Nursing It Yo!

The opening episode of season 3, “Game On”, of the dark comedy, Nurse Jackie, aired last night. This show continues to deliver. Nurse Jackie stars Edie Falco as Jackie Peyton, a sharp-tongued, New York City ER nurse who is a flawed, complex character – just like our current health care system.

Nurse Jackie is a drug user who is a highly functional nurse, mom, wife, and friend. At the end of season 2 she’s busted, so to speak, by her husband who then tells her best friend. Executive producer Liz Brixius remarks about season 3 “She knows that people now know, and it’s about damage control. It’s not about secrecy anymore. It’s about managing information.”

She’s also an expert at deflection. Her reserve seems bottomless. Every episode you squirm as the tension builds and you wonder when or if Nurse Jackie will ever bottom out.  The story line of this character, a high functioning drug user, makes the rest of us wonder about the friend/spouse/co-worker /family member we know or suspect of being a drug user, to sit in this gray area when we really only want to see the lives of drug users in black and white. In other words are they using or not using.

In an interview, executive producer, Linda Wallem said “We had to wear her down because the one thing that I am not interested in doing is telling the story of a conventional addiction, followed by a 12-step recovery program. They’re as ubiquitous as Target,” Brixius says. “We’re interested in somebody who is truly haunted and still high-functioning. The problem is that Jackie herself is like Robocop. She can keep going while the things around her fall apart.”

All Saints, the New York City hospital this show is set in, is facing the same economic crisis that has resulted in forced hospital closings. Mrs. Akalitus, the hospital administrator, played brilliantly by actor Anna Deavere Smith, threatens the ER nursing staff to shape up or worry about their jobs being replaced by one of the thousands of unemployed experienced nurses who are ready to work. The script points out the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, a real live controversial closure in April 2010 in NYC. She nobly states before threatening them that “Hospitals come and go. But the sick and injured keep getting sick and injured.”

Here’s a tease. This LA Times interview of the exuberant, hilarious, nursing student (who works closely with Nurse Jackie), Zoey Barkow, played by Merritt Wever, will start blogging this season. The title of her blog, “Nursing It Yo!’

[caption id="attachment_10465" align="alignleft" width="225"] Edie Falco as

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

It’s hard to think of anything these days except Japan–and now Libya.   We are left paralyzed by a steady stream of images that couldn’t be more real and impossible at the same time.  We social mammals are hard-wired to experience the pain we witness in others and modern media brings that high-definition anguish into our homes 24/7.  It is our blessing and our curse.

It is at these worst of times that I am reminded that there is no such thing as “private health.”  All health, all dis-ease is public.  We sink or swim together.  And if I needed to be reminded, once again, of just how connected we social creatures are, I could just watch this video of the two dogs who miraculously survived the total destruction of their town, their family, their world as they knew it.  One of these dogs was badly injured. The other would not leave its side when help finally arrived.  Their bravery and loyalty, and their rescue has lifted broken hearts all around the world.

If you haven’t seen these dogs, click on this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3TM9GL2iLI&feature=email  —or click on it again to discover another “miracle.”  You’ll find you that you actually can speak Japanese, in fact, you can speak Dog.  I put the word miracle in quotes, because your innate comprehension of what you see isn’t the result of your having developed supernatural powers.  You are, however, tapping into are the very ancient, very natural powers of non-verbal fluency that have connected us to each other and to all creatures for millions of years.  When we are left speechless at the sight of wonderful and horrible things, it is this visual, visceral understanding that tells us everything we need to know.

It reminds us that we humans are not the only citizens of this shrinking, shaking, sinking planet.  We will never look at Japan or nuclear power the same way again.  And I hope we never look at dogs the same way again, either.  There is so much we don’t know.  We must respect that.  We must relearn to recognize love and honor wherever we find it.  We must look more closely at each other and hear what is said and not said.  Our ability to connect and have compassion for each other that is the only clean energy we can count on.

And maybe that’s why the images of the disasters in Japan–and Libya–are so disturbing.

Meg Daley Olmert

Senior Fellow and Author of Made for Each Other, The Biology of the Human-Animal Bond (DaCapo, 2009)

It’s hard to think of anything these days except