Mike has pretty much finished reading through the autobiography section of the 475 pages we assembled last week. Kimberly is reading too, and getting quite into it, as in she is upset about some of it! Interesting! Their reactions reconnect me with my story.
As editor Mike has suggested that I write about the end of Cycle 2 as a bridge into the central location of the book – Cycle 3. Makes sense, and at the same time, it’s a bit intimidating. It might take more than two pages. It might take time and effort.
But it’s TIME – time for this book.
So here goes, Mike!
I became conscious that another cycle had ended or was coming to an end at about the time of my 60th birthday. I am not clear. Recently I have been noticing that my memory for events from the time of returning from the 2008/09 tour – late April 2009 through my hospitalization in Oct. 2010 – is jumbled. I chalk it up to stress, the growing infection in my body and the actual effect of one Cycle passing into another.
The foundation of the concept of my life being in 30 year cycles comes from the belief – powerfully communicated to me when I was six or so - that I certainly could not live past thirty years of age. At about that time I was enrolled in a research study conducted at “Sick Kids” – the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto. From that point I was to take two trips every six months into a big city, by car, at a time when such a voyage was strenuous for every person involved – me, my mother and my father.
There are several elements of this pattern that created fundamental perceptions of life for me. The adult Judith has always struggled with the “obvious” conclusions that the child came to in these four trips every year.
First of all, I knew I must be sick. Why so much attention from doctors and big hospital people if I wasn’t sick! Secondly nearly every encounter was bookmarked by intense pain and loneliness, and at the same time a sense of specialness and intimacy. For example, on each of these mornings my father would get me up – something which otherwise my mother always did. He always gave me the special breakfast – boiled egg mashed up on buttered, nearly burnt toast – a breakfast that I looked forward to passionately. Once the appointments were completed my mother always took me for an extra special lunch. She never said anything but it was understood that it was her way of saying that she knew how much these trips were a source of pain and loneliness for me. Finally, the doctors always paid a certain amount of special attention to me and expected me to perform in some entertaining way. For example, they always asked me to tell them a joke on each occasion. I realized at a very early age that this attention set me apart in some way, and so as much as the actual occasions were difficult, I also at some level looked forward to these benchmarks in my otherwise boring life.
And so, the fundamental themes of my life were well established before I was eight. I was special, I was different, I was dying, I was to be treated painfully by every adult who mattered to me, and I had nothing to say about any of it, except to be ready to tell jokes and eat lots of good food. I was very chubby until my 50’s.
(To be continued…)
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
November 28, 2010
I had the best dinner tonight!
Over these last two months food and beverage have been a constant concern. My recovery from the infection, my loss of bladder function and the effort to live creatively with pain (and increasingly less pain!) all depended in some way on what I eat.
During the hospital days and immediately thereafter the concern was THAT I eat. My various accommodations to swallowing difficulties, nausea from pain medication and the infection left me dangerously malnourished. By the way malnourishment is a theme that ran through my transition from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. Hmm!
It was truly comforting deep in the hospital days to have Stanley, the nutrition researcher, glow over practically every mouthful I took and to have him rejoice as the quantities of food I ingested increased day by day.
As soon as I got home my friends, especially Gloria, filled my kitchen and freezer with very excellent food – so much that six weeks later I still have some of it!
With Jen’s guidance it soon became apparent that I needed to, and actually wanted to, shift what I consider to be an ordinary day’s way of eating. I literally felt like I was starving for the first few weeks and that certainly helped my motivation to try eating differently. This was boosted by the realization that different habits would let me stop using those foul laxatives!!
The fundamental problem was that any pain medication that works for me also slows my bowels, creating the blockage that interferes with my bladder (and shut it down for a month!) thus increasing the pain and driving up the use of medication, which slows down my…..
The three necessities were to eliminate gluten, increase noncaffeinated fluids and get more fibre into me. As straight forward as this may sound there are tricky conundrums, such as that oatmeal, though high in fibre is also high in gluten, as is chicken – the one meat my friends (not Gloria!) most want to provide. I have never been a big vegetable eater and now my limitations in chewing and swallowing eliminate any chance of salads. Day by day I found better combinations AND experimented with how much of my old habits (cheese anyone) were tolerable (not much!)
I got a slow cooker, discovered congee, started to carry a thermos of herbal tea and made many, many other changes.
It has become clear that it is useless to go to the Food Bank because everything they have is no longer food to me – wheat pastas, hot dogs, milk, etc.
Like everybody else I exist in a cultural pattern and such a drastic change has been confronting along with welcome. I am basically British in heritage and inclination. The first time I went to my ancestral homeland, England, I was amazed and awed that I was offered cream on nearly everything I ate. After a few days I reconnected with memories of my Mother’s cooking – stewed hamburger, cornflakes and tuna fish, boiled cod – and I realized that in the English soul food is fundamentally brown. That is, the colour of British food varies from the white and brown of crusty bread, through the cream to beige of fish and chips, puddings and pasties, to the deep brown of sausages, burnt toast, gravy and blood pudding.
Tonight, in complete agreement with food that works for me, I had roast beef (brown), potatoes and onions baked with a rosemary dressing (lighter brown), sauerkraut (beige), pumpkin pie (orangy brown) and lemon herbal tea (yellowy brown).
I am full and in heaven!
Over these last two months food and beverage have been a constant concern. My recovery from the infection, my loss of bladder function and the effort to live creatively with pain (and increasingly less pain!) all depended in some way on what I eat.
During the hospital days and immediately thereafter the concern was THAT I eat. My various accommodations to swallowing difficulties, nausea from pain medication and the infection left me dangerously malnourished. By the way malnourishment is a theme that ran through my transition from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. Hmm!
It was truly comforting deep in the hospital days to have Stanley, the nutrition researcher, glow over practically every mouthful I took and to have him rejoice as the quantities of food I ingested increased day by day.
As soon as I got home my friends, especially Gloria, filled my kitchen and freezer with very excellent food – so much that six weeks later I still have some of it!
With Jen’s guidance it soon became apparent that I needed to, and actually wanted to, shift what I consider to be an ordinary day’s way of eating. I literally felt like I was starving for the first few weeks and that certainly helped my motivation to try eating differently. This was boosted by the realization that different habits would let me stop using those foul laxatives!!
The fundamental problem was that any pain medication that works for me also slows my bowels, creating the blockage that interferes with my bladder (and shut it down for a month!) thus increasing the pain and driving up the use of medication, which slows down my…..
The three necessities were to eliminate gluten, increase noncaffeinated fluids and get more fibre into me. As straight forward as this may sound there are tricky conundrums, such as that oatmeal, though high in fibre is also high in gluten, as is chicken – the one meat my friends (not Gloria!) most want to provide. I have never been a big vegetable eater and now my limitations in chewing and swallowing eliminate any chance of salads. Day by day I found better combinations AND experimented with how much of my old habits (cheese anyone) were tolerable (not much!)
I got a slow cooker, discovered congee, started to carry a thermos of herbal tea and made many, many other changes.
It has become clear that it is useless to go to the Food Bank because everything they have is no longer food to me – wheat pastas, hot dogs, milk, etc.
Like everybody else I exist in a cultural pattern and such a drastic change has been confronting along with welcome. I am basically British in heritage and inclination. The first time I went to my ancestral homeland, England, I was amazed and awed that I was offered cream on nearly everything I ate. After a few days I reconnected with memories of my Mother’s cooking – stewed hamburger, cornflakes and tuna fish, boiled cod – and I realized that in the English soul food is fundamentally brown. That is, the colour of British food varies from the white and brown of crusty bread, through the cream to beige of fish and chips, puddings and pasties, to the deep brown of sausages, burnt toast, gravy and blood pudding.
Tonight, in complete agreement with food that works for me, I had roast beef (brown), potatoes and onions baked with a rosemary dressing (lighter brown), sauerkraut (beige), pumpkin pie (orangy brown) and lemon herbal tea (yellowy brown).
I am full and in heaven!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
November 17, 2010
Today was a !banner! day. Yes, those are exclamation marks.
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
We don’t talk much about having a bowel movement – I am reluctant even to write the word used very commonly around here – “poo”.
Having a poo has become the ULTIMATE signal of progress or regression in my physical state since Oct. 4 when I went to the emergency room and was admitted for nine days. Nearly everything tried before or since that event to relieve or manage my pain has had the effect of slowing my bowels. On that day the situation became life threatening due to bowel/bladder interaction and infection. (Read previous posts!) Since then there has been effort on my part, Jen’s, the medical people, my personal assistants and my friends to get IT to come out right each and everyday. Practically a National project! It hasn’t been all that successful. The regular use of Morphine, and I suppose the added factor of my AGE constantly works against my good results and has led to this need to sustain a virtual preoccupation with the frequency, size, colour and consistency of my …. poo.
Today I had one – (a poo) – unaided by laxatives, stool softeners, suppositories, litres of herbal tea or other intervention. I realize that it is TOO SOON to imagine that life has returned to a pattern of elimination that I might consider “normal”. Just the same this is the very day when I was remembering nostalgically how I used to eat and drink a whack of foods now considered “bad” for me because they tend to exaggerate the bowel freezing effects of Morphine – coffee, bread, crackers, oatmeal, cheese, milk and SO many more.
I haven’t been very good at keeping to a mainly vegetables and herbal tea diet. Initially I was better behaved but I basically felt like I was starving. My masseuse recommended, by the way, that if I was “starving” I should drink more water. It felt like some sort of criminal punishment.
I basically cheat about a third of the time – a little bread here, a miniscule bit of cheese there, some pasta on rare occasions. But today I got curious. If it wasn’t for the Morphine it would certainly look to me that the supposedly healthier diet is actually plugging me up. Shortly after that thought – the awaited event happened.
Crazy - I know. But this six weeks of focus on my body is making me a little crazy!
Well enough about that.
Tomorrow Mike, Kimberly and I are going to present the idea to my circle that we go on a short tour of the east coast of North America for World Peace through Inclusion. Basically I miss the pelicans. But the concepts around WPIT are gelling and I am restless and M and K are ENTHUSIASTIC and it’s clearly looking like time to get on with it.
I’m expecting – even hoping for – push back from the circle. When we go I want to do so with some stability – not in the naïve way that Gabor, Erin and I left. More than anything I don’t want this to be more running off to prove myself, or ourselves. I want us to be welcomed, understood and celebrated.
Gabor and I spent time over breakfast today. Bit by bit we are carving out a way to have a future around WPIT and friendship. It is good.
I’m signing off on the short side of 2 pages today. Maybe that’s enough for my first “real poo” day in a LONG time!
Monday, November 15, 2010
November 15, 2010
I’m a little tired of writing about the pain. Last night I attended the Sunday evening session of the Landmark Forum. It’s something that Landmark graduates do when we have a friend taking the Landmark Forum for the first time. It became really clear to me that a good part of this journey will transform when I am willing to fully accept my body as it is, my pain as it is and my personality as it is.
Of course, I imagine that I have already done this – more than once. But I guess this is another layer and a different journey after all.
Jen, the masseuse, was here again this morning. Most of what we talked about and most of what we worked on was to support me to express anger. Anger is not something I have been willing to freely express. In my world the social cost is too high and the physical jeopardy too great. In the Wisdom way of looking at things I am experiencing an opportunity to upgrade my relationship to expressing my anger. I am no longer a child who might get hit, or a teenager facing getting shunned.
Jen told me a few stories about singers who began their careers by renting a sound booth and privately singing until their voice emerged. I never told Jen that I used to sing or that secretly I would love to sing again. Her intuition makes me marvel.
My good friend Savoy is a boxer and she has often invited me to come to her gym. Who knows what we might invent together that would allow me to vent the fire that currently burns my bones?
Sometime yesterday I began to realise that I have a version of Gloria’s Emu oil and Med Marijuana in my bedroom with me. I have a bottle of capsules of marijuana oil produced in Alberta and carefully rendered to be non-hallucinogenic. I have a tube of generic Hydrocortisone cream. I have begun to mix them and have them massaged into my lower back from where the rod ends to my tailbone. The concoction tingles in a nice way and already I feel a difference.
Much as I want to get out of bed and get on with life, today was a good example of what I can do while I’m lying around. Mike Skubic and Kimberly Fu were over and we did planning around Laser Eagles, a potential WPIT tour, a ten session seminar on personal support that I will give in December and January and a presentation that Mike and I will make to students that create video games. We did a full days work within five or six hours.
I love working with enthusiastic people. I love working with young people. I love creating when there is minimum resistance and good solid questioning. If most of my days were like today, I could happily live from my bed.
Sometimes I think too much in terms of either/or. Perhaps I don’t have to choose life in bed or life out of bed. Truly, together with others, I can create life with the best of both.
There is a certain discipline in committing myself to write more than one page a day. There have been days when I have written a great number of emails or other documents for other reasons and where I have been tempted to count them as part of this commitment rather than keep up this form of expression. I have also been tempted to consider averaging my numbers as there have been several occasions when I have written three to five pages in one sitting.
But this is not the point really. My experience has been that there can be something available beyond the point where I run dry. It is relatively easy for me to write and so it is also easy to not dig very deep.
On the few occasions when I have run dry it has been an opportunity to pause and wait. Beyond the waiting is there more? That is the faith and that is the exploration.
My friend, Martha, has taught me that people who do not easily use language will often seem to be completely nonverbal unless someone is willing to sit and wait long enough for them to speak. For example, one might ask such a person a question and then wait nearly half a minute before the person answers. In the absence of other people’s willingness to wait such a person rarely gets to express any unique perspective in the world.
Part of the faith and journey in creating these writings is my assumption that there is part of me that I have not yet expressed. Jen was pointing to this this morning when she questioned my willingness to express anger. She was pointing out that expressed anger could even lead to singing. What songs have I not yet song?
Of course, I imagine that I have already done this – more than once. But I guess this is another layer and a different journey after all.
Jen, the masseuse, was here again this morning. Most of what we talked about and most of what we worked on was to support me to express anger. Anger is not something I have been willing to freely express. In my world the social cost is too high and the physical jeopardy too great. In the Wisdom way of looking at things I am experiencing an opportunity to upgrade my relationship to expressing my anger. I am no longer a child who might get hit, or a teenager facing getting shunned.
Jen told me a few stories about singers who began their careers by renting a sound booth and privately singing until their voice emerged. I never told Jen that I used to sing or that secretly I would love to sing again. Her intuition makes me marvel.
My good friend Savoy is a boxer and she has often invited me to come to her gym. Who knows what we might invent together that would allow me to vent the fire that currently burns my bones?
Sometime yesterday I began to realise that I have a version of Gloria’s Emu oil and Med Marijuana in my bedroom with me. I have a bottle of capsules of marijuana oil produced in Alberta and carefully rendered to be non-hallucinogenic. I have a tube of generic Hydrocortisone cream. I have begun to mix them and have them massaged into my lower back from where the rod ends to my tailbone. The concoction tingles in a nice way and already I feel a difference.
Much as I want to get out of bed and get on with life, today was a good example of what I can do while I’m lying around. Mike Skubic and Kimberly Fu were over and we did planning around Laser Eagles, a potential WPIT tour, a ten session seminar on personal support that I will give in December and January and a presentation that Mike and I will make to students that create video games. We did a full days work within five or six hours.
I love working with enthusiastic people. I love working with young people. I love creating when there is minimum resistance and good solid questioning. If most of my days were like today, I could happily live from my bed.
Sometimes I think too much in terms of either/or. Perhaps I don’t have to choose life in bed or life out of bed. Truly, together with others, I can create life with the best of both.
There is a certain discipline in committing myself to write more than one page a day. There have been days when I have written a great number of emails or other documents for other reasons and where I have been tempted to count them as part of this commitment rather than keep up this form of expression. I have also been tempted to consider averaging my numbers as there have been several occasions when I have written three to five pages in one sitting.
But this is not the point really. My experience has been that there can be something available beyond the point where I run dry. It is relatively easy for me to write and so it is also easy to not dig very deep.
On the few occasions when I have run dry it has been an opportunity to pause and wait. Beyond the waiting is there more? That is the faith and that is the exploration.
My friend, Martha, has taught me that people who do not easily use language will often seem to be completely nonverbal unless someone is willing to sit and wait long enough for them to speak. For example, one might ask such a person a question and then wait nearly half a minute before the person answers. In the absence of other people’s willingness to wait such a person rarely gets to express any unique perspective in the world.
Part of the faith and journey in creating these writings is my assumption that there is part of me that I have not yet expressed. Jen was pointing to this this morning when she questioned my willingness to express anger. She was pointing out that expressed anger could even lead to singing. What songs have I not yet song?
Saturday, November 13, 2010
November 13, 2010
Somehow I have been kind of giddy all day as if I had taken too much of my two daily doses of Morphine. I didn’t. Part of it is sheer enjoyment of spending a day with Mike Skubic. A fine personal assistant, Mike is also very in tune with my personal purposes. So in one day we have improved the design of our under-construction WPIT website, looked at fundraising plans, spent exhilarating time with Tom James working on the inclusive video game project, and also accomplished all sorts of typical daily stuff – eating, washing and so on.
Perhaps I am just tired! It’s been a full day and it’s not done yet and I have been “up” – not in bed – for a big part of it.
Then there is the Morphine. This week I started to take 2/3 of the doses permitted to me each day, but regularly whether or not I was feeling pain at the time. Practically this works out that I am taking 2 ml at 11:00am and 5:00pm. The reasoning behind the reduced overall dosage is to give my bowels a good chance to empty themselves in the morning, before I slow them down with the narcotic. The reasoning behind regular administration is to give myself a chance to lower the base amount of pain I feel day by day.
The concern remains – in Mike, in others, in myself. Am I, will I become addicted? The effects of the drug are minimal, yet at about the 5th hour I am counting down - when can I have the next dose or when can I lie down again!
I am swearing more, getting excited more, going from grumpy to happy and back more quickly. Is it the blogging that is releasing my social inhibitions?
This afternoon I picked up the misplaced prescription – Amitriptyline Hydrochloride. Its potential side effects include constipation, nausea, urinary retention and other worse stuff. I am terrified to take it.
I guess my point is: “When you are up to your ass in alligators it is hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp.” I want to be comfortable enough to fulfill my life. Apparently there is no treatable “cause” of my pain, so I must learn how to live with it. I do not want to shift my life goals to managing financial burdens and side effects. Yet the government funded allopathic pathway keeps throwing me into waiting lines and medication hell. To go outside this system promises more effective approaches but continuous and prohibitive costs as well.
The past few weeks or so my expensive, government funded, high quality hospital bed mattress began to develop wrinkles in the plastic cover. These wrinkles became more persistent and were developing into ridges. I cannot move my own body so these ridges are a risk not just of discomfort and pain, but also of skin breakdown and infection.
I called the distributor requesting immediate assistance and the person at the other end said it could be weeks before the problem could be rectified – but, she suggested, in the meantime why didn’t I remove the cover?
Now I have owned three or four hospital bed mattresses in my life time and slept on many more and never has one had a removable cover – until this one. So it never occurred to me to look for a zipper. It’s there! The wrinkled cover is now in a closet and I am sleeping on the best mattress you can imagine.
So, when it comes to me and my pain, is there a zipper?
Perhaps I am just tired! It’s been a full day and it’s not done yet and I have been “up” – not in bed – for a big part of it.
Then there is the Morphine. This week I started to take 2/3 of the doses permitted to me each day, but regularly whether or not I was feeling pain at the time. Practically this works out that I am taking 2 ml at 11:00am and 5:00pm. The reasoning behind the reduced overall dosage is to give my bowels a good chance to empty themselves in the morning, before I slow them down with the narcotic. The reasoning behind regular administration is to give myself a chance to lower the base amount of pain I feel day by day.
The concern remains – in Mike, in others, in myself. Am I, will I become addicted? The effects of the drug are minimal, yet at about the 5th hour I am counting down - when can I have the next dose or when can I lie down again!
I am swearing more, getting excited more, going from grumpy to happy and back more quickly. Is it the blogging that is releasing my social inhibitions?
This afternoon I picked up the misplaced prescription – Amitriptyline Hydrochloride. Its potential side effects include constipation, nausea, urinary retention and other worse stuff. I am terrified to take it.
I guess my point is: “When you are up to your ass in alligators it is hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp.” I want to be comfortable enough to fulfill my life. Apparently there is no treatable “cause” of my pain, so I must learn how to live with it. I do not want to shift my life goals to managing financial burdens and side effects. Yet the government funded allopathic pathway keeps throwing me into waiting lines and medication hell. To go outside this system promises more effective approaches but continuous and prohibitive costs as well.
The past few weeks or so my expensive, government funded, high quality hospital bed mattress began to develop wrinkles in the plastic cover. These wrinkles became more persistent and were developing into ridges. I cannot move my own body so these ridges are a risk not just of discomfort and pain, but also of skin breakdown and infection.
I called the distributor requesting immediate assistance and the person at the other end said it could be weeks before the problem could be rectified – but, she suggested, in the meantime why didn’t I remove the cover?
Now I have owned three or four hospital bed mattresses in my life time and slept on many more and never has one had a removable cover – until this one. So it never occurred to me to look for a zipper. It’s there! The wrinkled cover is now in a closet and I am sleeping on the best mattress you can imagine.
So, when it comes to me and my pain, is there a zipper?
Friday, November 12, 2010
November 12, 2010
Today the pain clinic took place. It was a distinctly deflating experience.
I imagined white coated medical technicians, and of course, the mandatory doctor, giving me sermon-like discourses about the importance of learning to live with pain and not trying to get rid of it. I expected to be introduced to the mysteries of “managing” without medication. I was braced to be told about classes, approaches, required behaviour changes and, through some kind of ritual, to be initiated into membership with those who “live with pain”!
There was only one other person waiting when I arrived (on time) and when I left less than an hour later, still only one other. The receptionist was the only one wearing a white coat. I met two doctors – the resident in training and, after him, a lovely woman originally from London, England.
The eight page questionnaire that I turned in to the receptionist – filled out – never appeared again. The young man took an incomplete history and referred largely to the computer record of my recent hospital stay and previous clinical visits going back ten years.
The doctor in charge did not balk at my statements that most medications make me sick, or that I find them hard to swallow. However I was also told that although I will be given return appointments to try acupuncture and a TENS machine, nothing “alternative” will be covered by OHIP (Ontario’s health insurance) or ODSP (Ontario’s benefit for those labelled disabled). All she was really willing to offer is – another pill.
I left with the prescription, filled it at the hospital pharmacy and then my personal assistant either left the bag at the cash register or dropped it. I arrived at home with no medication and no recollection of its name. I only know that its other use is as an anti-depressant and that I have been given a paediatric dosage. It is to be taken before bed as it will make me sleepy. So it goes! My pain makes me like a sad and restless baby.
For this I waited more than ten months!
There is a song from the ‘50’s – Peggy Lee? – that goes: “If that’s all there is, if that’s all there is, if that’s all there is my friend then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.” I don’t really know why this should be such a let down for me, but somehow when I compare what the best official medicine in Toronto has to offer with all my masseuse Jen and my friends have been coming up with for the past six weeks to support me in this crucial life shift, I’m a little stunned.
This morning my friend, Gloria, was recommending a pain relieving ointment made from the combined oils of Emu and marijuana. I have no idea where to get either, but clearly I have friends who do. It sure has got to beat drugging myself into insensitivity.
In any case in my reality the pain clinic of Nov. 12 was the watershed after which I would have all the information and experience necessary to make some concrete choices and plans about my Cycle 3 life. The clinic has come and gone. Disappointing as the outcome is my life awaits my direction.
I imagined white coated medical technicians, and of course, the mandatory doctor, giving me sermon-like discourses about the importance of learning to live with pain and not trying to get rid of it. I expected to be introduced to the mysteries of “managing” without medication. I was braced to be told about classes, approaches, required behaviour changes and, through some kind of ritual, to be initiated into membership with those who “live with pain”!
There was only one other person waiting when I arrived (on time) and when I left less than an hour later, still only one other. The receptionist was the only one wearing a white coat. I met two doctors – the resident in training and, after him, a lovely woman originally from London, England.
The eight page questionnaire that I turned in to the receptionist – filled out – never appeared again. The young man took an incomplete history and referred largely to the computer record of my recent hospital stay and previous clinical visits going back ten years.
The doctor in charge did not balk at my statements that most medications make me sick, or that I find them hard to swallow. However I was also told that although I will be given return appointments to try acupuncture and a TENS machine, nothing “alternative” will be covered by OHIP (Ontario’s health insurance) or ODSP (Ontario’s benefit for those labelled disabled). All she was really willing to offer is – another pill.
I left with the prescription, filled it at the hospital pharmacy and then my personal assistant either left the bag at the cash register or dropped it. I arrived at home with no medication and no recollection of its name. I only know that its other use is as an anti-depressant and that I have been given a paediatric dosage. It is to be taken before bed as it will make me sleepy. So it goes! My pain makes me like a sad and restless baby.
For this I waited more than ten months!
There is a song from the ‘50’s – Peggy Lee? – that goes: “If that’s all there is, if that’s all there is, if that’s all there is my friend then let’s keep dancing, let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.” I don’t really know why this should be such a let down for me, but somehow when I compare what the best official medicine in Toronto has to offer with all my masseuse Jen and my friends have been coming up with for the past six weeks to support me in this crucial life shift, I’m a little stunned.
This morning my friend, Gloria, was recommending a pain relieving ointment made from the combined oils of Emu and marijuana. I have no idea where to get either, but clearly I have friends who do. It sure has got to beat drugging myself into insensitivity.
In any case in my reality the pain clinic of Nov. 12 was the watershed after which I would have all the information and experience necessary to make some concrete choices and plans about my Cycle 3 life. The clinic has come and gone. Disappointing as the outcome is my life awaits my direction.
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