Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Klem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and Monarchs.
[00:00:09] So I feel like I've been talking so much about myself, and although you're learning who I am as a person and what shaped me in my life, you're not really hearing about some of the people that have influenced me along the way. So today, I'm going to tell another story about one of my dearest friends whom I lost in March of 2005. It is so hard for me to even think that next year it'll be 20 years that she's been gone.
[00:00:48] I was 47 years old and she was 46 when she died, and she had so much life to live, and it was just devastating to me. But she has an amazing story, life story that I want to share with you because she was definitely a huge influence in my life.
[00:01:13] So I first met Wanda when I went to work at the Barron center in Portland, Maine. The Behrend center is a senior living center that the city of Portland owns, so they actually have a place to take care of their precious senior citizens. I went to work there in 1993, and I met Wanda then. She was the assistant Director of nursing for the Behren Center. So in her role, she was over quality metrics. So she would round on all the units there and make sure that the patients or the. The citizens that live there, I should say that because it is their home, we're see, we're receiving quality care. She would do audits on medications.
[00:02:10] She would make sure to get new patients enrolled in living there, and she would hold the staff accountable for anything that they were doing that didn't really follow regulatory status.
[00:02:30] So she had a big job there.
[00:02:34] But it was pretty evident right out of the gate that her and I were going to get along when she thought. She loved my sense of humor, first of all, and I loved her directness. So she was really a straightforward person. There was never any mystery about Wanda and what Wanda thought. It was all right out there, right in front of everybody to see, and I appreciate that. There's no hidden agenda. You know, if she thought I was doing something ridiculously wrong, she'd be the first one to say, dawn, you're doing something ridiculously wrong. Get it together, girl. That's just how she was. And so I appreciated that honesty, that honest approach to life that just seems so great.
[00:03:27] But as I got to know her, I got to understand why she was the way she was.
[00:03:34] So Wanda was born in Boston to a Polish family, and they were. She Was raised in the projects in Boston, which is poor housing.
[00:03:49] Her father there was her father, her mother, and an older sister, Mary, who's two years older than her in the projects.
[00:04:00] When Wanda and Mary were in middle school, their father died.
[00:04:05] And then their mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
[00:04:12] So it was a time when Ms. Really didn't have the treatments that we have today. I mean, what they've done with Ms. Today is a amazing.
[00:04:27] But it was a time when we knew very little about it. Studies hadn't been done, people ended up becoming wheelchair bound.
[00:04:39] And her mom did debilitate. So she was not doing well. And she ended up having to go to a nursing home. She went to a nursing home when Wanda and her sister were in high school. And so they lived in the projects by themselves. They basically raised themselves. Okay. I can't even imagine, but they did.
[00:05:05] And they did get Social Security from their fathers passing away.
[00:05:11] And also they, her mom had a lot of family, so the family was always checking in on them to make sure that they were doing okay.
[00:05:23] One of my funniest stories about her is that her sister Mary, both Mary and Wanda were extremely bright women.
[00:05:36] And I don't know if it's just because they had to be so independent that they learned how to do things and they read a lot. Wanda was a voracious reader and so was Mary. And so they just came with a lot of know how I would say.
[00:05:55] So Mary, like I said, was two years older than Wanda and it was. She was graduating from high school and it was time for her to go off to college. Well, she had applied around there, but the college that she got accepted to, that she really wanted to go to was was Marquette. And Marquette was in Wisconsin.
[00:06:21] And Mary was completely tortured about the idea of going away to college and leaving her 16 year old sister home by herself to survive. She just hemmed and hawed over it. But in typical Wanda fashion, Wanda was like, oh, Mary, for God's sakes. I can still hear saying, telling me the story and hearing these words from her. Oh, Mary, for God's sakes, of course I'm gonna be all right. You don't have a thing to worry about.
[00:06:58] So the day comes when Mary's gonna go off to college and Wanda's taking her to the airport in Portland. And they get to the airport and they're up at the check in counter for the flight.
[00:07:14] Mary's flying to Marquette.
[00:07:17] And Mary bursts out crying and Wanda has the ticket in her hand.
[00:07:26] So the agent behind the counter Is comforting Mary saying, it'll be all right. We'll take good care of your sister. You don't have anything to worry about. And Wanda's like, I'm not the one going on the plane. She's the one going on the plane. She's the. She's crying because she's leaving me, if you can even imagine that. And the ticket counter woman was, like, so confused. And then she was very amused. So that was kind of the relationship between Mary and Wanda. Mary was the older sister, but Wanda was the one with all the sass and the practicality. And she just was, like I said, such a straight shooter. Like, what are you getting all worked up about? Kind of thing.
[00:08:24] So I worked at the Baron center with her for four years, from 1993 to 1997.
[00:08:31] And we got together often. We had a lot in common. Wanda absolutely loved animals.
[00:08:42] When she ended up staying in Boston. And then when she graduated from high school, she had actually gone to an associate degree program and gotten her registered nurse degree. So associate degree in nursing, became an RN and then she ended up moving to Maine. She wanted to be in a more rural setting. And when Mary and Wanda. Mary, actually, I think, was in college when their mother died. And Wanda went to the nursing home to pick up her mom's personal effects.
[00:09:28] And she told the story to me so many times because it really impacted her and where she went in her life. When she went to the front desk to say, I'm here to pick up my mom's belongings, they went behind the counter and came out with a. A garbage bag filled with her mom's personal belongings.
[00:09:56] I think that is what impacted Wanda more. Not that she wasn't sad that her mother had died, but they had been anticipating it for a long time. But to get her mom's personal belongings delivered to her in a garbage bag just seemed so disrespectful to her.
[00:10:20] So after she had gotten out of nursing school and moved to Maine, the first job that she ended up getting was at the Behrend center as a registered nurse. She wanted to work in a nursing home to make sure that the residents there were treated with dignity and class and lived out the lives that they deserved to live. That was so important to her from her experience with her own mother.
[00:10:55] So she was really great. She was an excellent, excellent nurse.
[00:11:00] She was an excellent advocate for the patients. If something was going wrong with the patient, she would step right in there.
[00:11:11] She really had her finger on the pulse of what was going on with the patients, and she Made every effort to make sure that the patients were getting the care that they deserved.
[00:11:28] So I worked underneath her for four years, and it was a complete pleasure. But during that time, I had gotten married to Craig, and I had decided that I was going to go back to graduate school to get my master's degree in nursing. At first I thought I was going to be a nurse practitioner, and I actually got accepted into the nurse practitioner program.
[00:11:58] But after I had been in the program for almost three years, two and a half years, I decided that that really wasn't the route that I wanted to take.
[00:12:09] And I ended up switching to be a clinical nurse specialist. And I remember I was talking to Wanda about that at the time that I was making the change. First of all, she was totally annoyed, really, that I wanted to go back to graduate school. She's like, oh, come on, isn't there something more you want to do in your life? You know, that kind of thing? Well, she.
[00:12:36] She had her whole life filled up with animals. Like, she had dogs, she had cats. She was always rescuing a dog, always rescuing a cat from somewhere. And that's what filled up her life. So she thought I should be involved more with animals. And I said, no, I'm gonna go the people route.
[00:13:00] So when I started back to graduate school, she left the Barron center too, and she went back to school to learn how to be a dog groomer.
[00:13:14] One of the best decisions she ever made in her life. She was so happy, ecstatically happy about it.
[00:13:23] And she had been living in a house way out in the country. It was such long drive, even into Portland. So once she got her license to be a dog groomer, she moved in closer to Portland. So in one of the towns just outside of Portland, Buxton, and she bought a house that could accommodate her dog grooming business. And it was so funny how she had it set up. It was kind of. It was a different kind of house. So one half of the house was for the people, and the other side of the house was for the animals. I mean, I am serious. So the dogs and the cats all lived on one side of the house. And she would go over there and feed them and everything. And then she had her side of the house. So if she ever wanted just some peace and quiet kind of thing. I remember two of her favorite dogs. One of them was Graham, and one of them was Taylor. Taylor was a Newfoundland. She had always wanted a Newfoundland more than any other dog. So she finally got a Newfoundland. And he wasn't black, he was black and white. And what a beautiful dog. And it was a male, and she still named him Taylor. I'm like, I'm a Taylor. That's kind of a strange name. But you couldn't tell her anything. She is going to go forward with what she thinks is right. So getting that dog was one of the best things that she ever did.
[00:14:57] And then Graham, I think he was like, just a mutt. She just. She had so many dogs. Most of them were not purebred dogs. They were just dogs that she fell in love with.
[00:15:12] She would go to the pound and get another dog. That's how she was.
[00:15:16] So it was. It was awesome. It was really so awesome. Well, in the meantime.
[00:15:23] So we're. We're going on different paths now, right? She's into dog grooming. I'm in graduate school. In the middle of graduate school, I adopt my daughters from Romania. So she's like, why do you want to have kids anyway?
[00:15:43] We had a whole argument about that. Who the heck would want to get kids in their 40s? What's the matter with you? What do you want to even have kids? You don't need kids. You and Craig are so happy. I'm like, well, why do you Want to have 10 dogs? Who the heck would want to have 10 dogs? You can see how we got along, right? We're arguing about our pathways in our life and what is going on in our life.
[00:16:09] But we understood that we were not the same, but we were still going to be great friends. That's all that really mattered.
[00:16:21] So she's doing great. I'm doing great.
[00:16:26] I get through graduate school. Miraculously, I had gotten into an accelerated program because I really. When I applied to graduate school, I only had my associate degree. So they said, you can do an associate degree to your master's degree.
[00:16:47] So I was ready to graduate with my master's degree, and I started freaking out, thinking, oh, what this is. Something's going to happen, and they're going to go, how did you get your master's degree without getting your bachelor's degree? I just felt skeptical about it. So I decided in the middle of graduate school to get my bachelor's degree, too. So I ended up getting my bachelor's degree, and then a year later, I got my master's degree.
[00:17:15] So I already told you that a lot of my study work in graduate school was around palliative care.
[00:17:24] So when I was graduating from my.
[00:17:29] With my master's degree, I was going to try to get a job in palliative care. I had had the privilege of doing a clinical rotation in Boston at mass general with the. I mean, they were like the frontiers of palliative care back then. And it was like, in 2004. So palliative care was really just starting to come on the scene, and I decided that I was going to apply for a job in Boston in palliative care.
[00:18:09] I had been out of school probably a month, and I was working on the inpatient oncology unit at main medical center.
[00:18:20] And it was such a relief to graduate. I graduated in May, and it was a hot summer evening up there, and I was working the evening shift. We had three nurses stations, and I was working in the first nurses station, which was really kind of out of the ordinary for me. Usually I was in Station 3, because that's where the bone marrow transplant patients were. But on this particular evening, I had been assigned to the first nurses station, and that was general.
[00:18:58] General oncology.
[00:19:00] So I was making my rounds. It was right at the change of shift, and all of a sudden, I hear a loud page, don clem, you have a phone call at the front desk.
[00:19:13] Anybody that knows me, my kids, my family, my friends, anybody that knows me knows I hate taking personal calls at work. Nothing annoys me more than that I'm at work. I can't focus on you. I have to focus on the patients. So I'm like, don Clem, you have a phone call. What the heck is going on here? Nobody calls me at work, right?
[00:19:42] So I go over to the station, and I pick up the phone. I go, this is don Clem. Can I help you? Well, on the other end of the phone was a mutual friend of both Wanda's and myself, and she is calling to tell me that Wanda is in the hospital at brigham and women's in Boston, and she has had a whipple procedure today because she's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
[00:20:22] So for any of you who don't know what a whipple procedure is, it's when they go in and they actually remove the head of the pancreas.
[00:20:32] And back then. So we're talking 2004.
[00:20:41] That was.
[00:20:43] That was before we had made strides in the area of pancreatic cancer. They still do whipple procedures today. It's a common procedure now, but back then, it was really kind of a scary procedure, and it definitely signaled something scary to me.
[00:21:09] And she's like. And I was like, I can't believe it. I was in complete shock. I don't think I've ever been more shocked about anything in my life.
[00:21:22] I said, Just so happens I have an interview down there tomorrow in Boston. And when I get done with my interview, I'm gonna go over and see her.
[00:21:34] And that's exactly what happened. I went down for an interview.
[00:21:41] I went to an interview in a clinic that wasn't far away from Brigham and Women's. I think it was at Deaconess Hospital down there. And I had my interview. But you know what? I could not focus at all. I probably should have canceled the interview.
[00:21:59] And I just couldn't get her out of my mind. I was more interested in going to see her to see what the heck was going on than I was in the interview and even trying to get another job.
[00:22:16] So I got through the interview. It was obvious they weren't going to hire me because the interview was terrible. I wouldn't have hired me.
[00:22:26] And I remember I left there and I walked right over to the hospital, and I figured out where she was. I asked the front desk, and I went up to her room, and when I got there, the nurse was walking her down the hall, and.
[00:22:39] And she looked terrible. I'll never forget it. Of course, she was medicated.
[00:22:45] First day post op, and they're walking her. She was in excruciating pain. I mean, the whole thing was just like a nightmare to me, a complete nightmare.
[00:22:59] But I did make it there. I know she was grateful that I showed up, and so I was really happy that I had gotten the chance to get down there to see her.
[00:23:14] So she got discharged in a couple of days, and she made it home.
[00:23:20] Her friend who had called me was a nurse practitioner, so I knew that she was going to be in good hands with her because she would be checking up on her to make sure she was doing okay. And Wanda had a lot of great friends that were all interested in making sure that she was taken care of.
[00:23:42] I remember I started going out to see her, and she loved custard. So I made a whole bunch of homemade custard for her and brought it out in those little Pyrex glass dishes. I just remember that so much, and she was so grateful for that. And, you know, I'm in the. I had finished with graduate school, so I brought over my huge anatomy and physiology book, and I'm like, here, you can look up your disease. If there's anything in there that you need, that you think you're not getting, let me know, because I can advocate for you with the oncology oncologist. And at that point, I'm trying to convince her to see one of the oncologists that we had on our unit, that was a fantastic physician. Let me tell you. The physicians in the oncology group that I worked with at Maine Medical center were top of the line. And it was such a privilege to be able to work with any one of those physicians.
[00:24:45] But this one in particular was an astounding physician.
[00:24:51] So she says, well, I'm. I'm gonna be fine. I'm gonna be going to Boston for treatment. I can take the bus down. I go, what are you talking about?
[00:25:00] You don't have to go to Boston for treatment. We have an awesome oncology group here. These doctors are from all over the US we had a doctor from San Francisco. Francisco. This guy had been in Rhode Island. He went to Brown University. Okay. He was so smart. He was incredibly intelligent. I said, he is a fantastic physician. You don't need to go anywhere else. Oh, no, she's gonna go back to Brigham and Women. While she went down there for a couple of times, taking the bus, I was so annoyed. But that was her. I mean, you can imagine. Can you imagine? She was 16, living alone by herself.
[00:25:46] She was not going to depend on anybody for her. That's how she was, you know, and so she was not going to listen to me telling her.
[00:26:00] I think she had gone for like a month down there and back.
[00:26:05] And then she said they told her they could refer her to a physician up at Maine Med. I said, yes, I know the physician that I want you to go to. This is his name, and I want you to get referred to him.
[00:26:22] So she did get referred to him.
[00:26:25] And I remember the time that she had her first visit because I was working on the clinic, and he came in after office hours in the afternoon, and he said, I met your friend today, and she is quite the character. I think this is going to be a good fit. I was like, yes, yes, this is wonderful.
[00:26:49] So she would come in inpatient and she would get treated and get her chemo. She had it outpatient, but then she had some issues later on where she would have to be hospitalized, and things were moving along fairly well.
[00:27:08] And then the last time she came in. So by now, she got diagnosed in June, and she's made it through the first six months of treatment, which I was so happy about.
[00:27:24] And then we get into the new year, and she came in in January, not really in very good shape. She was having a lot of pain. So we were trying to figure out where is her pain coming from. I remember she had ultrasound, she had X rays. She. She had everything. It was at the end of January, and we're all trying to figure out what was going on.
[00:27:52] We're. We're trying to keep her comfortable.
[00:27:57] Finally, one night I was there and I probably been a couple weeks, and we're into February now. And she says, I am in the worst pain I've ever had in my entire life. Something is wrong.
[00:28:12] And so I went to talk to the oncologist and tell him. He goes, don, we've X ray Durden everything. I said, I know, I know we've done everything thing, I get it. But I'm telling you, she's just not somebody that complains. There's something we're missing.
[00:28:32] Well, the surgeon was there at the same time, and both of them I had worked with for such a long time. And both of them, I feel like it was a mutual respect in the relationship that we had.
[00:28:46] And he's like, don, the surgeon, I think maybe we should take her to surgery and open her up and see if we're missing something. I go, really? He goes, I really do. Let's just see what's going on. So I was like, okay, this is good. This is really, really good. So I went to talk to her, and she was okay with going to surgery.
[00:29:13] And so they ended up taking her to surgery that night. And then her sister was there. Her sister came and I got a phone call, like at 10 o'clock that night. And she said, you're not going to believe it. And I said, what?
[00:29:30] Well, they had taken her to surgery, and when they opened her up, behind the bowel was a huge tumor. And there was nothing that they could do about it. There was absolutely nothing that they could do. And the tumor had been pressing on her bowel, and that's why she was having so much pain. So they closed her back up and they brought her back to the floor, to the unit. And then she just went on a morphine drip. And then. And then that was it.
[00:30:06] On the day that she died, it was a Sunday.
[00:30:11] And I came in to see her. Her sister was there with her best friend, a social worker who had been such a good friend to her and a couple other people and myself and Mary, her sister, had brought some things that she knew Wanda would really appreciate. So she brought a big bag of M M's and she divvied them all up between us because Wanda loved M M's and we were all talking about the M M's and how we wish she could have the M M's with her, with us. And she was just Completely under sedation from the morphine drip.
[00:30:58] So she didn't know what was going on, or at least we didn't think she did. And then they all looked at me and I said, you go, girl. Just like that. And she took her last breath and she died right then.
[00:31:17] Oh, my gosh, it was awful.
[00:31:22] It was awful. And it was good all at the same time. Because she was never going to have to suffer again.
[00:31:28] And all the people that loved her so much were right there with her eating peanut M and M. Something that she would have wanted. She would have wanted that.
[00:31:40] So I was really struggling at work during this time.
[00:31:46] And I had my director over me was someone that was 20 years younger than me. So I was in my 40s, she was in her late 20s. She's like 17 years younger than me.
[00:32:01] And she was not very nice to me during this whole time. You know, I'm sure some of it was because she thought I was shouldn't be working, that I should be paying more attention to the patients. I can't say that she was wrong, although I wasn't working all the time. But I was definitely advocating for my friend on my off time. And I feel like I could have been better. But I don't think she was very understanding either. She never one time said, why don't we give you some time off? Let's try, you know, nothing like that. So she. I felt like she was kind of bullying me at the time. I remember feeling that way. It's been 20 years now. So when I look back, I think maybe I was more emotionally involved in that situation than she would have liked me to be. But she was my friend and actually, I don't care. I probably would do it the same exact way all over again.
[00:33:08] So after Wanda died, I think I asked to speak at her funeral or her sister might have asked me to speak at her funeral.
[00:33:21] Either way, I did speak at her funeral.
[00:33:25] And I cried through the whole thing. I had written something out and it was really good, but I couldn't handle it, really. It just impacted me so much to lose somebody. I kept thinking to myself, this is so unfair. She's already lived such a hard life. Why are you taking her so soon? She didn't even get a chance to realize her dreams fully of having her dog grooming business. By the way, she named her dog grooming business business the Dirty Dog. And it had a huge sign that one of her best friends had made for her, the St. Bernard in a big wooden bathtub. It was adorable. And you know she had so much to live for, and she was just getting to where she wanted to be. She had that house. The animals had one side, she had the other side. Why? Why? Why? I just kept thinking that another thing she did at the end, she had all those dogs and cats, but then she decided at the end that she was going to start buying birds. So she bought a bunch of birds.
[00:34:38] And I remember my mom was living with me at the time, and I kept saying to her, she's buying birds. And my mom would say, she can do whatever she wants. She's dying. If she wants to buy 500 birds, let her. Because when you're dying, and you know you're dying, you get to do what you want to do. And at the time, I remember thinking, that doesn't even make sense because we're going to be the ones that are taking care of these things, right? But my mom didn't care, and she stuck by it. And really now when I look back, I think, yeah, why was I arguing about that?
[00:35:14] So she. We all got together and we all figured out who's taken who. There were 10 dogs, 14 cats, and I think, seven birds.
[00:35:26] So I ended up with a cockatiel named Elvis and two canaries.
[00:35:33] And Elvis was a part of our family for a very long time. He was a wonderful bird. We absolutely loved him. And every time I think of Wanda, I think of Elvis. He was amazing.
[00:35:48] But the story is that I was so frustrated with my director.
[00:35:57] That was the time I decided to go back and see a psychic. Can you imagine that? Now, I haven't been to a psychic after this whole. This whole thing from the first time, episode 11, if you haven't seen it, the Yellow Roses episode.
[00:36:15] But I decide I'm gonna go see a psychic. Where am I gonna go? So downtown? Well, it's not really downtown, but on Forest Avenue is a little plaza. And there's a store in there called the Leaping Lizards. And it's a new age store. And I went in there just out of curiosity to see if they would know a psychic or something. It just so happens they happen to have one there today. That day that I went in, I'm going in to find out should I quit my job. That's why I went to see the psychic. It's so classic of me. I don't go to a therapist that's gonna help me work through my issues and my anger management. No, I'm gonna go see a psychic to find out should I quit my job or not.
[00:37:05] So anyhow, I go in the back room. And I meet this woman. She was great.
[00:37:10] And, you know, same thing. She says a little prayer, and then she says, there's two women here right now.
[00:37:19] And I go, there are? And she said, yes. One of them says to tell you her name is Graham.
[00:37:27] Okay? Wanda's. One of Wanda's favorite dogs was Graham. So when she said Graham, I knew darn well it had to be Wanda. And she says, the other one, your grandma. And my grandma had died, too. My grandma died the year before Wanda, but she was 94 years old. So we were ready for my grandma to die, but we were not ready for Wanda. She was only 46. She says, they're arguing right now. I go, what are they arguing about?
[00:38:02] She says, wanda says that you have to, you know, keep moving on with your nursing.
[00:38:13] And I. And your grandma is saying, she's got two kids to raise. She's not gonna be, you know, going back to school or anything else. She's gonna take care of her kids. And I'm like, oh, my God.
[00:38:30] It was the. It was so surreal, But I know it really is true. It really is true. They were arguing about it.
[00:38:43] And what the psychic did end up telling me is she says, you've. You've already healed yourself here. You came to Maine from Massachusetts to heal yourself, and you are healed now. It is okay for you to leave the state. And actually, you are going to move. You're going to move four or five, five hours south of here, and you're going to work with patients that are terminally ill for about five years.
[00:39:19] So we did move, if you look at it longitudinally, we moved about five hours south of Portland, only a couple of states over, Right, because we're in Michigan now.
[00:39:35] And then the last job that I had, I worked with terminal brain tumor patients for five years and helped them cross over.
[00:39:46] So I guess the moral of the story is that I did leave Maine. I was healed. I ended up taking care of terminally ill patients.
[00:40:02] And Wanda and my grandma both came to see me that day and helped me out. And I know the story sounds crazy, but in my mind, it's just the truth.
[00:40:24] Thank you for listening to my story today. I hope you enjoyed it.
[00:40:30] If you have any comments or questions or you have a story that you would like me to share, please go on my website, milkman.com M I L K M-O-N.com and leave me a message there and I will get back to you.
[00:40:50] The following two episodes are going to be about two other people that influenced me in my life that also worked at the nursing home with me. So I was so lucky to work in that nursing home. I met three of the most amazing people there, all very different, but all of them gave me gifts that I still live with today.
[00:41:22] Until the next time.
