I recently had a conversation with my mom about my sister who had to go to the hospital with the same condition I was inflicted with a few years ago. We spoke about the differences and the similarities of the condition, and it brought about the retelling of my story leading up to my hospital stay. We shared it through both my experience and hers. Mine as the patient hers as the chauffeur and mother.
In 2006 is where this memory takes place. I had recently arrived home from traveling for a year in Australia close to Christmas in 2005. In Australia I had met my boyfriend Bernard, at the time, and he made his way over to Calgary to visit and stay with my family. During his visit I was struck with some episodes of very uncomfortable stomach pain. Stomach pain so intense that it would render me stuck in the foetal position or throwing up from the pain until it passed, and it always eventually passed. This happened on several occasions before Christmas, and I just shrugged it off as food poisoning or something like it.
On the last day of Bernard's visit the pain came back but this time it didn't pass, I decided that I should go to the emergency room and get checked out. What a great last day in the country, sitting in a waiting room in a country where waiting for health care to be provided can take years. After a few hours of waiting hunched over in pain, I decided I would go to my regular doctor who after 4:30 had a walk-in clinic. Not much was happening for me in the waiting room, so I thought I would try something else.
The walk-in doctor diagnosed the stomach pain as an ulcer, I didn't know better to think any differently and I walked out of the doctor's office with ulcer medicine thinking life was going to better once this medicine kicked in. That night we went out with friends for sushi to celebrate the last day Bernard was in town. I actually ate some food and thought, "see life is already better"
We finished the evening and went to bed early as I had to drop him off at the airport very early the next morning.
The night was restless, my stomach was still hurting, I don't know if I slept or not. I woke up very early and before I got in the car to drive to the airport I threw up the sushi from the night before, I tried drinking some water, that came back up too, and I proceeded to drive in extreme pain to the airport. Bernard and I gave hugs and kisses and he told me to not stick around, and to go home and crawl into my mom's bed so she would know if I needed help. I drove back and climbed into her bed, shortly after I told her that I needed to go to the hospital. The pain was too great to bear anymore. She proceeded to get ready...it seemed like hours and I was waiting impatiently as people in pain usually do. "why was she taking so long? didn't she realize how much pain I was in? this is an emergency, there's no time for brushing your teeth in an emergency!"
I was so thirsty I would try to drink some water and then it would instantly come back up. Sitting was uncomfortable, standing was uncomfortable, lying down was uncomfortable, I felt like I was dying the most painful death anyone could ever die. Torture victims had it easy compared to this. My insides were my enemy and my mom was the slowest driver in the world!!!
We arrived at South Calgary Urgent Care, because the emergency room at the actual hospital was a joke. We signed me in, and there we proceeded to wait what seemed an eternity, but was probably only half an hour. I think they understood the pain I was in because sitting was no longer an option, lying on the floor with my head against the cool tile was the only relief I could find. My mom says she sat near me, not knowing where to look. People were watching and I was quite an embarrassing sight, what could she do?
She held her hands, trying not to look like she belonged with me, and waited for someone to call my name so the crawling on the floor would stop? I was pretty much incoherent at that point, and I certainly couldn't hear anything past the pain. Fortunately we both didn't have to wait long. Who knew crawling on the floor moaning gets you great service? My suggestion is try this and see what it brings you. I had a bed, I had a room, I had a nurse that could not find a vein to take a blood sample, and so to add more pain on top of the pain already endured I was poked several times with a needle.
Finally someone came back with the correct diagnosis and I was given my favorite of medicines, morphine, to stifle the pain. Pancreatitis caused by a gallstone. now that they knew what it was they shipped me off to the hospital where I hung out on a stretcher because they had no beds, and was finally placed in a room in the cardiac ward with three women over 80 the next day. That hospital stay is another story to come.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Childhood
I've been absent from posting anything in a long while because I've been wandering down this stream of aimlessness for about a year now. No focus, no money, and no real desire to pursue much of a career.
Where did my creativity go? Somehow it disappeared and in it's place there I planted stress. Last night I watched a film by a local Regina filmmaker called "My Dinner With Generation X" it resonated with me. Little did I know that my birth year placed me within this generation's label. To the filmmaker however Generation X was reserved for people born within 1961 - 1969. They were the disenfranchised, and directionless, they were the result of being neglected in childhood and they are the ones wandering aimlessly, but not without purpose, in life. I found that I was able to relate to these people in the film and that my childhood didn't feel much different than the ones they were describing, and my adulthood is beginning to resemble something like theirs.
Instead of continuing down this path of directionless self-pity that i've been wallowing in for the last 6 months I've decided that my postings on this wall are going to be a mixture of childhood memories, and things that have and will shape my life. The future is now, or at least a second from now, and if I can't be generation X and I must somehow have a label, I would like to take Douglas Coupland's new novel titled Generation A and apply it to who I am. It's fitting that he's given a new name to another generation, and in reality I probably don't really represent it, but what I gathered from his novel was that these people who live without real contact are in the middle of a world they grew up in and a world that has changed so drastically that it is barely recognizable.
I feel that I am in this middle ground. I was part of a generation that can remember a time before internet, and grew up to be technologically inclined, yet not quite as immersed in it as children of the millennium are. Where our environment was not yet needing to be saved, but it was on its way.
I feel like I am in the future, yet only as an observer, not quite a participant.
Where did my creativity go? Somehow it disappeared and in it's place there I planted stress. Last night I watched a film by a local Regina filmmaker called "My Dinner With Generation X" it resonated with me. Little did I know that my birth year placed me within this generation's label. To the filmmaker however Generation X was reserved for people born within 1961 - 1969. They were the disenfranchised, and directionless, they were the result of being neglected in childhood and they are the ones wandering aimlessly, but not without purpose, in life. I found that I was able to relate to these people in the film and that my childhood didn't feel much different than the ones they were describing, and my adulthood is beginning to resemble something like theirs.
Instead of continuing down this path of directionless self-pity that i've been wallowing in for the last 6 months I've decided that my postings on this wall are going to be a mixture of childhood memories, and things that have and will shape my life. The future is now, or at least a second from now, and if I can't be generation X and I must somehow have a label, I would like to take Douglas Coupland's new novel titled Generation A and apply it to who I am. It's fitting that he's given a new name to another generation, and in reality I probably don't really represent it, but what I gathered from his novel was that these people who live without real contact are in the middle of a world they grew up in and a world that has changed so drastically that it is barely recognizable.
I feel that I am in this middle ground. I was part of a generation that can remember a time before internet, and grew up to be technologically inclined, yet not quite as immersed in it as children of the millennium are. Where our environment was not yet needing to be saved, but it was on its way.
I feel like I am in the future, yet only as an observer, not quite a participant.
Memory of Forgiveness
I grew up in a family of 5 kids, 4 girls 1 boy. I was the 4th child the 3rd girl. Timid and shy I grew up very quietly but there were times where I added to the chaos of a big family.
I spent a lot of time reading in my room, I loved reading, loved stories and just couldn't get enough of the imaginary places in my head. Sometimes I would let those imaginary places out of my head and enter the real world. I remember one day I finished reading a story, it wasn't Tarzan (and oh how I wish it was, because then it would make more sense to how this incident came about). I was lying on my bed sad that I had come to the end of a story, and looked at my curtains. I then looked at my stool seat. It was pink and would flip up to store things. It held my most favorite barbies(my little treasure box) I got out of my bed and pushed the seat over to the window and decided that I wanted to know what it was like to swing on a vine in the jungle. I stood on the stool grasped the curtain in my hands and leaned forward putting a little of my weight on the curtain. It held, so I let go and swung out about a foot. I stood back up and climbed back on to the stool, this time I just let myself fall off the chair holding onto the curtain, I went a bit farther out this time. It held again, and it felt pretty cool.
Downstairs I could hear the noise of my family. My parents were making dinner, my sisters were fighting, and my brother was probably playing with lego. I decided I was really going to swing out far and then grab onto the next curtain, just like Tarzan. I climbed back onto the stool and this time as I grabbed the curtain I leaned back, to give myself more momentum, and pushed myself off. It was a force too strong for the curtain rod and instead of swinging out and latching onto the next curtain, everything came tumbling down, including me, the crash was loud and when I got up panic had set in.
I could hear my father's loud footsteps as he quickly climbed the stairs, I stood looking at the disaster that had befallen my windows. What am I going to do? he's coming, I'm going to be in so much trouble, help!
I tried putting the curtain rod back up, but I couldn't reach and when my dad opened the door, he saw me struggling to put things right.
"What happened!"
I couldn't speak. Then I thought of the perfect lie.
"It just fell?"
My dad looked angry, I thought I was in BIG trouble, but he just let the lie go.
"Just fell hunh?"
"yeah, I was reading my book and CRASH the curtain fell down"
"hmmn..."
this was it I was going to get it, a spanking, the worst punishment possible. My dad went over to the window, looked at the curtain rod.
" I can fix this, but I know the curtain didn't just fall"
Deer in headlights
"you were swinging on them weren't you?"
head down in shame
"yes"
"okay then... its time for dinner"
What? that's it? I broke the house! How can I be allowed to eat? This makes no sense at all. I got away Scott free? Dad never lets us get away with anything.
I was shocked, I thought I would be in gigantic trouble but there was nothing, not even anger.
The more I think about this event the more I realize that it was probably a moment when parents are supposed to be angry at the kid to teach them a lesson, but the situation is too funny to be mad at, I went downstairs for dinner and my dad stayed behind to fix the curtain, but the more I think about it the more I realize that he probably stayed behind to laugh, and where I thought I would be in trouble I was given the gift of forgiveness.
I spent a lot of time reading in my room, I loved reading, loved stories and just couldn't get enough of the imaginary places in my head. Sometimes I would let those imaginary places out of my head and enter the real world. I remember one day I finished reading a story, it wasn't Tarzan (and oh how I wish it was, because then it would make more sense to how this incident came about). I was lying on my bed sad that I had come to the end of a story, and looked at my curtains. I then looked at my stool seat. It was pink and would flip up to store things. It held my most favorite barbies(my little treasure box) I got out of my bed and pushed the seat over to the window and decided that I wanted to know what it was like to swing on a vine in the jungle. I stood on the stool grasped the curtain in my hands and leaned forward putting a little of my weight on the curtain. It held, so I let go and swung out about a foot. I stood back up and climbed back on to the stool, this time I just let myself fall off the chair holding onto the curtain, I went a bit farther out this time. It held again, and it felt pretty cool.
Downstairs I could hear the noise of my family. My parents were making dinner, my sisters were fighting, and my brother was probably playing with lego. I decided I was really going to swing out far and then grab onto the next curtain, just like Tarzan. I climbed back onto the stool and this time as I grabbed the curtain I leaned back, to give myself more momentum, and pushed myself off. It was a force too strong for the curtain rod and instead of swinging out and latching onto the next curtain, everything came tumbling down, including me, the crash was loud and when I got up panic had set in.
I could hear my father's loud footsteps as he quickly climbed the stairs, I stood looking at the disaster that had befallen my windows. What am I going to do? he's coming, I'm going to be in so much trouble, help!
I tried putting the curtain rod back up, but I couldn't reach and when my dad opened the door, he saw me struggling to put things right.
"What happened!"
I couldn't speak. Then I thought of the perfect lie.
"It just fell?"
My dad looked angry, I thought I was in BIG trouble, but he just let the lie go.
"Just fell hunh?"
"yeah, I was reading my book and CRASH the curtain fell down"
"hmmn..."
this was it I was going to get it, a spanking, the worst punishment possible. My dad went over to the window, looked at the curtain rod.
" I can fix this, but I know the curtain didn't just fall"
Deer in headlights
"you were swinging on them weren't you?"
head down in shame
"yes"
"okay then... its time for dinner"
What? that's it? I broke the house! How can I be allowed to eat? This makes no sense at all. I got away Scott free? Dad never lets us get away with anything.
I was shocked, I thought I would be in gigantic trouble but there was nothing, not even anger.
The more I think about this event the more I realize that it was probably a moment when parents are supposed to be angry at the kid to teach them a lesson, but the situation is too funny to be mad at, I went downstairs for dinner and my dad stayed behind to fix the curtain, but the more I think about it the more I realize that he probably stayed behind to laugh, and where I thought I would be in trouble I was given the gift of forgiveness.
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