The Turkey Bag

The Turkey Bag

There was a tire iron wedged between her ribs. That was the only way she could describe the pain in her chest. She knew all the technical terms that would be used to describe her condition; pneumothorax, mediastinal shift, pleural effusion, pulmonary metastasis. She remembered learning these terms in nursing school. She understood the patho-physiology and could have easily written a narrative note describing what she thought a patient with this disorder was feeling. Lucy had watched many of her own patients go through this same pain. She was ashamed now that she had been so indifferent as to ask them to give it a numeric rating.
“On a scale of 1 – 10 with 10 being the very worst pain and 1 being very little pain, how would you rate your pain?” She would have called this intractable pain. She would have felt appropriate empathy for the patient, made the call to the doctor and adjusted the pain medicine regime. She knew now that her patients never really told her what they were feeling. There were no words to describe this feeling. It would be impossible to put a numeric value on something that consumed your entire life. She had become unable to differentiate one toxic sensation from the other. Pain, fear, sadness, loneliness, and hopelessness… it all felt the same now. Until today, she never really understood the true meaning of suffering. Now she knew. She knew that suffering was pain without meaning, pain without hope for comfort; pain so palpable that it pierced your soul. Suffering had become an entity within her that consumed every thought and movement. All energy was focused on achieving some level of comfort.

She wanted to cry out but this would require a deep breath. The tiny puffs of air she lived on now were enough to infuriate every raw nerve in her thoracic cavity. She feared a deep breath might cause her chest to split open. She tried sitting, lying in all positions, walking… but any movement only served to exacerbate the already raging ache and increase her need for oxygen which had become a critically depleted commodity. She desperately wanted to weep but this too would require deeper, more frequent breaths. There was no relief, no release. “So many things the living take for granted.” She thought. She had tried to describe the pain to the doctors and nurses. She had tried to talk to friends about it. She was very stoic with her suffering; never demonstrative of her misery.

She sat motionless in her favorite chair looking out on the Beautiful Texas summer. It was June. The sun was warm. The cicadas were singing without regard for rhythm or melody. It was her thirty-seventh year of life and again she saw the world recover from the harsh, killing winter. The last of the spring blooms were swept away in a warm breeze. All around her was life. “Why can’t my life regenerate with the spring as it did for all other living things?” she thought. “Why?” and What if?” had become an obsessive pastime. As her body became less functional, she was left only with her thoughts. Her mind gave her as much misery as her collapsing lungs. She had always loved the springtime. But this final spring of her life only made her more bitter; angry that it was her last; angry that there was no relief from the relentless pain. Any pleasure that did accidentally come into her life was quickly swept away by the paralyzing knowledge that this was probably the last time she would have this experience. More than anything else, her mind tortured her with loneliness.

Her visitors had become few and far between. There were the obligatory visits with the relentless small talk that people feel compelled to make at a deathbed.
“Your color is good today.”
“How are you feeling today?”

“Are you in much pain?”

There was never any question as to the existence of her pain but everyone seemed very interested in the degree of her pain. Her stock answer had become “not too bad today”. That seemed to comfort the visitors so they could move onto the next irrelevant subject. Some came with good intentions, offering to mow the lawn or clean the windows. They did not realize she would rather look at a shaggy lawn through dusty windows than suffer such obvious displays of her humiliating helplessness. Everyone who saw her tried hard to conceal the pity but for most, the shock of her ravaged body was too much to hide. Lucy had come to call it the “cancer look”. She imagined the conversations that took place after their visits.
“She is so young.”

“Yes but she has smoked for more than ten years.”

“And her lifestyle was so crazy. She never took care of herself.”

And then there were the inevitable do-gooders. These were the ones who in spite of her urgent pleas to let the maid do the laundry, insisted on rummaging through her dirty panties. Lucy had explained how humiliating it was for visitors to do the housework. They would laugh and send her back to bed as if it were not her place to tell them what they could and could not do for her. There were some sincere idiots who held clean laundry with higher regard than self-respect. After a while Lucy gave up her last bits of dignity and let them invade her home.

Lucy was cordial with all visitors even those that were blatantly self-serving. Even an insincere visit was better than sitting alone with your own thoughts all day. At least if the do-gooders invaded she would have something other than her own situation to be angry about that day. She had been home bound for more than two weeks. At first the visitors came in flocks. Even people she had frequently shared intimate conversation with in routine life came with a companion. It was evident that no one wanted to be alone with the poor dying woman. And they certainly did not want any profound conversations with someone who was facing the inherently feared mortality. But the rotten breath and bloody emesis during deathbed small talk had quickly separated the friends from the hypocrites. She was hurt to find she had very few friends. The few that did still visit stayed only for a few minutes explaining “I won’t stay long. I know you need your rest”. But she could not rest. The pain never stopped long enough for her to fall asleep. She wanted so much to talk about her fears, her pain, and her loss of hope. She wanted someone to hear her. No one would listen. She wanted someone to hold her like a child and tell her not to be afraid. But no one would get close to her. No one would touch her. She longed for a human touch. She had come to look forward to her daily bed bath. At first it had been a degrading experience but soon it became her only physical contact with the living. She was not only losing her life, she had been abandoned by the living.

She watched the last of the sacred white dogwood blooms drift away with the south wind. She wished it would blow through her and inflate her aching lungs. With each breath she smelled the death consuming her. A putrid stench of decomposing flesh seeped from her with each tiny breath. Deep and eradicable, there was no escape. Warm bitter blood bubbled in the back of her throat leaving a sour metallic taste on her pallet. There was a pile of bloody tissues beside her, evidence that things were progressing quickly. She could taste the tumor; tiny, silent burps of rotten meat. Inside her chest, she sensed the entropy, life turning on itself. Hyperbolic replication guttered out needed systems, flooding cells, drowning them; drowning her. Where was this merciful God that so many believed in? The dogwoods reminded her of the chaplain’s visit. Lucy had been anxious when he called. She knew he would come alone and they would be able to talk about her fear. Perhaps he could give her some of the answers she needed to find peace with her life and her death.
She asked him “Why has God let this happen to me? I understand we all have to die but why is there so much pain involved? Why must I suffer so much?” He looked to “The Book of Job” to explain God’s excuse for human suffering. This only infuriated her and confirmed her suspicion that if there was a God he was certainly not merciful and probably had a very bad sense of humor.

“What is God trying to teach me with this?” she had asked him. “If I am the victim of some cosmic gambling game between God and Satan then Satan wins! My faith is gone. If God is trying to prove that I am a faithful servant, he picked the wrong girl. If I keep the faith as you say I should then, according to the Book of Job, even if I am healed from this painful affliction, something even worse will be put upon me. I am not up for the challenge. I am tired. I will gladly deny my faith in God for one more comfortable day… one comfortable breath.” She had refused to repent her sins and refused any further chaplain visits. He picked up his Bible in silence and respected her wishes… not even offering a final prayer.

Light gathered chaos; chaos shaped destiny; now chaos had become destiny. Her body, once warm and vibrant, had become her prison. She longed to walk in the wind and feel the warm sun on her skin. She craved the touch of her lover but he too had abandoned her. She longed to cry out, and weep long deep sobs to release the pain of the broken heart but the tumor would not allow any demonstration of emotion.


Lucy had never been an advocate for euthanasia. “It is a cowardly way out.” She thought. “But yesterday I lost control of my bladder. I smell like carrion. I look like a corpse. All dignity was lost when she asked her nurse to wipe her butt for her. She had watched people die before. She knew how long this could take. She never realized so much pain was involved in dying. The living could never understand because there are no words to describe what it feels like. Besides, trying to explain would require too much energy. And she really did not believe anyone wanted to hear it anyway. It was easier to just sit quietly inside yourself and feel the pain.

For a while the pain was a comfort. It reminded her that she was still alive. “As long as I can feel, then I am alive.” She had been reluctant to take the pain medicine; afraid that killing the pain would kill her too. She had come to associate life with suffering and nothing else. There was no other sensation. She remembered feeling warmth. She remembered what a cool breeze felt like. She remembered what it felt like to be in love. She remembered the comfort of cool sheets on a warm summer night and the warm passionate touch of her lover. She knew she would never feel these things again. She knew that until her final breath, this was the way she was going to feel. Everything that had been life to her had already died. To the living it would seem that Lucy had only a short time left to live. Her body was shutting down from the inside out. Her hands and feet had become cold and blue. Her breaths had become quick and shallow. All color had faded from her face. She knew the signs of approaching death. Lucy knew she could not last more than another day or two. To the dying… a day is like a lifetime. She could not wait that long.

She had the usual arsenal of pain medicine. Morphine, valium, soma. She had started having seizures a few days ago and they had added Phenobarbital to her daily regime. She had not eaten in several days so she knew the pills would absorb quickly but what if someone found her before it was finished. She did not have a gun and did not have the strength to hang herself. It had to be the drugs but she needed to make sure it worked quickly. The nurse could visit at anytime. Although the nurse would probably send some stronger medicine after her visit… Lucy did not want to wait that long. Her mind was made up. There was no stopping now. For the first time in weeks… Lucy had some hope for comfort and peace.With every bit of strength she moved herself into her wheelchair. She slowly wheeled herself into the kitchen. She poured all her drugs into a blender. She added a cup of Jose Quervo, some ice, and the last of the margarita mix. Her salvation blended into a cool frosty reminder of happy days. From the cabinet she pulled out a small cardboard box. In spite of the pain, she was now hopeful, even excited, she laughed at the contents of the box. “Reynolds Turkey Bag”. “Even Tolstoy would take joy in this irony.” She thought. The salvation elixir had now pureed into a creamy green treat. She poured it into a frosty mug from the freezer. Just for laughs she put a little paper umbrella into the glass. “Music” she thought. “I need appropriate music for this.” Lucy loved all music but for her final exit nothing but a good Bob Dylan tune would set the right atmosphere. She rummaged through her old CD’s. It was amazing how good she felt. She had just started sipping on the cocktail. Even though she had put enough opiates and barbiturates in it to kill King Kong she knew it could not be working this fast. The pain was no better. Every move, every breath still sent bolts of pain through every nerve fiber in her chest. This final burst of excitement was due to nothing other than the hope… the hope of comfort… the hope of peace. She put in her CD, selected the chosen song and programmed the player to repeat the song. “He not busy being born is busy dying”. Bob growled out his ballet “It’s alright Ma, I’m only dying.” She was too weak now to move back into her favorite chair. She was afraid of falling during the transfer and possibly spilling her cocktail. She sat outside on her back porch in the wheel chair she had so adamantly objected to not long ago. She looked again at the life around her. “I will miss life.” She thought. She gulped the last few swallows of the salvation cocktail. Her arms were becoming heavy now. Remarkably… the pain was gone in her chest. She took a few deep breaths. For the first time in days she could not smell the cancer that now grew in her esophagus. She caught a faint scent of the rosemary she had planted last season. She wished she could see it but could tell from the scent it was thriving in the warm Texas sun. She felt the breeze on her face and took a final deep breath of life. She slipped the turkey bag over her head and used the twist tie to tighten it around her neck. Her arms had become very heavy from the overdose. From behind the oven safe plastic bag she took one final look at the world. She felt the weight of her cachectic body sink deeper into the wheelchair. Her chest rose to take a breath and the bag formed tighter across her face. Then… the nausea hit her. She realized she had made a terrible mistake. She could feel the toxic pharmacopoeia churning in her cancer- ridden stomach. She had not added anything to combat nausea to her salvation cocktail. She could feel the chemicals slowing her heartbeat down. There was no turning away from final exit now but she did not want to choke on her own vomit. She tried to reach the bag to pull it from her head so the fast approaching vomit would not be trapped in her mouth and throat but it was too late. The drugs were having the expected effect. Her body was paralyzed. She was trapped. Trapped inside her turkey bag with nothing to do but wait. She felt the undigested remainder of the margarita slowly boil into her gaping mouth. There was no place for it to go. Her final breath of air had caused the turkey bag to form a tight seal around her lips. Her attempts to breath were scant but she knew another useless gasp was inevitable. The overdose was suppressing the fear. She had no pain. If she could breath she would have laughed at the predicament she had put herself in. “I should be unconscious by now.” She thought. But her mind was clear, as clear as it had ever been. “The mind must be the last thing to go. This really sucks.” Outside the turkey bag she heard Dylan’s rusty vocal chords belching out hisown philosophy on death and dying. “I should have picked a different song. Another bad decision.” Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, and Mama Cass had all died of overdose induced aspiration. “I wish I had remembered that before I put this damn bag on my head. I am glad I will be dead when they find me. I would hate to be alive to hear what people would say about the crazy nurse who died with a turkey bag on her head” She tried to resist but her urge to breath was too great. She took a final breath, pulling the acidic vomit into her lungs. Her body was now heavy and totally paralyzed but the irritation of her bronchi sent her into uncontrollable coughing spasms that created more intense gasps which pulled even more of the gastric acids from her mouth into her lungs. She had intended to keep her eyes closed while she died but reflexes caused them to open. To her horror she could no longer see through the turkey bag.The inside was smeared with bloody vomit that now stung her eyes. “It won’t be long now.” She told herself. She tried to close her eyes to keep from looking at the disaster she had created but the bag was too tight. Her eyes remained open. The sun was bright in the late afternoon but it was quickly becoming dark. Inside the bag the lights dimmed. Her body writhed and twitched but she could feel nothing but the burning tonic infiltrating her lungs. She looked for the light; the proverbial tunnel that would lead her to salvation. “Perhaps there is no salvation for cowards.” was her final thought. The final vision of her life was the bloody vomit that smeared the inside of her Reynolds Turkey Bag. Finally her mind was at peace. A few final convulsions, useless attempts her body made to spew the emesis from her lungs and she was still.