The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman's Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay, and Disaster(11)

I mentioned once to her how I read that, even on the normal dose of hormones, the medical recommendation is to stay as healthy as possible through diet, exercise and abstaining from cigarettes and alcohol. Her thoughts on this were expressed by a prolonged period of deep laughter and, as she finally dabbed at her eyes, the comment: ‘Fuck me, that’s a bit like a comedy routine.’

Sandra has not had a cigarette in ten years, but while she has abstained from alcohol during the periods in which her health has been particularly bad, she allows herself ‘a [couple of] glass[es] of wine [and]/or Scotch’ every evening—against medical advice, given the condition of her liver.

Every day she wakes up early to the drone of the television in order to drown out the demons that wake alongside her. And though it’s only partly successful she gets up anyway and dresses nicely anyway and goes out to run a business anyway. She hustles for more work and repeatedly tears herself away from the Velcro of her mind to crack jokes and, after a long day of driving between jobs that range from the distasteful to the apocalyptic, she returns home to cook herself and Lana a fillet steak, administers that speedily nibbling dog a sliver of Prozac and pours herself her drinks after retiring to her couch to finally enjoy a few hours of peace.

Which is all to say that Sandra’s diagnoses, while true, are not truer than her will. But she’s long known that the body can be a liar. So when you ask her how she is doing, she will say, ‘Oh, you know, mustn’t grumble,’ and then scoop you up and rush you through the latest updates on her plans for beauty treatments or expanding her business.

‘Once I make up my mind to do something, I’m very powerful. Nothing can gild the lily. I’m very focused. It’s like smoking. Since I was diagnosed with lung problems, I stopped like that.’ Sandra snaps her fingers, and the gold heart dangling from her bracelet clinks against the chunky chain. ‘There’s no weaning or waning, it’s bingo. I’m a firm believer that you’re as powerful as your mind. Firm believer. Mmmm,’ she growls in agreement with herself.

Thirteen-hour work days and six-day work weeks and forty-eight-hundred-kilometre months and deep laughter from the woman whose health was judged, by three different specialist panels, too risky to waste a lung transplant on. All agreed that she would not survive the surgery, in part because of the condition of her liver. She told them, ‘I don’t want to die grasping for air. It’s better that I have the operation. I’m in a win-win: I either get the operation and I live, or if I die, I go out trying.’ Still, she was denied.

Her outrage at this was expressed once when she told me that one of her hoarding clients, an elderly man whose oxygen bottles were sitting in a pile of his own faeces, had mentioned that he had been offered a lung transplant but wasn’t sure he wanted it. She was utterly enraged recounting this to me: ‘He gets a chance and I don’t?!’ She could understand neither how he was a better candidate nor how one could be ambivalent about the proffered organ. ‘You take opportunities when you get them, baby!’

When I asked Sandra’s doctor what the average patient with her comorbid conditions would be doing each day, he replied that they would be at home, resting. I mentioned how much she takes on and her seemingly infinite energy, and he responded drolly but with clear fondness and admiration: ‘She should just be tired all the time. I can’t imagine what she would have been like without this.’ He stopped to ponder the counter-factual scenario for a moment before shaking his head. ‘It’s just incredible.’

Sandra’s lifestyle is not what runners would call a suicide pace. On the contrary, it is deeply sustaining. ‘I like to keep busy,’ I heard her explain to a client once. ‘Having a terminal illness, I find that it keeps my mind busy, I don’t think about it, and I stay positive.’ She has no more chances for a lung transplant. ‘None at all. Signed, sealed and delivered. How many times have they had me dead and buried? They should name me Lady Lazarus,’ she laughed. I had seen for myself the months of deep depression that followed the panel’s final decision. The months when she found that the less she did, the less she wanted to do, until she was, yes, willing herself to die.

‘Breathe through your mouth! Concentrate on it!’ Sandra commands as she turns the doorknob and leads the charge straight ahead into the dim apartment.

The first thing I notice is the flies. Their papery corpses are crisp underfoot. I wouldn’t say that the place is carpeted with flies, but there is a pretty consistent cover of them on the tiles. It is a small apartment. The laundry cupboard is located in the tiny foyer and the dryer door is opened wide. A basket of clean clothes is on the floor beside it.

I walk past a bathroom and two small bedrooms and into a living room–kitchen area. The TV has been left on and is playing cartoons. There is a balcony at the far end of the apartment; a breeze blows in through the open sliding door and over the sofa, which has been stripped of its cover but not the person-shaped rust-red stain spread across the seat nearest the window. The stain is shocking and frightening but not as frightening as the tableau of life suddenly interrupted.

Cheryl is in the main bedroom guessing about the face of the woman whose underwear drawer she is emptying. Tania is making an inventory of the kitchen. She opens drawers and cupboards, taking photos of everything inside. The top drawer has the full complement of cooking utensils owned by high-functioning adults. The cupboard has a big box of cereal, a jar of Gatorade powder. A grey plastic shopping bag of rubbish is suspended from the handle of the cupboard under the sink.