Rose's Cantina

My mother spent over a year in the Toronto Hospital wasting away from a bowel blockage the doctors found only when they opened her up as a last resort. She died two weeks later of an infection. She was 67. I wish I had been in Toronto to be her health advocate. but I was here, in Ottawa, busy rearing three small children and living my entitled lifestyle. I wasn't even there at the end -- I couldn't bear to be the one to pull the plug. Afterwards, my solid brother Gary, who cared for her in final days in London, Ontario, told me a story. After her operation, she was left with a colostomy bag which she had to empty. It was a difficult miserable existence for Vera who by then was only 85 pounds. She soldiered on, of course; it's how women in our family are built. She got out of bed one night and walked into the hospital bathroom to empty her bag and it broke. There was shit everywhere. An orderly came in, cleaned her up, looked at her chart and said: "Boy, you...

After my gut-wrenching experience at the ER Sunday night, with the determination my condition was not a heart attack, I returned home emboldened by the fact I simply had the flu. I wasn't going to die horrifically on the wrong end of a pair of paddles, I was just destined to languish with a supply of Peptol Bismol, green tea and soup. But the pain got worse, like a knife in the back, made worse by lying for any length of time. So sleep came two hours at a time followed a level of pain which was excruciating. By 3 a.m. the day after the first ER visit, on Monday morning, it was time to go back, to call the doctor on his diagnosis. Gut pain is the worst because it can come from anywhere. It's always hard to nail down, so I wouldn't have blamed the original doctor except for the fact he didn't even palpitate my abdomen during my visit and only focused on the symptom of chest pain. Before my visit, I scoured my usual Internet favorites: WebMD, the Mayo Clinic, some...