Joe

My roommate, Joe Manzini, was 79. He had prostate cancer, was incontinent and had just recently been weaned off a trach. Joe had been a heavy smoker. I say had been, but in fact he was still known to sneak a cigarette outside on the patio every now and then. He was a bachelor and had virtually no family except a nephew that visited him once in a while. Joe had been at Silver Lake for seven years. Seven years! I really felt sorry for him until I realized what a pain in the butt he was. The reason we were roommates was that we were both in what they call "contact isolation." I had MRSA and I think he did too, or maybe he had some other communicable disease, I'm not sure. In theory anyone walking into our room was supposed to don a mask and gown, but that almost never happened (in the ICU these rules had been adhered to religiously) . Anyway, Joe would wake up every morning and watch "The Sopranos". We each had a TV mounted on the wall in front of our respective beds. Apparently Joe was a little deaf because when he watched TV the volume could have awakened Jimmy Hoffa. And we were nowhere near Giants Stadium. So every morning there was a kind of "dueling broadcasts" in our room: it was "The Sopranos" vs "Pet Star". Then one day Kalman had the fantastic idea of bringing me the wireless headphones I used for my stereo at home, and they actually worked with my TV. I was able to hear well and block out Tony & Co. at the same time. Brilliant!
Because of his surreptitious smoking, Joe was getting worse every day. He was finally sent to Richmond University Hospital for about a week. When he got back, he was not the same guy. He didn't know where he was and didn't remember the names of nurses who had cared for him for seven years. He talked to himself a lot during the day, but at night he almost never shut up. Now, it's hard enough to sleep in a hospital or nursing home, what with nurses roaming the halls and the sound of call bells and ventilators filling the air. It's damn near impossible with a delirious old mafioso yakking all night about Big Nicky and Vinny the Moustache. It's a miracle I didn't strangle Joe. While he might have been a dangerous tough guy in his youth, somehow I never feel threatened by anyone wearing a diaper. Anyway, he talked about his years in the navy and when he met Frank Sinatra at his niece's wedding and all kinds of juicy stuff. It actually might have been somewhat interesting in a different context (even if a lot of it was baloney), but not at three in the morning.