job of mine, I’ve found out that Sydney is an incredibly multicultural city. And it doesn’t seem to matter where someone is from, respiratory disease is an equal opportunity aggravation.

In the last five days, I’ve logged 300 kilometers, visited 60 homes and heard a dozen different languages. Changing air filters isn’t glamorous, but in the ten minutes it takes to do the job, I’ve met interesting people, learned new things and spread a little joy.

An Assyrian-speaker named Shaman told me he was a Christian from Iraq and when I apologized for what my country was doing to his, he got off his bed, stuck out his hand and shook mine. “Saddam was my president, but it was not my fault,” he said. “Leaders do what they do but it’s no reflection on you.”

Earlier that day, Fatima sat cross-legged on the couch, wearing a white hajib. She spoke to her daughter who explained that Arabic was only one of the five languages she knew, Persian and Turkish being others. Before I left, she kindly fulfilled my request to teach me hello, goodbye and thank you.

The couple from Sri Lanka gave me apple juice and explained they had been here a decade, having resettled to escape the warfare between the Tamil Tigers and government troops.

I got bubbly lemon soda from the Greek couple and flat soda from a refugee from Saturday Night Fever. When the fellow figured out I was American he insisted on showing me his ‘beauty,’ a near-mint condition1982 four door Oldsmobile. “They didn’t import many of these babies,” he said caressing the hood. No doubt the boxy shape, poor performance and shoddy workmanship had something to do with the car’s lousy sales, but certainly, of anyone, this guy and his greasy black pompador would look stylish behind the wheel of this classic ‘yank tank.”

Sometimes while driving I get lost along the way. For some reason, the GPS likes to take me down single lane alleys and I’m learning to interpret its directions and apply a little brain power. On Friday, I called Bob and still have no idea what language he was speaking, or in this case, yelling. I rang him because his address was only listed as “Lot 55” on a very long road and the GPS doesn’t take to such countryfied directions. According to the handwritten directions, it was somewhere near the Manure Road roundabout and I finally found it on Sydney’s rural interface, along Manre Road (bad penmanship!). In all, it took three U-turns and two more calls to his wife (she shared her husbands direction-giving style) before I arrived at a dirt driveway, then waited for two tethered sheep to move along, and parked on a 10 meter square of salvaged Astroturf. From there, the rest was easy: Replace a couple filters, record the hour meter and make sure the machine is making 90% oxygen. It’s fairly brainless.


It seems with every visit there is something I can offer people. Sometimes we play “guess the accent” where I start of in Australian and return to American. Other times, I leave a little prescription. William told me about his son who was working in the gas fields, making good money, but just coming off a cold winter. “He called me to say it’s freezing out there,” he said. “Even wearing two sets of sweat pants.”
“Sweat pants? Brrrr,” I said. “He needs polypropylene.” On his receipt, I left him these words. “Patagonia capelene.”*

There are some sad moments too. The woman who’d just relocated three weeks ago to the assisted living center hadn’t made any friends. She said her family wasn’t around and she’d broken her glasses. “Nothing you couldn’t fix with a spot of glue,” I told her upon inspection.
“Can you help me with them?” she asked. “Could you ask the front desk people?”
My supervisor John cautioned me not to let people take advantage of me, but what harm was there in fixing this lady’s glasses? Least I could do was ask. But at the front, I interrupted lunch hour and got a rude reckoning.
“No,” one barked at my glue request. “That’s something she had to ask her family to do.”
“She already asked us that,” another added.
Apparently the staff get a lot of these little attention seekers and I suppose it is natural to build up compassion calluses. Still, her glasses were busted and surely someone had some glue around. Perhaps it’s a liability issue, there might be some huff junkies among the patients. I returned the lenses and suggested the lady make friends with some of the fellows racing around on walkers.

I’m learning to be more aware, too, as I walk in a home. Twice now I’ve gone in to service machines only to have husband’s wonder why I was doing maintenance when to them, their dead wives weren’t going to need any more oxygen. Oopsie. Paperwork omission. Now I look around for memorial photos and other clues that someone has passed and this is not a ‘service’ stop but a ‘final pickup.’

Sadder still was June. She was toking 4 litres of oxygen, getting close to the machine’s 5 litre max. Her disability kept her from going out, an assistant did her shopping for her, her cooking amounted to reheating frozen entrees, her sons mostly lived away and didn’t visit much and her only daughter was in a suffocating relationship with a man who was moving her to Tasmania. “What if I need a new nighty or something. I can’t ask my son to buy that for me,” she said. “This isn’t living. It’s existing.”

I agreed that things looked cloudy and we talked about cases where suicide might seem appropriate, but it was obvious that she had a big heart and still had her wits about her. She needed to find something useful to do, I suggested, some way to give back. “Get on one of those services that rings up and checks on people each day,” I offered. “Or get yourself a computer and get on line.”

She wasn’t having any of that, but maybe I’d planted a seed. That’s kind of how I’m approaching this job. These people don’t get many visitors and so each stop is an opportunity to shine a little light. Yesterday, I even taught a little yoga.

Dorothy was sitting in her chair gasping, asking that I increase her oxygen level. “That’s something you have to talk to your therapist about,” I told her. “Too much oxygen can make you feel as bad as too little.” I don’t know all the physiology and wikipedia wasn’t helping, but it occurs when the body retains excess carbon dioxide to balance an over-abundance of oxygen. Suffice to say your breathing gear is a delicate apparatus and is finely tuned to work with the atmosphere’s 21 percent oxygen.

I’m cautious about getting involved in medical stuff. A little knowledge can be harmful, but I still have helpful tricks. Dorothy is a classic chest and mouth breather and whenever she inhaled, her shoulders rose around her ears. Not only does mouth breathing limit the usefulness of a nasal cannula, she was using all the wrong breathing muscles, a negative feedback process which only added to her anxiety. It was nearing the end of the day, but I took five extra minutes to give her a breathing lesson. With her one hand on her belly and the other on her chest, I got her to observe her breathing and then gave her the lowdown on diaphragmatic breathing. “Inhale, belly moves out,” I explained, “Exhale, belly moves in.” She had near zero control of her abdominal muscles, but by the end of our micro-lesson, had gotten the idea of what she needed to do.**

So that’s it for week one. I’ve already experienced the potential boredom of repetitious tasks, but like I said at the start, I can do any job for a month. And one never knows what will come next. I see they have a backlog in the equipment maintenance division. ;-)

*A disclaimer: Poly undies are a bad idea when working in places with fire potential. An Alaskan bush pilot told me she wears only cotton, in case of fire, it won’t melt to her skin.
**As I was writing this story, I looked up her name and realized I failed to record the serial number from her concentrator. I called her up and got the number and gave her a refresher. “I’m giving it a try,” she said. “Thanks for the free lesson.”

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