09.10.08
miss diagnosis
We put our lives and the lives of those we love in the hands of medical professionals. We give them our histories and access to our most private (literally) areas and not only allow them but also invite them to poke and prod us at will and without question. We believe in the hippocratic oath and we trust that they have our best interests at heart but do they?
We have a pretty decent medical system here in Canada, although after seeing Michael Moore’s “Sicko” I realize we are fairly backwoods compared to the likes of France and Cuba and so many other countries. Still, for the most part we get the attention we need when we need it, or at least we used to. Recently I heard a story about a lady here in BC who has a monster kidney stone that is impassable. She has been given the usual treatments for her ailment yet nothing is breaking the rock down to peehole size. There is apparently some sort of water treatment that is successful in such cases but there are only two machines in the entire province that do it and the soonest she can be booked in for the procedure is in 18 months. This poor woman is in extreme agony and on any number of narcotics so she is completely unable to function yet she has to wait a year and a half for what amounts to a simple day surgery!? This is bloody inconceivable (Wally Shawn). I can see if it was twenty years ago and the technology was not developed but there is absolutely zero reason that anyone should have to suffer when relief is available. How can they justify making a person who is in such dire need wait for so long?! Are there really 18 months worth of people in line for that particular remedy?
I’ve heard of people dying of burst appendixes (appendices?) in hospital waiting rooms, and I knew two people who were sent home from the emergency room (one was sent home twice in the same night) and told “It’s just the flu.” only to die later because it sure as fuck was not just the flu! In some places people wait for up to twelve hours in the emergency room…seriously it’s a wonder that more don’t die. I understand the concept of triage but if I am going to go to the ER because whatever pain I am in or injury I have sustained is bad enough that I can’t stand it long enough to wait to see my GP then I am certainly not going to be well enough to sit in a crowded waiting room and suffer unattended for however many hours until I am finally treated.
I would imagine it all comes down to money (because sadly doesn’t everything?) but we are ‘supposed’ to be a developed country. It’s not like we’re having our babies in the cornfields anymore or stitching each other up with the same needle and thread we use to patch our pants (not me personally as I sure as fuck can’t sew…people or clothing), hell we don’t even have to go to back alley butchers to have abortions anymore. We pay for our medical, do we need to pay overtime so they can clear up their schedules a little faster? Or does our government have to pony up and squeeze some sheckles out of the beaver’s ass (our nickel has a beaver on it) so this sort of medical negligence doesn’t happen anymore. We’ve come too far to backslide over a few measly dollars. Some things are just too important to not fund properly…like people.
Our local hospital has closed beds and cut back lab services. The simplest of blood tests are now sent away and can sometimes take days for results. They do ultrasounds and x-rays locally but anything beyond the basics has to be read by someone with more letters behind their name than whatever we have here. My cousin’s water broke last week but since she was six weeks premature they put her in an ambulance to drive her three hours to the nearest OB/GYN. Rather than risking delivering a (slightly) preemie here they drove her 300 km on a crappy secondary highway where she could easily have lost the baby all together (or given birth in transit) but at least these doctors asses were covered. They just handed the problem off to someone else.
Where are our priorities? What could possibly be more important or fiscally urgent than quality healthcare? In my mind, not a damn thing.
The physicians are not completely to blame, they have to answer to health authorities…imagine Nazi’s with stethoscopes and calculators…and they have to justify all of their testing and such. My issue with the doctors themselves is more about honesty.
My husband (as I mentioned) was very sick last week. He was in severe pain, short of breath and fevered. I am no diagnostician (without google) but I am pretty sure that the three symptoms combined are not a good sign. My problem with how his case was handled (and I’ve witnessed this time and again) is that they treated the symptoms before finding out what was causing them. Let’s say for instance that Heiny’s spleen was going renegade in some spastic calamity of infection. The anti-inflamatories that he was given were pretty heavy duty so if there were any flaming organs in his person I’m sure that the drugs would have extinguished them…or at least eased the pain. Likewise if his stomach was the culprit, the Zantac would have masked the symptoms and further if his heart was broken the aspirin and nitro glycerine would have patched it. Now I am not saying that they should let a person suffer untreated completely until a positive diagnosis is found but christ on a cracker if you throw enough dope at a person something is liable to stick. Now we won’t know what caused it OR what helped. Yes, of course I am glad he is feeling (a little) better but if they only treated the symptoms then surely there is still a cause to contend with. How will we know what the origin was, how serious (or not) the whole ordeal was…or if it will continue to pain him…if they stop looking once the symptoms subside?
It’s all very frustrating to me and I wish I had been here when it all went down, oh yes I would have been THAT wife. I would have asked the right questions and kept asking until I got answers. I (unlike my dear stoned hubby) would also have remembered all of the information and I would have kept after them until they got to the source of his anguish…and fixed it!
Apparently the ultrasound showed no gallstones but until the doctor gets back from holidays in two weeks we won’t know what (if anything) the test did show. They are scheduling him to see a cardiologist which leads me to believe they have no fucking idea what the problem is so they are just passing him off to another health professional. He is feeling better and he (thankfully) is at least breathing without difficulty again and for that I am also grateful but what if there is something serious going on? What if they are missing something that had they caught it early enough might save his life? He’s completely stressed about it which does nothing for his physical state. His work is a mess (again…or still) and there is enough for him to deal with without his health causing him more pain as well. I should have gone to med school.
I want to have faith in our medical system. I want to believe we matter. I also want to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny but so far it’s not looking very promising. Maybe like all other things even natural selection has become synthetic and this is just how they thin the herd.
05.07.08
perspective
One day is running into another at the moment. I’m getting confused as to where I am in the week and my appointment calendar is saving me from thinking every day is Sunday. How lovely would it be if every day was Sunday…not so much for the churchgoers though, you’d REALLY have to like church. I’m not sure why my internal calendar is all fucked up…it just is. I’m feeling off, not sick really, just off. I’m kinda crabby, my knees are achy and I haven’t been sleeping. Hmm, maybe it’s PMS. I really need to start tracking these bad days to see if there is a pattern. It might have something to do with our current (constant?) state of limbo. We haven’t heard anything about the job yet, I’m guessing he didn’t get it. Now we have to decide whether or not we want to keep trying to find something in the city or if we should stick it out here. Speaking of sticking out, I have a sore thumb, it’s swollen and feels bruised at the knuckle. Not sure what I did to it but it hurts like a motherfucker and of course it would have to be my right thumb…the important one…the wrestling/hitchhiking digit. I may need a splint…and crutches…and drugs.
About the time I think things are seriously sucking for me something worse happens to someone else. Last Saturday at 8pm Cousin Trixie’s husband Harry got a phone call. His eldest sister Caren had gone in to emergency twice only to be told she simply had the flu and be sent home, untested and untreated both times. When she started seizing they finally took her seriously. After a lot of tests they discovered that she has spinal meningitis. Scary shit. Apparently she had a cold sore, a herpe, that instead of bursting outward ruptured inward making its way to her spinal column and settling in her brain. By the time she was admitted they feared it was already too late. Her headache had become excruciating, the pressure in her brain increasing to the point that it drove her eyeballs nearly out of her head. At one point they found her trying to push her eyes back into their sockets, screaming that the pain was unbearable and she wanted to die. They suggested calling the family.
Harry left home at 3am to catch a flight at 7am, his mom left at roughly the same time from Nova Scotia and the two of them met in Toronto. They rented a car and drove up to where the two sisters live, hoping and praying that Caren would still be alive when they arrived. As they donned the sterile gowns Peggy warned them that Caren was not looking herself and that they should brace themselves. Peg said that despite the warning the shocked expressions on their faces were right out of a horror movie. Harry held tightly to his mother as she nearly collapsed at the sight of her eldest daughter. As if the nine tubes running in and out of her were not enough her face was nearly unrecognizably swollen and misshapen. Her left eye and the left side of her mouth were drooping as though she had had a stroke and her normally peachy complexion was now grey.
“Hey sis, your little bun is here.” Harry tried to coax her awake at the urging of the nurse.
“Harry.” she mumbled, her eyes fluttering.
He thought she was in pain as her hands flailed toward her face. As she fell back asleep he realized that she had been trying to wipe away her tears. It was the first time she had been awake in two days.
Caren is only 49 years old. Her husband, children, siblings and mother have been taking round the clock shifts sitting with her. Hoping. They say that it will be another three or four days before they know if she’ll live. Even if she does survive she is looking at at least three more weeks in the hospital and depending on the damage to her brain she may never recover fully.
My shit feels pretty small right now.
I’m not one for prayer but as long as there is anything positive in me I will be sending that energy her way.
04.08.08
reefer madness
My son is renting a room from one of my mom’s cousins (my second cousin) in Vancouver. I have referred to her as Puff the Magic Cousin as she has a weakness for the wacky weed. None of us have any problem with her bogarting the buzz, it’s her life and they are her brain cells to blow…er…suck?! I always get a giggle over people who insist that smoking the herb does not make them dumber. They swear on a stack of rolling papers that they are just as aware and intelligent as ever and often claim the grass actually makes them more astute. I am sure there are some occasional users who manage to function just fine and even retain a good portion of BC’s (brain cells) and I know one particularly high strung woman who could not function (or sleep) without it. She partakes of pot so she can slow down. She is more than a litte ADHD and apparently the mary jane works better for her than ritalin. Still I know a dope smoker laugh from a mile away “uh huh huhu huh” and the chronics I have encountered have to share their BC’s because unlike their j’s there aren’t enough to go around.
Puff is a high powered realtor. She likes to doobie it up in the evening to help her relax. To her it is no different than a glass of wine might be for someone else. Again, I have no problem with her usage but she swears it doesn’t effect her mind. I beg to differ.
Whenever Puff does or says something funny my boy can’t wait to get on MSN and share the tale with me. One day he told me that she always smokes cigarettes outside but she prefers to bogart her joints in the house. I asked my son if she offers to share or if he takes big breaths as he walks through the room. He rolls his eyes at me and says “No, if that’s what pot does to people, I’ll pass.” Good boy. He also tells me that she often gets words mixed up, for instance my kid has heard her use the word ‘infostructure’ many times. I guess that would be the information regarding the structure? I am not saying that I am certain that it is the spliffs that makes her loopy, Puff is not blonde, she is in the top ten percent of lower mainland realtors, she makes millions of dollars each year she can’t be doing that well and be entirely dim…can she?
Several weeks ago Puff’s boyfriend went on a motorcycle trip down to California and one of the fellows who was fairly new to motor sports went along was having continuous problems. Puff was telling my son the story and she said, “You really need to be experienced to do the Baja, that is not the kind of trip you should take if you’re a novelist.”
The Boy did a double take…did she really say novelist?
She did.
He could not wait to get online to tell me, adding that “next time you go biking, make sure you leave your grammar at the door… no novelists allowed.”
04.05.08
puppy love
Some couples like to play ‘Doctor’, today my husband and I played ‘Vet’. No, that is not some bestial type game and it doesn’t have anything to do with a certain puppy prone sex position.
We have an almost eight year old Border Collie/Lab cross. Her name is Mika and she is by far the happiest, sweetest canine ever…her stench notwithstanding of course…and she does like to stand at the side of the bed to watch us have sex, which gives me the giggles and totally ruins the mood so my husband has to put her outside or he knows he’s not going to get anywhere. She is my early warning system when someone enters the yard, she is my (mostly) fearless protector (unless of course I am being attacked by a cat as she has been hissed and swiped at enough times that she knows to maintain a safe distance from felines), she is my bedwarmer when Heiny is working, she is my constant companion and there is nobody else I would rather walk with. Don’t tell my husband I said that. I simply prefer to walk with the bitch because she always keeps my pace and she lets me listen to mipod and doesn’t make idle chatter. I also appreciate the fact that if we do meet up with anything menacing…in this area that means bears, cougars, coyotes or squirrels…she will not only let me know they are near but she will also at least attempt to chase them away. My husband would surely push me to the ground so that he could get a head start in the opposite direction. I am sure he’d make me his escape sacrifice. It would be easy enough to explain to the authorities that I tried to run but I tripped and fell and by the time he realized I was no longer with him it was too late to save me, I was already critter vittles. Apparently I have my entire demise figured out. If I do happen to become bear chow I hope that someone checks into whether or not my husband purchased a new life insurance policy on me recently.
Mika knows how to tell time. She used to wait at the end of the driveway every day at 4:30 every day when my boy was in school because she knew that was when the bus would be rounding the corner. When I worked at the music store she would ask to be let out at 6:20 because she knew I’d be coming home soon. On days when I was late or my son didn’t get off the bus she would hang her head and mope. It’s kind of nice to be loved like that. My husband never wags his tail or jumps around excitedly when I get home at the end of the day. By the same token he also doesn’t lick his privates and try to kiss me either…though I am pretty sure if he had that option he’d take it.
I have been walking almost every day for a few months now…and can finally do so without the parka!…but I have this thing about walking, I hate to walk back. That was why I loved my treadmill, when I was had had enough I could just get off it. I will happily stroll in one direction forever but I detest having to turn around and go back the way I have already been. Maybe it has something to do with seeing the same dull scenery again, maybe the return route feels longer, maybe I’m just lazy. My solution to this is to walk as far as I can in one direction and get a ride home. Now I know that sounds like a waste of fuel and a pain in the ass for my limo driver but I have found a way to do it without being either. When my husband is on day shift he finished work at 4:30 and it takes him about 30 minutes to get home. If I head to meet him just as he finishes it gives me a solid half hour jaunt before he meets me and picks me up. Quite often when I have extra time and energy I leave early and get an extra 10 or 20 minutes. Usually by the time we meet up I have walked enough and am ready for the lift back.
Mika has figured out that 4:30 is walk time. As soon as the phone rings she goes apeshit bouncing around like a 60 lb spider monkey on Red Bull and crack. If for any reason my husband is late in calling she finds me and starts nudging me, dancing around, telling me it’s time to go. Yesterday was no exception but when she jumped up on me in excitement, nearly knocking me on my ass, she left a spot of blood on my hoody. My stomach turned, not out of squeamishness but out of fear that there was something seriously wrong with her.
I told her to sit and shake and she handed me the paw, it was all bloody and the dew claw was obviously missing. Gross. She was too excited to sit still, she was more interested in walking than being checked out so I figured it likely wouldn’t get worse in half an hour so away we went.
By the time we got home I could tell it was bothering her but she wasn’t limping or whining…she just wanted to lick it. Great, now my dog has a taste for blood.
I Googled “torn dew claw” to see if it was the kind of thing that needed veterinary assistance but according to the great and powerful Wiki, it just needed to be cleaned and wrapped so it won’t get infected.
I set up an ‘operating table’ on the bathroom counter and gathered all of the necessary supplies…peroxide, gauze, polysporin and band-aids. When everything was in place I called her. She just ignored me which is dog speak for ‘Fuck off, I do not want a bath.” I walked over to her and said “Come on!” She looked away pretending not to hear me. Finally I put her collar on her, and she came more than a little unwillingly into the bathroom. I lifted her (no wonder my back hurts today) up onto the counter and had her lay down. We cleaned her paw and thankfully the peroxide did not turn her blonde (I was concerned), put some antibiotic ointment on the gauze and wrapped her leg using the bandaids to secure it. It looked much like the wrapping of racehorse legs…or a mini legwarmer.
Mika sniffed at the bandage a few times and I hissed at her when she started licking at it and she finally left it alone. She spent the rest of the evening reclined on our bed between us as we watched TV raising her wounded wing into the air every time we paid her any attention and rolling onto her back to let us know that a belly rub would make her feel better. We obliged. Hell, there is nothing I love more than a good tummy scratch when I hurt myself too.
This morning we removed her bandages and she seems just fine, we may have missed our calling as vets but that still doesn’t mean we’ll let her watch us play ‘doctor’.
04.02.08
homeland insecurity
There are a few reasons why I have decided to leave the other site and move here, the main one being that it has really never felt like home to me and even though I know this means I will lose touch with a lot of people from there I just feel it’s time to move on and those who really give a shit will find me here and those who don’t…well, it’s one way of finding out who your friends are I guess. Wow, run-on sentence much?! I also really like the features here, there are alerts for posts and comments and it’s faster, easier and far more stable. It might take me a bit to get the hang of it all but even if I don’t it is still completely operable for the computerly challenged.
Another reason for leaving is that I feel like my blogging has gotten stale and I need a fresh start to shake off the stagnation and find my voice again. Life has been handing us some pretty shitty blows lately and I haven’t been able to clear the mess from my head long enough or effectively enough to do anything constructive. I want to write but every time I set out to do so I find myself frustrated and feeling like it’s all been said before and rather than coming off as redundant I pull up Facebook and have a few games of Scramble to distract myself instead….oooh shiny words! While my vocabulary has improved it has not kept the demons out of my cranium. I need to purge, to spit them out, I have to get rid of them, or at least put them on paper (screen?!) because turning on the lights and exposing the little bastards usually makes the monsters a little less intimidating.
We are apt to be making some big changes in our lives very soon and I am not at all happy with them. My husband’s job is all fucked up and they are now saying that there will be no work for them for two weeks a month. We were barely making ends meet with full paychecks, there is no way we can survive on half that. Decisions have to be made, likely a move is in our future which means selling the house (and home) that we built ourselves and starting over somewhere else.
I was born and grew up in this town and despite the fact that I couldn’t wait to get the fuck out when I turned 18 I also couldn’t wait to get back here after living in the city for a year. It was here that I met my husband and had my son. We moved when our boy was two but by the time he started school and the stress of living (and worrying) in the city got to me I begged to move back here so that he could have the kind of formative years that I had (minus the insane mother of course). I always felt good about and still stand by that decision, I think kids in small towns are able to (usually) stay kids a little longer and there are more eyes on them despite the smaller population. If my kid ever got into shit he knew that I’d know about it before he even got home. By the same token I was secure in the knowledge that this was a safer place for him too but if he ever got into trouble there were plenty of people here he could turn to for help. Three times I have left here and three times I have moved back. It is home for me and as Dorothy so wisely put it “There is no place like home.”
I love it here, the weather is not bad by Canadian standards, it gets cold but not usually the bitter frostbiting cold, it gets hot in the summer but never so hot you can’t breathe, we don’t get any wind in this part of the mountains and it’s peaceful and private. I love my work and I am finally building a reputation and a clientele that would take me years to acquire elsewhere. We love our house and I have worked my ass off in the yard and gardens and while they are not quite lush and lovely yet I would like to see them become at least pretty and productive…even that is a far cry from the rock and clay I started with. I fully expected to live in this house for the rest of my life, I even imagined my grandchildren (eventually I hope!) coming to spend time with us here. It devastates me that we might have to let it go and we will never get out of it all that we have put into it financially or emotionally. The worst part of leaving for me however is the prospect of losing my real happy place, the lake. We will always be able to keep our spot but we will never get as much time there no matter where we move to and what kind of time off we get together. From home it is a forty minute drive, from anywhere else we’re looking at a minimum of four hours. From here it is feasible to go out for the day or a short overnight but those trips will be gone if we live anywhere else. I have spent the entire winter in anticipation of getting out there and starting on our cabin (so that we can camp year-round) and now it’s all fucked up and not only will we not be able to afford the cabin but we also may not get out there much at all. It’s beyond depressing for me.
My husband has to make some decisions. I will not force his hand even though I loathe the prospect of moving…not to mention packing all of our shit! He is forty years old and it’s hard for him to start over too and I know that but since he makes the bigger money ultimately it is up to him where and how he does so. I could gently (or not) nudge him in one direction or another but I would never make him go somewhere or do something that would make him unhappy even if it means sucking up my own sadness to do so. I understand why he holds onto hope that things will turn around at the mill, he knows that job so well, he makes good money (when he’s working), he gets four weeks of vacation in the summer and the benefits are fantastic. I realize that it’s hard to walk away from that if there is a chance it will pick up again but we can’t live on hope. It’s time to shit or get off the pot and the sooner he tells me where we’re going the sooner I can figure out how to deal with it. I just keep telling myself that no matter which route we take at least I will finally have high speed internet. It’s small consolation but consolation nonetheless.
I hate to be a whiner and I know our situation is not life or death and I realize that there are plenty of people who have it much worse than I do and I have perspective on that but at the same time this is my life, my world and these are my fears and frustrations. I get that things could be much worse and yes, at least we have our health but it’s hard to be grateful when it feels like the life I love is crumbling in and I am about to suffocate in the rubble and anxiety of it all.
Maybe changing blog sites will be good for me in that it’s a move of its own sort as well. Maybe starting over online will prepare me for starting over offline. Maybe not. That was me trying to be optimistic and failing with flying colours.
09.10.07
ben here
Twice now my friends and I have been forcibly evicted from our blogging home. It’s not like we’re drunk, noisy, rowdy, cousin-fucking hillbillies or anything but still we can’t seem to catch a blog-damn break when it comes to our communal hosts. In the past week I have signed up at no less than five other blog sites. They are all either full of children or they have no soul. So now I find myself here at WP. I was tempted to blog here once before but I had heard that this place was all hoity toity grammatical and snooty and well, that’s just not me. I like to write and I am more than a bit voyeuristic when it comes to reading about the lives of others…and when it comes to watching them have sex too really.
My one big disappointment with WP is that my name was already taken. I tried to log into the system, I punched in every password I ever used just in case at one time I did sign up here and forgot about it. It would not surprise me if indeed I was the benthere here and I used some new password (that I picked because I would surely remember it) that I have long since forgotten. My nana has Alzheimer’s and I know that someday it will be my fate to wear my pantyhose on my head too so most days I count myself lucky if I remember to wear pants. Alas it appears that some other bent was here first.
I have been blogging as benthere for four years. To have to come up with a new moniker at this point seemed like too much work…I am lazy so really doing most things feels too much like work. I knew that I wanted to keep ‘ben’ in my handle because, well, that’s who I am. That was when ‘benher’ came to me. I know it sounds a little butch, a little Hestonesque but I love a good pun and when you take away the religion, the slavery and the chariots it’s just the story of a woman trying to find her place and her voice in a textual world. I am a little more feminine than Charlton, I have better hair and I like to think I am a little more eloquent. Now if you’ll excuse me I’d like to settle myself in here and rearrange some furniture…then I’ll deal with those damn dirty apes.
ben
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