In My Corner of the World

"We cannot do great things, only small things with great love." - Mother Theresa

In spite of the beautiful sunshine, the world is looking a little dark right now.  Donald Trump continues to spew his venom, people are still reeling from the mass shooting in Orlando and yesterday the U.K. voted to leave the European Union.  The market is tanking and things feel scary.  If I could, I would wave my magic wand and fix it.  I would erase the fear and hatred at the heart of most of our problems.  Oh that I had a magic wand.  But I don't.

Nonetheless, I am not helpless.  I do not have the big fix for all these problems but there are things I can do.  I can speak up for love.  I can speak up against hatred.  I can help in lots of small ways.  I can listen to someone who is struggling.  I can let someone cut ahead of me in the grocery store line.  I can smile and say hello to the woman in the hijab when I see her in the store.  I can pay for the coffee of the person behind me at Tim Horton's.  I can buy a few pairs of pyjamas and drop them off to the refugee clothing bank.  I can attend a Pride celebration.  I can bring a cold drink to the security guard at my mom's nursing home.

I can't heal the planet but I can make my corner of the world a little better.  None of us can do everything.  We can all do something.  If we all do what we can in our little corner, we might just change the world. Let's give it a try.

Challenges

“When you feel broken and your resources are down to nothing, Calm Down and pray because God is up to something!” - Carlix Collins

I'm not sure where to start other than by saying it is a good thing I got my pacemaker when I did.  Even with my new efficient heart, the last few weeks have more than sapped my energy.  My resources are depleted, the tank is empty.

While Cath continues to struggle to recover from her recent radiation treatments, Nancy spent nine days in Mt. Sinai.  I took her into emergency two weeks ago when she was suffering from severe abdominal pain.  She needed surgery to remove her gall bladder and was classified on the emergency surgery waiting list as a "C" patient.  That means all the "A and B" patients had priority over Nan.  I took her in on a Tuesday morning and she had her surgery late on Thursday night.  As they were able to do the surgery laproscopically, she was released the following day.  We didn't even make it to the elevator before she collapsed and was readmitted with a case of pancreatitis.  She was there six more days.  So, for nine days, I was at Mt. Sinai for about twelve hours per day.  The first four days I was there alone with Nan.  By day five, Cath felt well enough to join me.  But Cath is still far from recovered from her own trials.  In some ways, it was harder to manage Cath than it was to manage Nan.  Bells and buzzers and loud noises sent Cath into a tailspin of tears every day.  Hospitals are noisy places.  She was nervous and aggresive.   I was desperate to get Nan home.

While I sat at Nan's bedside Monday morning, I got a call from the nursing home.  There had been an accident while my mom was momentarily left unattended and she had suffered a head injury.  I somehow needed to figure out how to be in two places at one time.  Two days later, my mom developed a fever and a respiratory infection.  The following day, one of the nurses noticed that her foot was swollen and discoloured.  Xrays confirmed that her foot is broken.  No incident report was made so we don't know how it happened.

Nan was released on Wednesday and went to stay with Cath for a couple of days.  Stan went to the lake leaving me to care for both my sisters.  Cath can't drive yet so I've had multiple chores to do every day, not just to chauffeur her around but to do her grocery shopping and other errands.  I am also going to the nursing home every day.  My mom has an egg on her forehead, a black eye and the worst facial bruising I've ever seen.  Her bruises end low on her cheek in a large blister. My frustration level is high.  Mom has been a resident of the nursing home for eleven and a half years.  In 2011 she broke her hip when left unattended sitting on her bed.  A couple of years later, she broke her foot.  No incident report was filed.  At least a half dozen times in the last two years, she has had significant bruises.  We don't know how they happened.  I realize she is fragile and it doesn't take much to bruise her skin.  I am not concerned that she is being abused but rather that staff are so concerned for their jobs if they file an incident report that they just don't tell.  The nursing assistant involved in mom's head injury cried for days after the accident happened.  I get that she feels terrible.  I get that accidents happen.  I'm not even angry.  I just want them to figure it out so that it doesn't keep happening. Her tears and contrition along with three dollars will get me a ride on the subway.  

My friend David tells me that periods of adversity are God's way of letting me know that I am loved and trusted.  It is in trying times that we grow.  I don't want to contradict him or complain but frankly I'd be okay with a little less growth right now and a few days of Jackie time to refill the tank. 

Walking Through Fire

"Where there is no struggle, there is no strength." - Oprah Winfrey

It has been a couple of months since I've made an entry in this blog.  I don't know if anyone reads it so I don't know if anyone has missed it.  I've had a couple of interesting and challenging months, not just in terms of my own recovery from surgery but in terms of supporting my sisters who have been dealing with their own challenges.

I've done very well in my personal recovery from pacemaker surgery.  I'm still trying to get over the fact that this is what normal feels like.  I can run across a wide street to make the light and run up a couple flights of stairs all without breathlessness.  My revved up heart has given me a revved up metabolism resulting in a bit of unearned weight loss.  Who knew my sluggish heart was keeping me fat?  Still, it has taken some adjustment to my new speed.  There have been many nights when I have been woken by what feels like a racing heart.  My cardiologist assures me it is not racing, just beating at the speed of a normal heart.  Given that I have never had a heart that beat normally, it feels weird.  I'm getting used to it and I'm sure in time I won't notice it anymore.

Just after my surgery, my sister Cath started a course of medical treatments of her own.  She is fine but it has been gruelling for her.  Her treatments have required a daily visit to the hospital for thirty days.  She hasn't reacted well to the treatments, suffering many side effects. When her husband decided to head to their lakehome for a few days, I took over accompanying her for her daily treatment.  What we expected to take a few minutes, in fact kept us in the hospital for eight hours at a stretch most days while the doctors figured out how to deal with her side effects.  They finally did get it under control and with only two treatments left to go, she is now at the end of the tunnel, standing and intact.  During this process, my other sister Nancy had foot surgery which kept her completely off her feet for three weeks.  I did my best to take care of her though I am admittedly grateful for her kind neighbours who checked in on her multiple times daily.  As Nan was unable to attend at the nursing home for several weeks and Cath wasn't up to it, it also fell to me to see to my mom.  I didn't make it everyday but I did the best I could.

A couple of days after my surgery, my biggest client terminated my contract over the phone.  I was terribly hurt.  For seven months, I gave this company my heart in a way that I have never committed to another client.  They said all the right things convincing me that there was an alignment of our values.  I worked long hours far in excess of my contract requirments and didn't bill for a single moment of that time.  I thought I had found a place where I fit.  I was wrong.  I made full disclosure at the time we signed the agreement, I am not a sycophant.  I will never be sycophant.  It has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years but I feel it is my obligation to speak up when I see things going off the rails.  I do it privately and respectfully, but I do it.  The company owner assured me that is exactly what he wanted.  He asked me to save him from himself.  At the end of the day though, the emperor didn't want to hear that he has no clothes.  The truth became an inconvenience and confronting it raised a mirror he didn't want to look into.

In retrospect, I am relieved.  The situation was starting to feel toxic.  We did not have an alignment of our values and it was causing me pain that I had so seriously misread the owner.  Mostly I felt angry at myself for getting taken in.  But it would have been close to impossible to work with the crazy level of stress I was experiencing and look after my mother and sisters while recovering from heart surgery.  The end of the contract was a problem that came with a gift in its hands. The challenge is that in January, I had advised my client referral sources that I wouldn't be accepting new clients as I couldn't keep up the pace.  I had to go back and reactivate those referral sources and am grateful that they didn't skip a beat.

For the past week and a half, my husband has been golfing in Florida.  I seized the opportunity to both finish some projects I've been working on for months and to go on a cleaning frenzy.  This afternoon, I will tackle my bedroom closet.  I haven't been well enough to do it for two years.  My new heart is strong.  My energy levels are high.  It is spring and my world is filled with hope.

Of Madmen and Mayors

“There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.”  ~Josh Billings

Yesterday was one of those days when I got up, turned on the news and seriously considered going back to bed.  The western world was once again gripped in tragedy after the bombings in Brussels.  I made coffee and watched the news for about thirty minutes before deciding to turn it off.  I don't understand anything anymore.  It is too sick and too sad, too incomprehensible, too inhumane.  I cancelled my plans to go downtown for lunch.  I didn't have the heart to speak to anyone.

A couple of hours later while checking my Facebook page, I saw the news of Rob Ford's death.  Dying of cancer at just forty-six years old is sad.  Mr. Ford left two small children.  There is, no doubt, much sadness in his family.  They grieve for a brother, son, father and husband.  When it was becoming evident that his life would be coming to an end, I wondered what would be said about him when he passed.  Would the media whitewash Rob Ford, the man?  Would his political allies?  The general public?  

Just 50 people showed up for a vigil in the rain last night hosted by Mayor John Tory to honour the victims of the Brussels attack.  Thirty people dead, many more injured, ordinary people, going to work on the subway, going away on a holiday or going home, their lives snuffed out in an instant by madmen.   Many more Toronto residents showed up in the rain to leave flowers, notes and tokens at a makeshift shrine set up in the Etobicoke park named after Rob Ford's father.

When his death was announced yesterday morning, the media kicked into high gear, saying little more about Rob Ford's misdeeds than that he had his problems. They interviewed his colleagues at city hall including his fiercest opponents.  All talked about his love for his family and his kindness to people in need.  Maybe those things were true.  But equally and more true is that he was an abusive husband, racist, misogynist and criminal who hung out with bad men and did bad things.  He believed he was above the law.  He abused the office of mayor. He brought shame to our city and embarrassment to our citizens.  While I have no need to vilify him in death, I certainly have no intention of canonizing him either and I will not be complicit in rewriting history.  Surely our memories aren't that bad.

Becoming Me

"I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service." -  John F. Kerry

My friend Tricia Dower's new novel Becoming Lin came out this week.  I ordered it months ago when I learned that it would be released this spring.  I loved her last book Stony River and expected this new one would be equally good.  I was wrong.  Becoming Lin is even better.

I am a voracious reader.  When I pick up a book that resonates with me, I usually won't put it down until it is done.  This often means 3 a.m. bedtimes giving me only a few short hours to sleep until I need to be up for a meeting.  Becoming Lin is only 275 pages, so no late night would be required.  It should have been an afternoon's reading but in fact I took three days to finish it.  I worked hard to resist the urge to read until it was done.  For one thing, I knew that I would be sad to come to the end.  I got attached to the characters and was reluctant to let them go.  For another thing, I wanted to reflect on the story as I read it.  I spent hours remembering who and where I was in the time of the Vietnam war though I was younger than Lin, the central character in the book.  It was the late sixties and early seventies. I was becoming Jackie.

Coincident with my reading, I entered into a conversation of sorts with my cousin Francis.  He has been trying to help me understand the intricacies of U.S. politics.  Francis is a bit older than me.  He was drafted and served in Vietnam when I was in high school.  Though I've wanted to talk to him about it for more than forty years, we have not.  Francis doesn't talk about the war.  He has written about it though, sharing his writings with only his wife in the civilian world.  This week, he shared them with me.  I am truly humbled.

As I have had to learn to live with the physical and psychological effects of lifelong heart disease, Francis has had to learn to live with the lifelong physical and psychological damage of war.  I wish there was something as simple as getting a pacemaker to fix his maladies.  Unfortunately, there is not.  There is only love.  I'm not sure it is enough.

Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/vietnam_war.html

Bionic

“Recovery begins from the darkest moment.” -  John Major

After a long, painful day, I was released from Mt. Sinai last night at the height of the snowstorm.  I am bruised, sore and in an abundance of pain.  I'm also incredibly grateful.  I've decided having a pacemaker officially qualifies me as a bionic woman.  I wonder if my new status comes with super powers.  At this point, I would be happy if it just means I can climb the stairs without stopping twice or walk a block in the cold without gasping for breath. 

Anything beyond that will be a bonus.

Anxious

“No amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of worrying can change the future. Go easy on yourself, for the outcome of all affairs is determined by Allaah’s decree.

If something is meant to go elsewhere, it will never come your way, but if it is yours by destiny, from it you cannot flee.” - Umar Ibn Al-Khattaab

In a few minutes I will leave for Mt. Sinai.  It's surgery day.  I'm filled with anxiety.  I had a bit of a meltdown a couple of hours ago but I have calmed down a bit since then.  I'm wondering why this time is so much harder than the other times I've been through surgery.  This is hardly the scariest procedure I've had.  Maybe it is because it is my heart.  The very essense of being.  The beating of which keeps me alive.  The metaphorical repository for my feelings.

I expect all will go well.  In the event it does not, there is little left unsaid.  The people I love, know I love them.  The rest is out of my control. I surrender.