Tag: health

Re: Refuge

My uncle is aghast that in his country, refugees who travel across the English Channel are “put up in hotels”. I’ve long since given up on his rants about the injustices of the immigration system. The reality of finding a place of refuge for millions throughout the world is a reminder of global inequity. Privileged folks, like my relative in the UK, just don’t see past their own need to protect their borders with walls or fences.

Poets like Robert Frost would disagree. From Mending Walls: “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out/ And to whom I was like to give offense.” Perhaps artists are the first to lend sympathy to those forced from their home environments by war, persecution, climate change, or lack of employment opportunities. No one who wasn’t suffering hardship of any sort would make a choice to go to a foreign land. When I read of refugee camps, I consider my mustard seed of related experience and feel great empathy for these wandering nomads.

“Are there no workhouses…” is a line spoken by the miserly fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge, as he brushes off a plea for Christmas charity. Those humans who seek refuge from the pains of the world are of no concern to this wealthy man. The billionaires continue to profit from playing with their money while the 99% struggle on with the results of bottom-line focussed corporations and ostrich politicians. Mother Nature has no voice yet the signs of her woe are everywhere.

We had a storm in our spot by the sea yesterday. Trees swayed in the gusts and heavy autumn rain fell. I revelled today as I looked up to see flocks of birds appear out of some mysterious hidden location further up our street. I walked gingerly, stepping over branches and mounds of leaves, and wondered where they had found a place of refuge. Reading the newspaper later I discovered ferries had been cancelled, power lines downed, and op/eds were shrieking over the lack of attention being paid to climate change.

Where is refuge to be found from the onslaught of depressing news. From my perspective as a media consumer, I often feel myself to be a refugee trying to stay balanced in this modern era of deliberately manufactured discord. I feel history will look back on the 2020s as an equivalent to the horrors of the two previous world wars. The idea of a current definition of WWIII would include; cyber insecurity, polarization of states, economic irregularity, resource misuse, widespread inequity, global human migration, climate instability, religious intolerance, military expansion, and pandemic unpreparedness. The list reads like the side-effects, in fine print, found on the package for the latest cure-all medication.

Some sort of prescription is certainly needed if humanity is to make it out of this century alive. Veterans of past wars sought shelter where they could and helped their neighbour when they could. Time for us to do the same.

Re: Triage

I like words that are used between languages. There must be no borders with communication. Triage is a French word that means to separate out, or to sort. I think sorting is a good thing, in a medical context or any other. When I sort my feelings I’m better able to communicate my thoughts. I can see what is most important after even a bit of reflection and attend to it first, with a plan of action.

My wife is a nurse. She brings her training, attention to detail, and compassion to various situations throughout our days together. We’ve started watching the television series called The Pitt. This is one manic show! Where I find the director’s techniques fascinating, my bride gets pumped by her familiarity with the emergency room intensity. I’m left panting by an episode’s end, and she is energized. We have fun deconstructing the scenes with me asking tons of questions about accuracy and medical procedures.

In the heat of a hospital emergency room it must take everything you’ve got to decide who is the most in need of attention. All your personal prejudices must be back-filed. You would have to suspend your personal opinions. Focussing on the goal of saving lives is paramount. But I marvel how anyone can keep their heart from interfering with their head when it comes to making choices. In most situations, I must first consider my heart, before allowing logic to enter.

Our planet needs a triage event. We need to decide what is important on this home called Earth. There is plenty to indicate our globe is sick and needs attention. I’ll imagine Climate Change as a first priority. Back in 1970, the USA sponsored the first Earth Day, we got a flag and a thumbs up for concern over lack of environmental awareness. In 1979 the first World Climate Conference was arranged by the United Nations, by then we had lots of data showing we knew that things were going to get gnarly on our planet. Still, we left the patient in the waiting room. By 1995, with things not decided, The Conference of Parties (COP) held the first of 29 (and counting) annual conferences to get a U.N. consensus on how to help an exhausted planet. I read the news today (Oh Boy!) and it’s not looking good as data shows the melting glaciers do not have long to exist. The patient is going to die before getting a bed for continuing care. Our Earth has been left in the metaphorical hospital hallway to await its fate while we capitalist, nationalistic humans worry over who is going to pay the bill.

It comes down to priorities. Setting goals is hard in business, harder in personal life and hardest when it comes to international solidarity. It’s easier for me to think of the planet as I do my partner. She will always come first; my life and happiness depend on her health. Once her needs are met I can move on to other matters.

That’s life.

Re: Inflammation

It’s entirely possible that a person can have inflammation of the psyche. I know because I have been feeling it lately. My symptoms include: Redness of the face when ever I see a picture of The Donald, Swelling of the chest as I pace about the rooms of my vindictive mind imagining what might be an appropriate punishment for these perpetrators of injustice, Pain in my brain as I try to rationalize how the state of the world came to be so scary for my grandchildren. I fear that I have lost control of my moral compass. Most alarmingly, my soul is feeling the heat of all these conflicted emotions.

The political world has been set on fire by our faux leaders, billionaires, and capitalist conglomerates. Meanwhile many parts of the natural world are aflame with the results of human induced climate change. The Anthropocene was a recent term used to define humankind’s dominance over our planetary systems. I suggest that our planet’s destruction at the hands of Homo sapiens is rapidly resulting in a new geological period. Let’s call it The Inflammatory Age. It’s clear to me that everything on this globe called Earth is suffering from a sickness quite like the illnesses that spring up in our body systems. Earth has been keeping the score of multiple abuses to its structure. Constant extraction of its minerals, pollution of its water, air, and lands have taken a toll on its health. Warring nations have been inflaming the hearts and minds of youth to the point they are absorbing the negative energy and losing all sense of peaceful solutions. When does acute illness, become chronic; leading to death or extinction?

My health care advisors tell me the inflammation in our physical body is responsible for many of our ailments.  With every infection, inflammation of the nearby cells is initially involved as a protective measure. It could make things worse however, complicating the healing process. The original injury is therefore harder to manage. Sometimes through my life I have felt feverish for no apparent reason. My joints get swollen and uncomfortable. Pain relievers can help me through these spells of an aching body. This fever can be brought on by stress which can be a contributing factor to my discomfort. If our body is electric, and of a chemical nature, then it’s no wonder we short-circuit every once in a while during the natural course of living.

A bull cannot be inflamed by the sight of red. He is tortured into a rage by the constant twisting of the matador’s cape. So too am I enraged by the antics of people intent on bullying for the sport of it all. The answer is not by fighting fire with fire. Not in my peace-loving book anyway!

Once upon a time during Covid-19 our provincial health officer, Dr, Bonnie Henry called on our population to be kind, be calm, and be safe. She sensed that fear inflames during times of crisis. I agree with that wisdom: Inflammatory comments don’t help, only hinder, our return to healthy living.

Re: Worst

I had an incident involving insurance and it made me spiral to thoughts of worst case scenarios. As clouds of worsening doubt gathered about, I found surprising comfort in ranking the worst moments in my life in one paragraph. The effort convinced me that my current situation was not that bad. I just had to get a grip.

Making a list of tragedies and traumas sounds depressing but it did offer me a sense of control. Control can sometimes bring a certain calmness. If you like order in your life then putting things down on paper offers perspective. The list I made that day was revised several times. That’s a cool thing about judgement; our sense of a moment’s impact more or less changes as we gain the wisdom of hindsight. I call it My Best Worst List. This summary list became a therapeutic accounting of the crappy moments that I wish hadn’t happened, but did.

My first wife died of cancer when we were both only 50 years old. That was entered as the worst on my self-therapy list. I suffered clinical depression 7 years before that, making it second on my collection of lifetime worst events. A simple surgery went wrong so I had a hellish night in an emergency room. A family trip was once aborted due to a flat tire that nearly killed us all (I was driving and I still have chest pains from the memory of that experience). My sister ending her life prematurely is on my list. I had a best friend who bailed on a European hitchhiking trip AND being my best man at my wedding, which was a total bummer. In grade nine I got the one/two punch of my parents separating then we moved to a city AND I had to go to a new high school. Too cruel!

Bad things don’t have to happen before we know what the good times feel like. Pain is pain in the moment. Time heals if we don’t focus on our suffering. Feeling low is normal and it doesn’t have to be linked to one happening. Identifying something on a scale of bad to worse is the first step to understanding the bigger picture of your life. For me, sometimes it was a matter of encouraging myself to hang on for-one-more-day. On the worst days I felt lucky to have someone provide the guidance to see the way ahead, out of the gloom. Humour helps at the right time, delivered in a positive way. Silliness tends to lift me up before things get worser.

A ruined birthday party can be the worst thing in the whole world for a four year old. You grow older. Tragedies mount. You learn from the school of hard knocks. It helps to share your story, comparing war wounds over a beer and liverwurst lunch. You can laugh with a soul mate while discussing the value of worsted wool over synthetic fibre. Always remember; things could be worse! I’m resolved to leave the past where it belongs.

Re: Pace

I have a sort of pace maker for my heart. I’ve been diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation, which means that my heart has irregular rapid beats. I currently take medication to regulate the intensity and to cut down on the randomness of my heart’s pace. I’ll live to see another day.

The pace of my life has changed. There are things I have adapted to, out of respect for my age. I’m neither unfit, nor unwell. My body is giving me reminders to slow down to accommodate the realities of my 8th decade. Joints are becoming arthritic. I can’t turn my head without hearing a crackly sound. I turn to pain medication more often. My skin flakes off constantly. I think it’s a question of ongoing maintenance, that, and good hygiene. My former mother-in-law used to say that after seventy life becomes a matter of ‘patch, patch, patch’. She was a vigorous mall walker into her late eighties then she just stopped and died. Talk about a change of pace!

One fretful moving day years ago I rented a car; an AMC Pacer to follow the movers to our new home and a new job. From there we were to go on to a wedding but alas, our pace for the Pacer was too much for that machine to bear. Repairs were made but we arrived late to the nuptials. It got worse; our rental wouldn’t start when it was time to leave. Towing and more repairs were made. I called the rental company & they said no worries, they’d sort it out when we returned the vehicle. I kept all receipts & affidavits but still had a hassle. Conclusion: AMC Pacer must be on pace to be the worst car ever.

‘On your mark, get set, go!’ Comes a shout from the timekeeper, while the racers are off at their running pace towards a manmade finish line. Olympic sponsors are currently revving their corporate engines, meanwhile nature sets its own pace. Certainly the seasons, by way of the rotation of our planet around the sun, tell us that everything will unfold in its natural way. I must consider the phases of the moon the next time I think it’s imperative that my pace is more important than my peace.

Since retirement I’m no longer in the rat race so I practise stillness, even value it. I’ve been a pacer; in the sense of anxiety keeping me moving. Waiting for something to happen was often an unhealthy preoccupation of mine. Picture the old time father pacing in the hospital expecting his child to arrive any minute now. In those days of expectancy I wore a watch to monitor the pace of my day; counting the minutes until the working was done, timing the roast in the oven, looking to see if I still had time before my appointment.

My 95 year old special mom uses a large nuclear style push button audio device by her bed to tell her the time. Its automated voice tells her to get up and greet another day.

Re: Heart

My heart skipped a beat the other day. In fact it skipped several beats, enough to make me wonder what was going on. My son-in-law just happened to be stopping by for lunch so I asked him to take me to the hospital instead.

It was the prudent thing to do. Heart disease claims more lives in Canada than any other illness. I had been having heart palpitations (what I called kittens chasing each other in my chest) with some regularity for the past several months. My wife and I had agreed that, ‘the next incident’ would be the one where I would go to emerg. I considered my father, who died while on holiday in Portugal due to his heart health issues. He was only seven years older than I am right now. Memento mori.

My son is thirty years younger than I am. He and his wife have just bought their first house. After the move they enjoyed reporting a heartfelt sense of permanence, saying the decision was a “coup de coeur” experience. News of their combined joy pulled at my heart strings as though a song of love and longing had just arrived after a commercial break. A song such as this favourite of mine by Tony Bennett. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6DUwMnDxEs

There are many songs written from the heart. Some popped into my head as I waited for a doctor upon entering the hospital’s emergency department. It was a large open area room akin to a Costco warehouse. Direction arrows were taped to the concrete floor, clerks stood at their posts. Instead of food samples or coupons I answered questions and was directed to a succession of stations where I was tested and questioned further. I got labelled then someone came with a wheelchair to take me through the final portal. Here, in a small room, I was told to lay on a bed around which gathered no fewer than seven medics. They stopped my heart twice in an attempt to reset it from a high of 185BPM. I felt well attended to, so I wasn’t frightened.

While being monitored and tested further, I listened to the busy sounds of the ER setting. I contemplated the news cycle since late 2019 of Covid calls to action in hospitals around the world. Many unrelated deaths occurred because folks like me were resisting going for medical attention for other ailments, like the atrial fibrillation which became my diagnosis on this day. Surprisingly my heart beat returned to normal as quickly as it had raced to my attention. Latest incident over, I have appropriate medication to forestall a similar occurrence and an appointment for a follow-up consultation with a cardiologist.

I felt gratitude that I had avoided a stroke which I was told was a potential with my condition. I was heartened to see our health care system work so well on my behalf. I’m happily feeling the beat of a consistent rhythm, giving me hope for what my future may hold.

Re: Pool

“Right here in River City” is a lyric from The Music Man and it is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of pool. The billiard kind, on a table, with balls rolling on a quality felt. My grandfather, a grand champion in his country, taught me the basics of banked shots and finesse with a chalk tipped cue. He snookered me many a time before I got the hang of the game. My mom however, agreed with the flim flammer character Harold Wilson, who felt that pool halls were places of sin. Here Mr.W. is played by Hugh Jackman singing a clip from ‘We’ve Got Trouble’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UOL5CzvxnI

Both my parents encouraged me to swim. I was enrolled in the Red Cross program and got badges up to Bronze level. I competed in local level swim meets, once getting a third place in Breast Stroke. I took SCUBA lessons in two different pools, then completed my open water certification near Tobermory, Ontario. Now in my seventh decade I tend to splash around when I enter a pool, yet I still feel confident that I won’t drown.

Bodies of water encourage me to enter. I love the feeling of buoyancy. I love holding my breath and sliding porpoise-like under the surface, frolicking in the two worlds of air and liquid. I prefer a hotel stay that gives me access to a pool. Even a half hour in the chlorine infused water gives me an emotional lift that is a combination of youthful exuberance and entitled bliss. The building where I’m staying in Mississauga has just opened its outdoor pool. I was there on the first day, waiting by the gate. Children were gathered, freshly freed from school, looking as excited as I was to have a swim. They hung back while I tested the waters and took the first dive. Sublime.

When I lived in Schumacher, I swam in the oldest indoor pool in Northern Ontario. The atmosphere in the vaulted room felt as confining as underground shafts built by the mining company that had made this recreational space for its employees and their families. I have found natural pools of water whenever I have travelled. Hot springs in New Zealand, frosty kettle lakes near Timmins, the ocean-like fresh water expanses of Lake Superior and the salty delight of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

When I first visited Victoria in British Columbia, my eldest son took me for a midnight New Year’s Eve swim held at a community pool. It was a tonic to celebrate time passages in that way. I remember the walk along the dark streets and a gin&tonic to cap the evening when we got back to his apartment. A friend of my wife asked her to cat sit her pets once and I went along because of the beautiful private pool located in her condo complex.

Where ever I go I pack a bathing suit. A chance to immerse myself in healing waters is not to be missed.

Re: Heel

I like to keep one step ahead of things. This makes it hard on me when situations require that I heel, while others take the lead. I’m not saying I need a leash, but recent events surrounding Covid19 restrictions mean I have to hold back my urge to take charge. I like to be ahead of the pack, or at least off to the side minding my own business. These days I’m feeling I have to wait for my dinner, whine for a walk or watch expectantly by the front door. When I die, I’m not coming back as a dog.

Perhaps coincidentally, cracked heels run in my family. My nan’s chiropodist used to remove the callused skin on her heels with a device like a potato peeler. My mom would forecast, “So if you don’t wear socks more often, you’re going to end up just like her.” I was given many cautionary tales as a kid and sometimes I’d have to decipher the meanings. My mom would frequently bring me to heel. “Robert, come sit and talk with me.” She’d pronounce like a summons, while tempting me with a loaf of fresh baked bread. Our kitchen table was one of those chromed things with a stained formica top. Mom smoked while she talked, her monologues might last only one cigarette but sometimes she’d chain smoke, punctuating sentences by butting out into a perpetually dirty glass ashtray. I remember a story of a guy she used to work with being described as, ‘such a heel’. That’s the only part I remember; that he was a heel. The fun visual stuck, sort of like the image of a dickhead, with roughly the same connotation.

I’ve learned that heels can come in all shapes and sizes. Evangelical tent preachers can sometimes be heels, taking advantage of trusting people, as depicted in the great Burt Lancaster film Elmer Gantry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z73HAUbQNp4

My dad liked imitating a crazed religious healer we occasionally saw on Sunday morning television. He would playfully slap the heels of his hands on my forehead or both sides of my head while crying out, “Now! Rise and be Healed!”

I’m married to a legitimate healer. She practised nursing and complementary medicine in her working years. Now she brings this experience to our friends and family. Besides reminding me to put cream on my rough heels, my wife has provided her healing arts to all manner of damage I have done to myself; from falling out of trees, to stubbing toes, to traffic accidents, to convalescence after minor surgery.

Once, a friend of mine tried to show me the healing art of bread making. He demonstrated the correct way to knead the dough using the heels of his hands. Later, kitchen filled with intoxicating aroma, bread warm from the oven, I would ask for the heel of the loaf, just as I had enjoyed as a boy. I’d slice hard butter on it, then add a daub of peanut butter. Comfort food for a weary pilgrim.