TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: She sprays this place with like perfume or something. I'm glad neither of us are allergic.

CLIENT: I wasn't sure whether it was ten-fifteen or ten, but I'm here. I've been here since nine o'clock.

THERAPIST: You have?

CLIENT: Oh, yeah, the God damn friggin bus driver was at my door at eight-thirty.

THERAPIST: Oh. Did you just now remember where it was?

CLIENT: No. I was downstairs having coffee.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay, I gotcha. You're welcome though, there's somebody else that's here. I think she probably gets here I haven't asked, her but I'm assuming she's here at least by nine at the latest, if you ever get here early. She's here, the other there's another psychiatrist next door.

CLIENT: Okay.

THERAPIST: Well, good to see you.

CLIENT: Yeah, good to be out. I'm so winded now. [0:01:02.2]

THERAPIST: Does it just take a hell of a lot out of you?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. Well, I had to come in the back way because I couldn't get up the stairs, you know, with that.

THERAPIST: Can they get through? Can they drop you off back there?

CLIENT: Yeah, he could have, because he came down that street and I said, "Wait a minute, it's the building right there," and so instead of stopping and just letting me out, he kept going backwards in reverse, and let me out there. (sounds physically uncomfortable)

THERAPIST: Okay, yeah.

CLIENT: I have to grab one of those pillows.

THERAPIST: Yeah, can I do anything?

CLIENT: Those small pillows.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Do you just want one?

CLIENT: Yeah, just to put behind my back.

THERAPIST: Let me know if you need another one.

CLIENT: Ah, okay.

THERAPIST: Oh, you poor thing, Louise.

CLIENT: I have never had anything so uncomfortable. I thought everything else was really brutal but this is so uncomfortable. [0:02:10.5]

THERAPIST: And there's nothing they can do, it's just a waiting game, right?

CLIENT: Yeah. I stay in I try not to stay in bed all day, because I don't want to get pneumonia, but most of the day I have to lay in bed and I have to lay on my side, because I can't sit. Nothing is comfortable. The only chair in my house that's comfortable is the rocking chair, and I can only sit there for maybe a half hour.

THERAPIST: Okay, ah-huh. The rocking chair is the best though.

CLIENT: Yeah, at home, yeah it is, because I can, you know. I shouldn't say it's very comfortable because it's still uncomfortable, but I can rock myself up so I can get up on the walker, where on the kitchen chair set, I have to lean on the table and the table is glass, and I don't want the thing going flip. [0:03:14.8]

THERAPIST: Yeah. I'm wondering too if next time, if this chair might be better.

CLIENT: No, this is fine.

THERAPIST: That's okay.

CLIENT: It is, yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: You know? Yeah. And sitting in the bus there, that's kind of I don't know why they have to go on so many shortcuts.

THERAPIST: You feel every one huh?

CLIENT: Oh, yeah, you know?

THERAPIST: The bumping.

CLIENT: It's like the wheels on the bus go round and round, and you're up in the air and down.

THERAPIST: Oh my God, Louise, oh my God.

CLIENT: I says, "Okay!" So I totally ride with my jacket off and I have it underneath my ass. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Because you were just trying to get comfortable.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, God. Where was the pain, on a scale of one to ten, when you left the hospital, and where is it now? [0:04:19.6]

CLIENT: When I left the hospital it was -

THERAPIST: Ten being the highest.

CLIENT: It was ten when I left and it's been ten at home. So she says, (whiny) Why don't you go to the hospital? If the pain is ten, what are you supposed to do? I says, "You're supposed to go to the hospital. But guess what? I go to the hospital and they don't say okay. They say get her a room. I says, so, you know, what am I going to do minus my other kidney, my liver, my legs, you know? I said no, I'm not getting admitted again.

THERAPIST: Because you think they'll do more surgeries?

CLIENT: Yeah. Every time I go in there for Christ's sake. I go in for a hand surgery and I come out with a pacemaker.

THERAPIST: That really just freaked you out.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: That must have been so scary.

CLIENT: Because this guy, that was the chief cardiologist, I've seen him before over there and they kept telling me there's nothing wrong with my heart, and then all of a sudden, I've got to go run for a CAT scan or an ultrasound because they saw something on the film. I mean it's like, you know, and they did the angioplasty on me there. I think it was last year, if not the year before. Everything was fine but now, all of a sudden, I've got a heart murmur and my heart skips a beat. So, I mean, what's it do, come on all of a sudden? [0:06:04.3]

THERAPIST: They found it during surgery, was that the idea?

CLIENT: Yeah, during my hand surgery, my heart stopped and then it went beep, and then it did nothing, nothing, and then beep, beep, beep. So they said that those gaps in between, those stops, that they're going to have the heart cardiologist called in. So they called him while I was having the surgery, he assessed it and the next thing I know, he's telling me I'm not going home because I'm having a pacemaker put in. And poor Rebecca, she's out there waiting, all set to take me home, and the nurse says, I need to -

THERAPIST: You can go home.

CLIENT: No, I need you to come in the back, Louise wants to talk to you. So of course she comes in the back and she's sitting down next to me and the cardiologist is there and he says, "I'm not sending Louise home tomorrow because she's having a pacemaker." And she goes, "What? A pacemaker?" I says, yeah, it's done now, you know? I guess it was on the menu and I signed it off. [0:07:17.3]

THERAPIST: Kind of like you weren't even I mean, I guess obviously, you weren't expecting any of that.

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: And there was just quite a bit of shock.

CLIENT: It was.

THERAPIST: Is that what it was?

CLIENT: Nobody explained to me what a pacemaker is.

THERAPIST: Jesus.

CLIENT: What it's for and you know, and there.

THERAPIST: That is, that's amazing.

CLIENT: I knew my father had a pacemaker but I didn't, you know -

THERAPIST: But they didn't give you any information.

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: Or tell you why, how, how it works. Did they eventually do that? Did you…?

CLIENT: Well that night when I was, where they they had kept me overnight for it and one of the doctors came in about eleven o'clock, because I was having my crying jag there. He says, "What's the matter?" I said, "I don't know what the hell a pacemaker is."

THERAPIST: Good for you, I'm glad you said that.

CLIENT: I don't know what it does, what it's for. I said, "Do you think you can explain to me what's the purpose of it?" So he did, so I said okay. [0:08:24.8]

THERAPIST: And what was that? Did that do anything for you?

CLIENT: Yeah, you know, like if my heart stopped again it would keep my heart going.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: And then, the stitches were very rough looking but the scar is really an outside scar, but even though there's two more layers underneath with stitching, but they'll dissolve themselves. You know it was just, it was something that I wasn't expecting.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah.

CLIENT: You know? It really threw me for a loop.

THERAPIST: Yes, yes. Frightened you.

CLIENT: Yeah. And the soreness.

THERAPIST: And the what?

CLIENT: It was so sore.

THERAPIST: It was sore, okay.

CLIENT: And it still is to this day, sore. It's uncomfortable. If I go like certain ways, I feel like it's stretching the skin. [0:09:31.0]

THERAPIST: Okay. It must be hell to get used to.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I think, you know, you're saying, I'm not going back to the hospital, getting admitted. I imagine what you're getting at is that you ended up just feeling like, yeah, you don't know what could happen, what's to go next, what they could do, and that it was kind of a shock, you know, to one of the most sacred places in the body.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. It really was quite a shock.

THERAPIST: Did you have any kind of before they kind of clarified it for you, what was going through your mind about it? (phone rings) What kind of what were you imagining the pacemaker was?

CLIENT: I got a new cell phone but with the old number.

THERAPIST: That's some ringer, what is that? I'm going to make sure this thing is going. [0:10:46.8]

CLIENT: Well, they didn't complete the call.

THERAPIST: Did you get a number?

CLIENT: Yeah, it's my house.

ON THE PHONE: [0:11:01.5 to 0:11:20.1]

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: What number is that, by the way?

CLIENT: The old phone number that I had. The other one, I lost when I was in the hospital.

THERAPIST: Oh, they found it?

CLIENT: No. I have a brand new one.

THERAPIST: Okay. All right. But yeah, so I was asking you, what did you imagine the pacemaker meant before they clarified that stuff to you? What was going through your mind with that? [0:12:25.3]

CLIENT: Everything. And then after the surgery, I noticed I had like a big lump underneath the arm, near the heart, and I asked them what it was, because I still have it to this day. You can feel the lumps and they said that was my lymph nodes. So of course I was kind of afraid there because my mother had Hodgkin's Disease, which is cancer of the lymph nodes, so she had to have all the lymph nodes removed. So of course, you know, that's all I could think of was, you know? Okay, next, I'm developing Hodgkin's Disease.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know, all these things run through your mind.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah, yeah. Am I going to have my lymph nodes removed, do I have Hodgkin's?

CLIENT: Yeah. It was like you know, okay. It was kind of scary. [0:13:34.1]

THERAPIST: Oh yeah. Kind of?

CLIENT: Yeah, it was scary.

THERAPIST: It frightened the hell out of you.

CLIENT: So of course, then I have Mark telling me, "That's it, no more sex, that's it. I'm afraid what's going to happen, I'm afraid that I'm going to hurt you." I says, "Yeah, okay, fine." I said okay, that's another thing off my list. That lasted until Valentine's Day.

THERAPIST: I know, but you were saying that you were worried that that would mean the end of him wanting to have sex, for fear of hurting you. Making your heart stop, I guess, or something.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. I said don't worry, it will kick right back in, Mark. (chuckles).

THERAPIST: You're safer now.

CLIENT: Yeah, you know?

THERAPIST: You're safer now. [0:14:39.0]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And that lasted all of, what did you say, lasted all of a week?

CLIENT: Yeah, until Valentine's Day, and then we did it.

THERAPIST: How long had it been?

CLIENT: I don't know, maybe the week before.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay, okay. Because I know you guys were on a dry spell for a while because of Deborah.

CLIENT: Deborah.

THERAPIST: But now you've got a lot more time to yourself.

CLIENT: Everything is going good.

THERAPIST: With Mark?

CLIENT: Yeah. Sometimes he's an ass-hole, like he's being an ass-hole this week.

THERAPIST: He is?

CLIENT: Yeah. He's at the house now, looking for a joint to smoke, and I said, "Tell him there isn't any, bye." You know? Tough shit, you come back when I'm home. Like, frig it. That's the way I look at it now. Mm-hmm. I'm calling the shots now. [0:16:07.9]

THERAPIST: You're calling the shots now.

CLIENT: Yeah. If he don't like it, it's tough shit. He's not the only guy in the world, you know? I'm getting brave in my old age. (chuckles) Ah-huh.

THERAPIST: Calling the shots, like you were saying last week. I guess with Deborah, I was thinking last week, you were saying, Deborah, vamoose, I want to be alone.

CLIENT: Yeah. Oh yeah, I threw them all out that day.

THERAPIST: Mary too, yeah.

CLIENT: What can I say, I'm a bitch. I had it out with Mary again the other day. Oh, you want me to you know, when I ask her to take me shopping, I don't know what she doesn't understand, you know? Shopping, morning, that's when I go shopping, in the morning. My afternoons, I generally spend with Mark, when he's around, and my nights are for my TV shows, sorry. But Mary thinks, you know, when she gets up at three o'clock, that means that we should go out at three o'clock, shopping, and not come home until seven, eight, maybe nine o'clock. No.

THERAPIST: Three o'clock is her morning. [0:17:36.8]

CLIENT: Yeah. So she got thrown out the other night, and she rang my doorbell. I said no, I don't need you to take me shopping.

THERAPIST: What time did she come by?

CLIENT: Eight o'clock at night. I'm in my nightgown.

THERAPIST: Whoa.

CLIENT: She wanted me to help her out, fill out some papers for housing.

THERAPIST: She comes over at eight p.m. to do that?

CLIENT: Yeah. I said, "Mary, I'm in my nightgown, I'm going to bed, goodbye." Well what about my papers? I says, "Go down to housing and have the lady fill them out for you." I was pissed.

THERAPIST: Had you been waiting all day for her?

CLIENT: Yeah. So, she offered to take me Tuesday, and I said, "No, Rebecca is taking me, at least I can depend on Rebecca." Oh, tell Rebecca not to come, I'll take you there. You know? I didn't know you meant nine o'clock. I said, "I didn't mean nine o'clock, I just mean in the morning.

THERAPIST: In the morning, before noon, yeah. [0:18:47.1]

CLIENT: Not twelve-thirty, not one-thirty, not two-thirty, you know? It's nice of people. Like Mark, it was nice that he called me, you know?

THERAPIST: What do you mean?

CLIENT: Well, he probably went down the house to see, you know, if I was home, so he could smoke a joint.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Oh, you mean just that phone call was about all that?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay.

CLIENT: I was here, what did you do with the pot? I said they hid it. Well, where is it? I said, I'm not telling him, forget it. If he wants, he can call back, if he don't want it, it will still be there Monday. If it ain't there Monday, it will still be there Tuesday. That's the way I look at it.

THERAPIST: I'm thinking to myself, they're looking for it right now. [0:19:48.5]

CLIENT: (laughs) They probably are, they probably are, mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: Where did she hide it? They're going to play a game of hide and go seek.

CLIENT: They're probably going through my underwear drawer. That's like the other day, he was looking for a Percocet. I wouldn't give him one. Deborah said when I left, he went all through my pill box, that you know, you arrange the five days in a row.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Deborah's like, "He was looking through that box like no tomorrow, ma." I said, "That's okay, because there wasn't any in there was there?"

THERAPIST: And you usually keep it from him? Can you hide it well enough from him?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm, oh yeah, you know? I says oh, it's tough luck isn't it, nowadays, you know? You get a pacemaker and you grow a set of balls. I said, I think that's fantastic. (laughs)

THERAPIST: You think it's related huh? What do you think? [0:20:50.4]

CLIENT: I don't give a shit anymore.

THERAPIST: Wow, that really put a scare into you.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. Petty shit don't bother me, that's petty shit.

THERAPIST: Does it feel like a brush with death, is that…?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: I mean, not to put words in your mouth.

CLIENT: In a way, you know?

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: It just makes you feel a lot closer to the man upstairs, but then again, I also felt an awful lot of heat, but I said listen, I don't want to go where my father lives. Today was his one year anniversary. I'm in mourning.

THERAPIST: Of his death.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: It was today. You didn't find out you found out that week though, right?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: It was, you found out like a while later.

CLIENT: Oh, yeah, Paul was like six months later, or a year and six months. I don't know, it was one of those, but I think it was six months. [0:21:55.2]

THERAPIST: But your father's is today.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Tell me, what are you feeling?

CLIENT: I don't feel anything. I mean, maybe I should send some black roses or something, but other than that, no.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh.

CLIENT: It don't phase me. I don't know whether I should send my son a sympathy card, saying the death of your father, and then I should put, in small letters, by the way your real father passed away too.

THERAPIST: He probably doesn't even know.

CLIENT: No. He wouldn't give two shits if he did or not, because after all, he's an (inaudible). He changed his name. I guess not only did my father rape me but, you know, I must have carried his child. [0:23:12.7]

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, you carried his child. Was that after and that was after your mother had left him, or no, Heath?

CLIENT: Oh, my mother had left him way before Heath was born. Oh, yeah. Oh, well.

THERAPIST: He thought it was his.

CLIENT: I swear he did, you know?

THERAPIST: It's almost as if it wasn't even a thought, it was a fact.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. What did he do? Nothing. Mm-hmm, yeah, who knows? So what else is happening? [0:24:14.3] (laughs)

THERAPIST: Well, you just said a mouthful, that's a lot there, that's a lot there. The rape, the pregnancy, your dad taking him on as his dad.

CLIENT: I can vividly remember, like it was I knew it was after midnight, and I could hear my father's keys jingling, and I says, "That's my father," and the lady says to me, "No, visiting hours are over." I says, "I don't care, that's my father coming down the hallway." I says, "I can hear his keys." He had a big thing of, you know, like a bit key ring with all these -

THERAPIST: One of those circles, with all the keys on it. [0:25:11.4]

CLIENT: Yeah, with all the friggin keys filled on it. And then he had another one attached to that, so it was like, you know? I said, "Yeah, that's my father, I can tell, just by walking down the hall and hearing those keys jingle, that's my father." Sure enough, it was my father. He had them have the nursery, he had them bring the baby into the room. Oh, yeah, you know? He didn't even come up and see Deborah. Yeah, he saw Heath. Even though Troy and I were still together at the time.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: It was like Heath was his.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You know?

THERAPIST: Yeah. Heath was his.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, like he had fathered him.

CLIENT: Yeah. And then once Troy and I got split up, oh my God, he was all over Heath like, you know, flies around horseshit. [0:26:19.5]

THERAPIST: Yes, like it was him taking custody.

CLIENT: But hey, what can you do? Oh, yeah, yeah. Why should he have to sleep down here and suffer from not sleeping, because she can't keep quiet all night. Deborah's would scream all night long, no matter what you did for her, it wasn't it didn't work.

THERAPIST: You couldn't soothe her, comfort her.

CLIENT: No. Put her down the other end of the bed, she's got her days and nights mixed up. I said where the hell do you think I've got time to do all this stuff and I've got another one at home that's only fourteen months old. Nowhere.

THERAPIST: No help? [0:27:21.3]

CLIENT: No, no. Just Louise, with toothpicks holding up my eyelids like this, you know? Oh, take her for a walk in the carriage. I says yeah, and where do I put the other one? I would be if it was in this day and era, I would have probably Heath hanging on my back, on one of those little back things, and Deborah hanging from my chest, you know? Oh, sure, I'd be the one with the broken back. As long as you know she's quiet and everything and her diaper is not wet and ba-ba-ba-ba, just put her in a little bassinette thing and put it inside the bathtub and close the bathroom door. Yeah, okay.

THERAPIST: Who was saying that, the doctors?

CLIENT: The doctor. Well, you know, I'm in the basement. That God-damned screaming carried up all through the shaft. [0:28:25.8]

THERAPIST: You could hear it.

CLIENT: Yeah, you know? So, it was like okay, what do you do?

THERAPIST: There was absolutely zero comforting her, a way to get her to regulate.

CLIENT: She didn't like being held, she didn't like being pushed in the carriage. I said, you could run out of a tank of gas by just riding around, trying to get her to sleep in the car.

THERAPIST: She would just continually be in distress.

CLIENT: Yeah, mm-hmm. I mean, you give this kid a bottle after a bottle after a bottle and she still didn't shut up.

THERAPIST: You must have felt so helpless.

CLIENT: She was allergic to the first formula, then we tried another formula, that didn't work either. Oh, it was just, it was brutal.

THERAPIST: Nothing you did worked.

CLIENT: It was, you know, she didn't want a pacifier, she didn't want to rock in the swing.

THERAPIST: Nothing. [0:29:33.1]

CLIENT: Nothing, mm-hmm, yeah. It was so nice, you know?

THERAPIST: And Troy had left by then?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: How long into your pregnancy was Troy there?

CLIENT: He left six months after she was born.

THERAPIST: Oh, he did, okay.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. From the time she was born, until in December, he was taking Heath up north. His excuse was, you know, so that Heath could sleep well, they'd go up to visit his parents and then he started fooling around with the sixteen year-old neighbor next door.

THERAPIST: Right, yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: That ended that deal.

THERAPIST: You had found out and that's what ended it.

CLIENT: Yeah, mm-hmm. So, you know, so since then, it was like clear sailing for my father to just take Heath then, you know? [0:30:41.3]

THERAPIST: Yes. Yeah, Troy was out of the way.

CLIENT: Yeah. He'd take Heath upstairs at suppertime and let him sleep upstairs.

THERAPIST: Does Heath resemble Troy? Can you see a resemblance?

CLIENT: I do but people say no. They say he looks like me, which I don't see. He has his father's receding hairline and everything.

THERAPIST: You see the hair of Troy.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Anything else?

CLIENT: Well, he's got Troy's eyes and everything. Deborah, I don't know where the hell she got the blue eyes. I'm trying to think what neighbor might have had blue eyes. Ah-huh. No, his parents have blue eyes. [0:31:57.9]

THERAPIST: Is that right, Troy's, yeah, okay, okay.

CLIENT: His father had those blue eyes. Same with Darla, she's got blue eyes. But then again, Deborah has them, so… Yes, I finally got Darla is on an upbeat this week compared to last week, where she wanted to commit suicide. Oh, she was talking about her scores, and she's got a 3.7 score, which I guess is very high for the -

THERAPIST: The grade point average?

CLIENT: Yeah. She's going to be doing dual classes again, with the college courses. [0:33:00.7]

THERAPIST: Ah-huh. She's in what grade now?

CLIENT: She'll be going into the eleventh.

THERAPIST: Jesus, she's in tenth now. Is she taking she might be taking AP credit, college placement credit or something.

CLIENT: Yeah. She's doing great.

THERAPIST: She's better, she's feeling better this week?

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, much better, upbeat, than she had been the week before. She's still trying to get her father to let her come up and she told her father that she was sick of not being able to hear from her grandmother, when her grandmother was sick, having a heart problem and all this stuff. She's like, how am I supposed to find out if you don't let me call her and talk to her? Her and her boyfriend, are going out together on a date Saturday. They're going to the mall and to the movies with they generally don't allow them to go out together. Generally it's, you know, they have to be in the house, watching TV. I said oh, hey, you know, they've been together for a year. [0:34:50.2]

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah. The little shit. (chuckles)

THERAPIST: Yeah? What do you think of it?

CLIENT: I can't get over her. I tell you, if you ever seen him, he's as black as the ace of spades. Oh my God, the only way you'd find him definitely, at nighttime, he'd have to smile. Ah-huh.

THERAPIST: How has that been for you?

CLIENT: All right, I don't mind it, you know?

THERAPIST: You've dated a lot.

CLIENT: Yeah. I was showing him to Kelly yesterday, and I was showing oh, Darla had put a new picture of herself and then Deborah says, "Oh, this is a picture of her boyfriend." So Kelly looks at me. In the meantime, Dolores is in the apartment, which is Deborah's buddy.

THERAPIST: She's black.

CLIENT: Yeah. She says, "Boy, the apple doesn't fall from the tree there, huh? All three of you." I said, "What can I say?" You know? Once you go black, you never go back. I consider Mark a milk chocolate. He's not really black, black, black, but Darla's boyfriend really is.

THERAPIST: Ah-huh. [0:36:20.9]

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't know, Dolores is too.

THERAPIST: Black, black?

CLIENT: Yeah. She's got that really she has the cornrow hair and stuff. Of course, and Mark shaves his head, so…

THERAPIST: What is the color like for you? Is there any sort of significance to it, to the color?

CLIENT: No, because Rob was very dark, that I dated. I don't know. I mean, black, black, black was really something that you could really say, hey Lola, look who I'm dating. (laughs)

THERAPIST: Lola you think about huh? What would Lola…? [0:37:24.3]

CLIENT: Oh, that killed her, that killed her, and I know she went and told my father because he didn't show up for the christening, he didn't show up for any of that. Neither did Heath.

THERAPIST: The christening?

CLIENT: For Darla, because Rob's family was going.

THERAPIST: Oh, I see, I see. Because you were dating a black man.

CLIENT: Yeah, yeah.

THERAPIST: That was enough for them not to show up.

CLIENT: And, you know, plus his family went to the church and all that stuff. Holy Baptist black people.

THERAPIST: He went to a Baptist church.

CLIENT: Yeah and you know, we had it at my church, even though it's a Protestant church, they like to do a lot of that singing and more singing and more singing. I mean, yeah, we're at church a whole half a day for Christ's sake. [0:38:28.9]

THERAPIST: Your old church.

CLIENT: Not my church but the black people.

THERAPIST: Rob?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Okay, yeah, okay. How are you doing?

CLIENT: Okay. I took a pain pill before I left, yeah. I'm holding them.

THERAPIST: The readjustment in your seat is…

CLIENT: That's like we had a meeting at the building the other day, they were giving us new keys, those fob keys where you just flash them by this black thing and it beeps and the door automatically opens.

THERAPIST: A fob key?

CLIENT: Yeah. It's a round key, and we have this like little black thing with a red light on it, and you pass your key.

THERAPIST: Just pass it in front of it.

CLIENT: Yeah, and the door [0:39:36.0]

THERAPIST: It's all electronic?

CLIENT: Yeah. Well, mine didn't work, half of them didn't work for people, so they have to return them. But now, they sent us out a survey thing, activities for the new year. Dolores put down stripper pole. (laughs)

THERAPIST: As your service coordinator?

CLIENT: The housing authority.

THERAPIST: As your service coordinator, reach out to community partners to provide needed resources, and I'm looking for resident input into programming that would be helpful, interesting, or stimulating. It would be useful to get a feel from your perspective, of the types of programming you would like to see happen here in your building, and that you would attend. Please take a moment to fill out this brief survey in order for me to better serve you. There will be a drop off box in the main lobby. [0:40:46.0]

CLIENT: But now, a lot of want to go to all these different things, but they're all held at the main center, and 99 percent of us don't drive, so how do we get to the main center? You walk up the street and take a bus? So now all of a sudden, these things are going to be -

THERAPIST: This isn't they wouldn't do it at your building?

CLIENT: Now they're going to do it at our building. So we want like, you know, classes, we want tai chi, we want to go for the tickets, oh yeah.

THERAPIST: Because they have a fund or something, that will fund this?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay, oh wow, that's nice.

CLIENT: Card games, strip poker.

THERAPIST: Strip poker?

CLIENT: Yeah. (chuckles) I want a gardening group because I want to plant a garden, and we have enough property there to have a space and a garden. I want a garden. [0:41:59.3]

THERAPIST: That will be great, yeah.

CLIENT: They have walking groups, they have beginners and all that stuff. Yeah, how to date black men.

THERAPIST: How do date black men, yeah.

CLIENT: I'll teach that course.

THERAPIST: You'll lead the seminar?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Maybe you can get Kelly to attend that.

CLIENT: Oh, shit, yeah. She's been over every day, "Can I get you anything at the store?"

THERAPIST: Is that right?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Oh.

CLIENT: I was like, just the newspapers, because that's all I really, you know? Except for one day, she went and picked up my prescriptions. [0:42:50.3]

THERAPIST: If there's hope for racial harmony in the world, you've the fact that you've got -

CLIENT: (sings) We are family.

THERAPIST: You've got Kelly to somehow turn the corner on your relationship with Mark and you.

CLIENT: I went up and saw Elliott boy, (sings), Oh, Elliott boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. And Elliott boy has increased my methadone to fifteen units at a time, instead of ten units at a time, so that's not too bad. So he says, "Well what you can do, since I already wrote your prescription out and you got it last week," he says, "you're going to run short." He says, "So just let me know four days ahead of time and I'll write it out for you." I says yeah but, you know, you can't just call it into the drugstore if it's a written prescription. I mean, you know, at the drug, yeah.

THERAPIST: Yeah, there's [0:44:04.9]

CLIENT: Yeah. He says, "I'll mail it to you…," he says, "… and then you take it to the drugstore." I says whoa, Jesus Elliott boy, you're really getting in there, huh? You're really up there with the stuff.

THERAPIST: Elliott boy on the ball.

CLIENT: So, I had to have the wound nurse come in, because I had an open hole in my backside from -

THERAPIST: A bedsore?

CLIENT: Yeah, a bedsore. So she had to put a pad on it, it's like a Dua Derm it's called. So, she said, "How's the visiting nurse and physical therapy coming?" I said, "Well, the physical therapist didn't get to come last week." She says, "How come?" I says, "Well, it was Valentine's Day and I was busy get laid." I said, who wants to… Elliott boy almost fell out the fucking door. (laughs) She said, "Well I'm glad one of us was getting laid," and the doctor says, "Yeah, I am too." [0:45:21.3]

THERAPIST: So it was him, the nurse.

CLIENT: (inaudible). And I'm the one that THERAPIST: Elliott boy liked that one huh?

CLIENT: Yeah. I said no, I said she wasn't getting in, no way. And after all… (laughs)

THERAPIST: Elliott boy is going to need a pacemaker.

CLIENT: He is, especially when I told him three times, I said, "But it was all the same guy." Poor Elliott.

THERAPIST: Elliott doesn't know what he signed up for.

CLIENT: You can call me any time now.

THERAPIST: Elliott doesn't know what he signed on for.

CLIENT: No, he doesn't. I think he's finding out.

THERAPIST: He's finding out.

CLIENT: Slowly but surely.

THERAPIST: Have you seen the psychiatrist? CLIENT: I think I have. I'm not too sure but I think I have. I know I've got to go see her next week.

THERAPIST: Okay, okay.

CLIENT: Next Tuesday.

THERAPIST: Next Tuesday. And this time works okay for you?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Good, okay.

CLIENT: So, is it quarter past ten or ten?

THERAPIST: Quarter past ten, yeah, yeah. I mean, because that will be better, because first of all, I'll get here around 10:00, 10:05, and it will give ten minutes or so for the heat to come on, and so it's not freezing in here.

CLIENT: All right. Okay, let me head out and roll down the hill.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah. Yeah, you should tell them to pick you up back there or the other one.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: Because it will be a hell of a lot less walking.

CLIENT: Yeah. [0:47:24.0]

THERAPIST: Can I help you in any way?

CLIENT: I'm supposed to use the walker to pull myself up.

THERAPIST: To pull yourself up, yeah. And did the physical therapist come this week?

CLIENT: Yesterday, and the nurse is coming between one and one-thirty today.

THERAPIST: What does the physical therapist do with you at this point?

CLIENT: She comes in, takes my blood pressure, checks my respiratory, and then writes in her notebook and that's that.

THERAPIST: That's it?

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: They can't do anything else right now?

CLIENT: Well, -

THERAPIST: That's what the physical therapist does?

CLIENT: Yeah. I have three exercises to do, sitting in a chair. I'm supposed to march thirty times.

THERAPIST: Just standing still?

CLIENT: Yeah. Just sitting down.

THERAPIST: Oh, sitting down, okay. [0:48:30.5]

CLIENT: And then I'm supposed to do, in and out, sitting down, and then lifting and lowering my leg sitting down.

THERAPIST: Lifting and lowering your leg, okay.

CLIENT: To get it up to, you know, how ever high you can get it.

THERAPIST: How have those been to do?

CLIENT: They're a breeze.

THERAPIST: Okay. Yeah, that's behind. You're probably way ahead at this point.

CLIENT: I'm way ahead of her, except I was using my cane and she yelled, "Did I say you could use your cane?"

THERAPIST: Oh, instead of your walker, okay, yeah.

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